How TC Restaurant Group runs a honky-tonk empire on Lower Broadway

Nashville’s Lower Broadway honky-tonks are coveted businesses, but it takes more than just opening the doors to turn them into moneymakers.

 

TC Restaurant Group (TCRG) owns more celebrity-branded, downtown honky-tonks than anyone — Luke’s 32 Bridge, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar, Lainey Wilson’s Bell Bottoms Up, Casa Rosa Miranda Lambert’s Tex-Mex Cantina and Morgan Wallen’s This Bar + Tennessee Kitchen.

 

The Ohio-based heavyweights began building their Lower Broadway empire in 2017 with the opening of FGL House, now Lainey Wilson’s, pioneering the idea of partnering with contemporary artists for bar concepts. Opry Entertainment Group and Blake Shelton’s Ole Red and Riot Hospitality Group and Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row, among others, followed in 2018.

 

Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, TC Restaurant Group anticipated a heightened demand and adapted its business model to meet customer needs.

 

They knew to be successful they had to think about running their businesses as more than a honky-tonk or bar.

 

“A lot of the adaptations and things we implemented are all very much derivative of business models from Las Vegas hotels, large-scale, high-volume nightlife venues and restaurants for that matter,” Grant Burlingame, vice president of operations at group, told the Business Journal. “These restaurants and bars are something beyond your normal everyday bar, which is again, part of the lure and excitement. It’s certainly a rewarding and satisfying thing to see the customers faces when they land in Nashville. … So, in order to maintain that service to customers, a lot of the things that we brought into this market are a derivative of some of the Las Vegas elements.”

 

Despite drawing on operating efficiencies from Vegas venues, TC doesn’t lean into the Music City’s “Nashvegas” nickname.

 

“We specifically do not use the term Vegas. … We are Nashville and we are proud of it,” Burlingame said. “There’s a fine line without being too contemporary or too forward-thinking to provide what the customers are looking for all while being true to Nashville.”

 

TC Restaurant Group doesn’t look at its properties as restaurants, bars, live music venues or retails shops, but all four combined. Its venues are open from morning to late-night, seven days a week.

 

The group doesn’t just focus on maximizing Friday and Saturday nightlife, but chalk their success up to also maintaining a strong culinary program to draw lunch and dinner crowds all week long.

 

“The competition lies in how we want to further pursue the weekday business. … That’s where we really make a lot of strong efforts, not just simply capitalize on the home runs of Friday, Saturday night, we want to have base hits throughout the entire week,” Burlingame said.

 

Coming out of Covid, safety and security remains one of the restaurant group’s biggest priorities. By the end of 2024, TC will have invested north of $15 million in security training and payroll over the last three years. They partner with the Sexual Assault Center and Safe Bar Tennessee, among other organizations, to continue enhancing customer experience.

 

“We have always been about safety first, that was really one of the points of focus for our company coming out of the Covid shutdown and reopening,” Burlingame said. “It certainly is one of the largest areas in which customers and consumers are expecting more, demanding more and we want to be the first to give it to them.”

 

Metro and Lower Broadway business owners have launched several efforts in recent years to address concerns in the area. Metro appointed Benton McDonough as director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife in 2022, The Broadway Entertainment Association formed in 2023 and Garth Brooks partnered with Metro Nashville Police Department to open a police substation on Lower Broadway this year.

 

“The night-and-day difference in the local, public recourses that we have felt on Broadway in the last year and a half, we’ve welcomed that with open arms,” Burlingame said. 

 

Since coming to Nashville in 2020, Burlingame has noticed the passion operators and business owners have in regard to doing what’s best for Nashville as a whole and was happy to become a part of the effort to maintain its culture, he said. 

 

The company also has found success in investing heavily into its new hire training programs and retaining employees by allowing existing staff to have the first grab at new opportunities.