Community Highlights: Meet Chloey Wilson of Elevate Coffee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chloey Wilson.

Hi Chloey, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Ryan & I are both from Seattle, WA. Back home, shops in the style of our own are on every corner. When I, was 18 I finally got my first coffee job after applying for what felt like forever. I loved the work, the creativity in it and the relationships I got to build with my customers. I loved being a barista. When Ryan & I lived in Utah for a time, I got a job at a family owned and operated coffee shop. The owner was all about quality and procedure and it was really helpful to my understanding of coffee. When we moved back home from Utah to Seattle, I finally landed a job at my dream coffee shop where I developed a great relationship with all of my co-workers, bosses & customers. This shop, “The Coffee Bear”, felt like home and I only grew my love for my work and respect for the business, especially watching my management work.

I went to school for Business Marketing at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, WA and even before school I always had an entrepreneurial spirit, making lemonade stands, starting a dog walking business, getting CPR certified to offer childcare, putting on plays and the list goes on. I loved to run things, be in control and be able to exercise my creativity. Business school really drove it home for me though, giving me the confidence to think I could really do it myself. But Washington felt like a risk, the market was so saturated with the kind of shop that I wanted to own & operate.

When Ryan & I moved to Nashville for my music career, he landed a job in his profession as a ballroom dance instructor. He studied ballroom in WA & UT and it was what he had thought he would spend his life doing in some capacity. I had been in and out of jobs not really finding my footing, I was so unhappy everywhere I turned. While working as a bartender at one place and a barista at another place, I started to dream up my coffee shop on the back of napkins, ordering paper pads and anything else I could find. I knew what I loved from the shops I had worked at and I knew what I didn’t, what I thought I could improve or wanted to do differently.

There was this lot, two blocks from our house, on the corner of Tulip Grove/Big Horn Dr and Lebanon Pike. Every day we would drive past this empty plot of grass and we would say, that’s gonna be the perfect spot for our coffee shop one day. The traffic on Lebanon Pike was a plenty and it was easily accessible, it was close to home, it was perfect. And one day a “for lease” sign went up on the plot of grass. We didn’t really think it was for the grass lot, it was probably for the office building next door but we figured, we’d ask. The office buildings owner’s nephew happened to be stopping by when we were, and we asked about the sign and told him our hopes. He told us the sign was for an office space in the building but that his uncle (the owner) had thought of putting a food truck out in the grass lot and gave me his uncles contact info. I reached out not long after that to set up a meeting with Kal Patel, the owner and who would come to be a close friend and mentor.

Kal took a meeting with me and heard my proposal and wanted to help me get started, he believed in my idea. I still needed to figure out, more than I could have realized at this point, but it was a huge step in the right direction.

When COVID hit in 2020, Ryan was laid off from his job, as was I. We all the sudden, had nothing but time. We aren’t the type to sit still, so we got to work. I had, at this point, already put together my 30 page business proposal, knew what I wanted to call the shop, what I wanted the drink staples to be, I had design ideas, a business license and few other things together but I had no idea what I was doing until I was doing it.

I asked a lot of questions, stood at the city for hours on hours, trying to find the right people, get to talk with them and hopefully get led in the right direction, every step of the way. & my best advice to anyone who wants something but isn’t sure they can or know how. I don’t think anyone REALLY knows what they are doing until they come out the other side and know what they would do next time and then the next time, you learn something different. You just got to start. Then persevere.

Once Ryan & I were laid off and we were able to secure funding, we got to work on the building. We got a shed and Ryan & I worked tirelessly building out the inside of the shop. We literally poured our blood, sweat and tears in to it. We didn’t come from money and securing the little funding we did, was difficult, so we made every penny count. When the shop was finished and the site was excavated and approved, we moved our shop on to the lot we dreamed of every time we drove by.

It has been five years since we opened our first Elevate and we now have two shops, 20 employees, one operational manager, TONS of loyal regular customers, endless drink specials and our dream job. Ryan is our CFO & crisis management and I am our CEO and Marketing Manager but really, Ryan & our operations Manager Hailey Nugent clock more hours every week than I do anymore, as I become more successful in my music career and spend less time at Elevate. Our team is incredible and we are so grateful everyday for our community.

We hope to continue to grow and expand. It’s too early to say what is next on the horizon but we are brainstorming and working on some exciting things, so stay tuned.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think the biggest obstacles have come from it being our first time owning a business. When it comes to contractors and expenses in building, we were inexperienced so it caused a lot of delays and funding issues that we did not expect and therefore underestimated and over promised on our timelines to both staff and customers. Our expenses in Lebanon were almost double what we expected, so, working to stay afloat with our current shop and securing more funding last minute, was really tough.

Another obstacle was us learning how to grow internally, when to assign leadership roles and delegate certain tasks and then learning how to identify the role and the responsibilities of that role. But it just took some trial and error and we are now in such a stable spot with it.

We’ve been impressed with Elevate Coffee, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a double window drive through coffee shop, so there is traffic flow on both sides of our shop. At Elevate Coffee we aim to “contribute to high spirits by making others feel valued through consistency, a personalized experience and coffee.” The idea is, there is drive thru coffee like Starbucks or Dunkin but your experience at those corporate coffee joints is talking to a box and then you get to a window where someone may or may not greet you with a smile and the window is quickly closing again before you head out; at Elevate we wanted to give people the quality customer service interaction they get at a cafe but without losing both the speed/efficiency of a drive thru and the quality of the coffee. We also set ourselves a part by making it so easy to customize drinks in all ways possible by instilling in our baristas the knowledge of how to themselves but also the initiative to ask inquisitive questions to get to the bottom of what a customer really wants, help them figure out what they want and teach them, so they know what to ask for next time.

Our core values as a company are: Contribution; we value our contribution to our community, coffee culture and the contributions we make as individuals within our team.
Time; we aim to always deliver on convenience and efficiency.
Consistency; we aim to always deliver on quality and experience in a way that customers can come to expect.
Personalization; we aim to always deliver on customized experience and beverage.
Spirit; we promote others being their best by being our best, in character and energy.

We pride ourself in the amount of regular customers we have built since being open at both of our locations, we strive for Elevate to be a welcoming place for anyone and everyone to get a great cup of coffee. We want the whole experience to be crave-able, not just the coffee.

We were the first double window drive thru coffee shop in Nashville. There was one in Hendersonville before us, called Kave & they are great but we are proud to be the first in Nashville & now Lebanon. We were also the first, that we know of, to sell both Lotus energy drinks and White Coffee out of Nashville and we think we are still the best to do it. We have new lotus specials every month and we have a full Lotus Specials menu.

Lotus energy is a plant based energy drink. It won’t give you the jitters or the crash. It is made with superfruits, amino acids and vitamins but it tastes like a delicious energy drink and almost all of our customers prefer it to Red Bull. And white coffee is coffee that is roasted for a shorter period of time leaving it still light in color, when it is extracted it looks off white, and it also still maintains more of the coffee seeds natural flavor before roasting, very nutty and earthy flavored. White Coffee is great because it is not as acidic, making it easier on the tummy and it has more caffeine!

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Kal Patel, the owner of the office building in which we have our office and the land in which our first coffee shop resides, has helped us in countless ways. He has lent us his network of people, gave words of encouragement, advice and believed in our idea and supported it from the very beginning.

Hailey Nugent was our very first employee at the age of 19 and is now our first operations manager. She has believed in our dream for Elevate before it had a reputation, when we had to sit out the window waving to cars trying to encourage people to pull through the drive thru. She also has believed in us as bosses and mentors to her, she constantly encourages us and challenges us to look at things in different ways, pushes us to try new things and contributes to the positive energy at Elevate in big ways!

Robin Wilson, my father, was the first person to invest in Elevate Coffee. He didn’t ever have a lot of money but when he came in to some money after my great uncle passed away, he generously helped us open up the first Elevate by investing more than half of his inheritance and we are so grateful for that. He truly made our dream come to fruition and we will never take that for granted or forget it. We wouldn’t have the life we have today if it weren’t for him.

Our family and friends have helped out in countless ways over the course of Elevate being open, in physical labor, loaning us money when we were cutting it close opening our second location, believing in us and rooting for us. We appreciate them more than they now and are grateful every day to have the support we do to be able to live our dream.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elevatecoffee.coffee/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_elevatecoffee_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elevatecoffeellc/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/elevate-coffee-hermitage-2