Big Bad Breakfast is targeting a mid-October opening for its new restaurant at 330 Franklin Road in Brentwood Place, marking the scratch-cooking chain's 32nd store overall and its fifth in the greater Nashville area. Founder and CEO John Currence says the company has wanted a Brentwood location for years, and permitting delays pushed back the timeline before landing on the fall target.
According to WhatNow, Big Bad Breakfast has not publicly announced an official opening date beyond the mid-October window, though the company has already listed the Brentwood location on its own website. Currence described the site as an ideal neighborhood location, pointing to a shopping center where the parking lot stays consistently full and activity rarely lets up. The Brentwood restaurant will offer the brand's signature scratch-made approach, with food prepared in-house daily.
A Brand Built On Fine-Dining Roots
Big Bad Breakfast was founded in 2008 by Currence, who originally built his reputation in fine dining. He won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: South in 2009 for his Oxford, Mississippi flagship, City Grocery, which he opened in 1992 before expanding into breakfast concepts. That background, per the WhatNow report, shaped his belief that breakfast deserved the same culinary attention as lunch and dinner, and Currence has said elevating the meal would resonate with people.
The chain makes its own jellies, jams, bacon, sausage, ham, and turkey at a company-owned facility in north Alabama, giving it control over food quality from production to plate, Currence told the outlet. That in-house supply chain underpins a full bar program planned for the Brentwood location, which will include scratch-made Bloody Marys, a cold brew vodka cocktail called the Breakfast Dude, and an Irish Coffee built from the original recipe used at San Francisco's Buena Vista Cafe, according to FranklinIs. Fresh-squeezed juice mimosas and screwdrivers round out the full-service dining offering.
Expanding Across Middle Tennessee
The Brentwood opening will add another Williamson County restaurant to a roster that already includes Big Bad Breakfast locations in Franklin and Spring Hill, along with stores in Nashville proper. The brand has also been busy elsewhere in the region: Hoodline reported in April that Big Bad Breakfast signed a lease on Murfreesboro's Public Square, taking over the former home of City Cafe, a diner tracing back to 1900. Williamson Source notes the company operates over 30 stores across the Southeast, a footprint that continues to grow with recent expansion news in Memphis's Cooper-Young neighborhood as well.
Currence has said the company plans to accelerate growth after strengthening its operations, using the current economic environment to build the team and tools needed to scale from 50 to 100 stores. Big Bad Breakfast has opened roughly five locations a year for the past six or seven years, and Currence believes the brand could reach 50 stores as that pace continues.
Brentwood Place's Bigger Makeover
The new restaurant lands inside a shopping center undergoing its own transformation. Regency Centers Corporation acquired the 320,000-square-foot Brentwood Place Shopping Center for $118.5 million in March 2025, when the property was 95 percent leased and drawing more than 4.3 million annual visits, according to Commercial Property Executive. Avison Young market data cited in that report put the Brentwood retail submarket's vacancy rate at a tight 1.9 percent in late 2024, well below metro Nashville's overall 3.1 percent rate after 16 straight quarters of positive absorption.
Since the sale, the center has been adding experiential and lifestyle tenants alongside Big Bad Breakfast. Up Hospitality's 130-seat Karrington Rowe and the literary cocktail lounge The Raven are joining the mix, per Megan Smith of The Masterpiece, as the property shifts from a spot that historically emptied out early into a day-to-night destination. Indoor pickleball and dining venue Crush Yard already opened a 33,400-square-foot facility at 300 Franklin Road in April, converting a former Stein Mart into eight courts, an arcade, and a full restaurant and bar, as Hoodline previously reported on the pickleball venue's debut. Luxury pet care brand Yardstick also signed a lease for more than 7,000 square feet at the center in October 2025, targeting a spring 2026 launch with high-end boarding and spa grooming services, according to Foundry Commercial.
Big Bad Breakfast's arrival fits both storylines at once: a fast-growing Southern chain chasing its next 20 stores, and a suburban shopping center betting that all-day dining and entertainment can keep its parking lot full well past breakfast hours.
