NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — For the last year, Nashville native Adam Smith had an idea brewing. “I saw the pandemic as an opportunity,” he said. It came to him after he left his career to take care of his children.
Now he’s weeks away from launching the Music City Brew Hop. He said the goal is “to show everybody that there is a side of Nashville that's not downtown, that's not Broadway- and that is exactly what we’re trying to convey here.”
The trolley, salvaged from Gatlinburg, will stop at eight East Nashville breweries during its eight-hour route.
“So if you get off at a brewery and you really like the beer you can stay two hours there and we’ll be back every single hour on that loop," said Smith.
Southern Grist will be one of them.
“So it’s not a binge drinking bachelor party tour. It’s more of a safety hop on, hop off, get them to the right craft and then whenever they want to leave they can,” said owner Kevin Antoon.
It's an opportunity for exposure after a year when the industry had none. “It’s a new clientele in most cases, it’s additional clientele, it’s more people spending money when breweries need it most.”
Smith is keeping everything local, including the music you’ll hear on the ride.
“That’s what I’m really here for is to have people find something that they didn’t really know existed because it wasn’t in downtown Nashville," he said, "and then now every time they come back to Nashville when they visit they’ll have a new destination that they want to go to.”
East Nashville Tours start July 8, but Smith is already planning future routes in neighborhoods like the Gulch and midtown.
