Margaret Littman

Five new hotels (well, four hotels and one motel) are bucking both the Music City Airbnb trend and the domination of big international chains through local connections, distinctive amenities, and unexpected addresses.

New locations and ideas are transforming a brand with 35 years of Nashville history
You’d be forgiven if you don’t keep track of every opening and closing at Opry Mills mall. But it may be worth your attention to swing by a new kiosk in the mall near Johnny Rockets. Colts Chocolates, the Nashville purveyor that makes the wildly popular Colts Bolts chocolate-peanut-butter puck, has new owners and plans for significant expansion.

Arkansas’ largest city and state capital might not be your top bucket list destination, but if you know where to look, you’ll find that it has many unexpected charms. Here are 10 things you may not have known about “The Rock.” Use them to help plan what to do and see and where to stay in this pretty riverside destination.

It was 2000, and Lee Rankin was taking her then 1-year-old son through the Kentucky State Fair when she saw her first alpaca. “I looked into its eyes and fell in love,” she recalls.
Right then and there, Rankin decided she wanted to move to the mountains and raise alpacas. It took until 2003 for the pieces to fall into place, but she made that dream a reality. Today her Apple Hill Farm offers others the opportunity to share the alpaca love with a robust agritourism business.
See more: Go Wild...

Whatever she does, Charity Morgan is all in. The chef attended the California Culinary Academy, an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu, which means her kitchen education was rooted in French cooking, with lots (and lots) of butter. Charity’s father is Creole and her mother Puerto Rican, so her childhood food traditions included pork, seafood and more butter. She cooked for her family of four using those traditions and ingredients … until two years ago.
That’s when her husband, Derrick Morgan...

When chef Maneet Chauhan, also of Chopped and Iron Chef fame, was deciding where to open her restaurant, she chose Nashville. That was partially because of Margot McCormack and Deb Paquette, two female chefs and entrepreneurs who raised the culinary bar in Nashville.

“When I came here, it was easy to see who were the trailblazers. It was the women,” Chauhan tells Fortune. “I met [Paquette] on one of my visits and it just firmed up the decision to come to Nashville.”

Memphis loves music and drinking, sometimes in that order. Even the most nondescript bar in Memphis has a noteworthy jukebox filled with old-school blues and rock n’ roll, a reliable DJ, a stage for live music or a combination thereof. Drink specials are a given. So are late nights. And while tourists flock to Beale Street for neon lights and crowded bar floors, Memphians tend toward places where bartenders know their names and local brews from High Cotton and Ghost River flow.

New initiatives move the market toward its goal of being at zero waste by December 2020
Your next visit to the Nashville Farmers’ Market on Rosa Parks Boulevard will include six new items. No, not necessarily farm-fresh peaches or asparagus, though those will likely be there too, depending on when you arrive. The market is introducing six custom-designed receptacles that allow customers to sort their trash.
The Nashville Farmers’ Market, which is owned and operated by the Metro government, is...

The industry gathering will take place this weekend at Music City Center
“We all crave stories so much,” says Melissa Anelli, the CEO of Mischief Management, a New York City-based firm that is bringing the new PodX podcasting conference to Music City Center this Friday through Sunday, May 31-June 2. “The glossy stuff in podcasting is secondary,” she says. “What makes for a good podcast is storytelling, whether it is fiction or nonfiction.”
Nashville is a city of storytellers...

Building a massive stage at the end of Broadway is not the only logistical challenge during the NFL Draft this weekend. More than 300,000 fans are expected downtown, yet with significant street closures, increased security screenings and limited early-morning delivery windows, restaurant and bar operators have had to rethink their ordering logistics.

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When Rick and Vicki Bolsom decided to retire and close their 26-year-old West End restaurant Tin Angel, it was bittersweet. Locals were devastated. The Bolsoms have been part of Nashville dining life for a generation. Before Tin Angel they owned the Cakewalk Cafe, where they hired Deb Paquette, who in turn went on to open Etc. and Etch, and changed the way Nashville dined out.

In 2017, Nashville surpassed Memphis (for the first time since 1890) as the biggest city in Tennessee and lately Nashville has been all anyone can talk about. But while Nashville has many charms, Memphis is finally getting its buzz back. And it’s all warranted. While oft-overshadowed, Memphis has a quirky food scene, a rich visual arts tradition, plus famous blues music, civil rights history and, of course, Elvis. This year Memphis celebrates its bicentennial—imagine 200 years of attractions ...

Like most entrepreneurs, Sarah Martin McConnell is determined. It was determination that led her to start Music for Seniors—a nonprofit that helps fight cognitive decline by bringing live music concerts and classes to the elderly—in 2007 while caring for her mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“My mom was the inspiration for this,” says Martin McConnell, who is a singer-songwriter and as well as a social worker. “I asked if I could bring music and do a sing-along at my mom’s dayc...

Taking a look at programs and organizations that cut waste and redirect food to the hungry
Imagine the entire space of Nissan Stadium filled to the top with uneaten produce. The lettuce you forgot about in the back of your crisper. Those melon-sphere garnishes served with your omelet at brunch last week. Imagine an arena’s worth of that, piled layer upon layer, rotting away every day.
The stats are mind-blowing: Up to 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is thrown away.