Celebrating Books in Nashville: WaterCooler, Parnassus & the Southern Festival of Books

For the past three years, WaterCooler has been hosting events that highlight the hidden gems in Nashville, some old and some new.  Over the past year, we have tried be more programmatic in our events, tying them to cultural happenings in the city.  For us, these are some of the reasons Nashville is a great place to call home.

The most recent example of this was the WaterCooler hosted at Parnassus Books, on August 19. We heard from Serenity Gerbman of Humanities Tennessee, which hosts the Southern Festival of Books, among other programs; Karen Hayes, Co-Owner of Parnassus; and the award-winning novelist, Ann Patchett, who happens to co-own Parnassus Books with Karen. 

These speakers gave us insight into all the opportunities to be a reader in Greater Nashville.  Parnassus has a program called the First Editions Club, which is like a coffee-of-the-month club, but which delivers signed first editions of books, hand selected by the folks at Parnassus, 10-12 times a year.  They’ve also got something called the Founders Rewards Program that, in exchange for showing your support in an independent bookstore, provides fringe benefits ranging from invitations to high-profile artist receptions to personal use of the store after hours – pretty cool place for a date, if you ask me.

Serenity Gerbman, who is Director of Literature and Language Programs at Humanities Tennessee, helps oversee programs including the Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word.  It’s scheduled for October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza.  This is actually the 24^th anniversary of the Southern Festival of Books.  It’s completely free and there are no advanced registrations.  Just like WaterCooler, if something interests you, show up and it’s first come first serve.  Serenity said that they are still looking for volunteers to host the rooms in which the various authors will be speaking and presenting.  So, in true WaterCooler fashion, we’re always looking for ways invite people to plug into our community, and this is an easy opportunity. 

For me, the most fascinating part of this WaterCooler was hearing the amazing line up of literary talent coming to Nashville in the next few months, including Caroline Kennedy, Molly Ringwald, Patricia Cornwell, Barbara Kingsolver, and Jon Meacham.  All of these authors are part of Humanities Tennessee's Salon@615 program,

Another great option is to attend the Authors in the Round, the fundraising dinner that kicks off the Southern Festival of Books, where diners are paired with well-known authors.  If you love schmoozing with writers, and hate dancing and silent auctions, this fundraiser is for you.  This year, it will be held on October 12 at the historic War Memorial Auditorium.  If you’d like an invitation or for more information, visit their website.

In wrapping up at WaterCooler, Ann Patchett said something that everyone in the audience appreciated.  She said that Parnassus's staff is what sets them apart from online book vendors.  She compared Parnassus to an old fashioned hardware store where you bring in your broken parts and the employees tell you exactly what you need.  Same thing with Parnassus: walk on in, tell them what you’ve been reading, and they can recommend your next favorite book.  But, if you come into Parnassus, take advantage of the recommendations from the staff, and then go home to buy it on Amazon.com for $5.00 cheaper, Ann says you’re “just flat not welcome.”  Everyone in the room loved the straight shooting.  For a group like WaterCooler, which promotes locally-owned businesses, we couldn’t agree with you more, Ann.

Follow the Southern Festival of Books on Twitter at @SoFestofBooks.

Follow Parnassus Books on Twitter at @ParnassusBooks1.

Follow WaterCooler on Twitter at @WaterCoolerNash.

Follow me on Twitter at @StephenZralek.

Celebrating Two Years of WaterCooler: Young Entrepreneurs Networking in Nashville

Two years ago, I was talking with my friend Wade Munday about how I wanted to start a fun, informal, monthly event for young entrepreneurs in Nashville to meet each other.  The goal was to provide networking opportunities and to learn about interesting topics or hear from speakers within our own age range (20s through 40s).  He helped me come up with the name WaterCooler, which sounded a lot better than CornerOffice and other names that we considered.  Then he moved to Boston for a year before coming home and getting married.

My friend Renata Soto, who runs Conexión Americas, graciously agreed to co-chair and co-host these events with me.  Our first speaker was Kimberly Pace of Owen Management School at Vanderbilt University, who talked about personal brands:  how each of us creates a personal brand with every action or inaction that we take.  We hosted the first one at Cantina Laredo, which had awesome guacamole and margaritas, but didn’t have the best acoustics.  We later moved to 1808 Grille at The Hutton Hotel, which provided a rock star environment, but was too small for our growing crowds.  Then we moved to Miro District.  We decided it was time to take the show on the road. 

During that time, we hosted some amazing speakers, ranging from Becca Stevens, who talked about her work with former prostitutes at Magdalene and Thistle Farms, to Clint Smith of Emma, Laura Creekmore, who gave an overview of social media (which now seems like it was eons ago), and Alan Young of Armor Concepts, whose products I see on billboards all around the city.

Our first field trip was to Yazoo Tap Room, where Linus Hall and Neil McCormick gave everyone a tour of their brewery and free tastes of Yazoo.  That event turned out to be our most popular yet, and it showed us that WaterCooler was good not only for participants (who, in that case, reaped free beer) but also for the hosts whose businesses we showcased, because it gave them an opportunity to connect with their audience and further build brand loyalty.  I know, for myself, that I buy a lot more Yazoo beer now than I did before, because I heard Linus’ story and know how fresh it is, in addition to merely wishing to support the local economy.

From there, we realized that our niche was really in focusing on locally-owned businesses and entrepreneurs, and not just hearing from a variety of speakers in our age range.  We went to Oliver & Sinclair Chocolate Factory, which was so jam packed that we had to turn people away at the doors for fear of overcrowding/fire marshals.  We also visited Corsair Distillery and heard from Darek Bell and his partner.  More recently, we toured CentreSouce, then walked down the street to City House for drinks.

Our hope in doing this, in hosting and starting WaterCooler, was to build connections, for ourselves, and with each other.  We want folks to come whenever they’re inspired by the topic or have an interest in the location or the host or the product.  But we didn’t want to do anything that required people to sign up for one more commitment.  Everyone has enough of those already.  Because of that, we don’t have an official membership, and we don’t ask people to pay dues. 

We know that we are achieving our goal, because we have made connections with you resulting in new clients for our businesses/practices, new donors for our non-profits, new jobs, and more generally new friends.  And we know that you have done the same.  Emma has gotten new clients because one person who attended was impressed with Clint Smith's story.  And at least one person has gotten a new job because of a relationship she made while trying to attend our event at Olive & Sinclair.  These are the sorts of things we want to happen with WaterCooler.  If you have more examples of good connections that you’ve made, or if you have interesting locally-owned businesses based in Nashville that you want to highlight, please let us know.  These are the stories that we want to help you tell.

WaterCooler goes to Corsair Distillery for Exclusive Tasting & Tour

If you missed the last WaterCooler, you missed a great event!  Nashville's only distillery, Corsair, gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of how they make and distill what is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after small batch liquors in the U.S. when they hosted us in April 2011. 

Located in Marathon Village, which used to house Yazoo Brewery, Corsair had to work mighty hard to even get up and running in Tennessee. 

Darek Bell

Because Tennessee's laws and Nashville's laws were so onerous, Corsair actually began in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  Only after they were able to convince the state and local lawmakers to allow them to "manufacture intoxicating liquors" were they able to come back home. 

As part of a private event for WaterCooler, co-owners Darek Bell and Andrew Webber showed us around, told the story behind Corsair, and gave us samples in their tasting room.  The Tennessean just reported that members of the public won't get this same opportunity until the laws are changed. 

Andrew Webber

To join the invitation list and receive news about upcoming WaterCooler events, shoot me an email. Thanks to everyone who showed up.  See you at the next on on May 9 at Conexion Americas! 

Here are some photos from WaterCooler at Corsair:

Griffin Technology Hosts WaterCooler

WaterCooler is a monthly networking event for "young" entrepreneurs.  (I take liberty with use of the word "young" since my co-founder and I are pushing 40, and since we'd like to stay involved for a while.  With that in mind, we include anyone in their 20s, 30s and 40s.)  We started this fun venture in September 2009 and highlight a different local business or expert each time.  Lately we've been enjoying the field trips, visiting Yazoo Brewery, Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co., and (coming up on April 18) Corsair Distillery.  It's a casual way to meet others who are active in the business, cultural and philanthropic worlds of Nashville.  Hopefully connections will be made at WaterCooler that spur new entrepreneurial and community collaborations.  If you'd like to be added to the list, email me at szralek@bonelaw.com.

Griffin Technology graciously hosted us on April 23.  Jackie Ballinger, its Marketing and PR guru, welcomed each guest and provided us with an incredible array of food and drink.  Also greeting guests as they arrived was this VW bus, which employees use for impromptu meetings, and which Griffin has traveled in for marketing at SXSW and Bonnaroo, to name a few:

Photo courtesy of Griffin Technology

Mark Rowan, Griffin's President, spoke about its background, its international reach and its commitment to Nashville. 

Photo courtesy of Griffin Technology

It was clear that Griffin is a dominant player in the global tech scene, and we're lucky to have it right here in our own backyard.

After, Jackie led us on a tour of their new work space.  We saw the wall of awesome accessory covers, the vending machine stocked with beer, and the work station decked out in action figures -- none of which is a regular feature where most of us work:

In the highest form of flattery (jealousy), everyone decided to ditch their current job and apply to work at Griffin. 

Here are some photos of the event:

Olive and Sinclair's Experience: Secrets to Success for Any Business

On January 31, 2011, I sat down to talk with Scott Witherow, owner of Olive and Sinclair Chocolate Co. , which makes the South's best chocolate. 

Olive & Sinclair's Exclusive with Williams-Sonoma

Later that night, he hosted WaterCooler, a monthly networking event for young entrepreneurs that some friends and I co-founded in August 2009.  We had a jam-packed crowd of over 40 people.  Everyone, it seems, wants to learn more about this company.  (For another great write-up on the tasting, check out the recent post on Nashville Foodies' blog, or see Gwyneth Paltrow's blog "Goop," which highlighted O&S.) 

Begun just 13 months ago in September 2009, Olive and Sinclair’s growth has been as viral as a posting on Facebook or Twitter.  O&S has already gained an exclusive contract with Williams-Sonoma for some of its products, and the demand for its chocolate grows every day.

We met after work at the office of O&S, which doubles as factory, research and design center, marketing headquarters, and nerve-center for all things chocolate in Nashville.  Before everyone from WaterCooler arrived, Scott offered me a sneak-preview sample of an upcoming chocolate he plans to launch in the coming weeks, something he’s collaborating on with Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams.  To top it off, he offered me the perfect pairing of a  Terrapin Moo Hoo Chocolate Milk Stout, which also has O&S chocolate in it.  Talk about a rich combination.  This was better than any of the after-school snacks I ate as a kid!

Here’s my take-away from talking with Scott, and what I think are some of the biggest secrets of his success. To be honest, I think these are some of the best keys to any modern business’s prosperity:

1. Authenticity: Olive & Sinclair offers an authentic story and product.

2. Collaboration: O&S collaborates with Terrapin, Drew’s Brews, Williams Sonoma, Bongo Java, and even non-profits like Saddle Up.

3. Embracing Social Media: Scott told me they couldn’t have had this massive growth and success without using social media. Only a 13 month old company, O&S has already grown to over 500 retail and wholesale customers.

O&S Red Hot Hearts for Valentine's Day

Here’s the best parts of my conversation with Scott:
Zralek: Thank you for the Terrapin Moo Hoo Chocolate Milk Stout…awesome! You were saying that social media has without questions helped your business…tell me how.

Witherow: Obviously it allows us to communicate with anybody out there that’s interested in Oliver & Sinclair. But because we’ve also been blessed with some pretty ridiculous—in a good way—articles. It’s allowed for people to actually kind of let us have a face. We were doing a lot more on Facebook and blogging before we ever even had a website. So that was a big part of it.

ZRALEK: Part of what I find in my work representing businesses as a lawyer is that, when people who are older than us (both in our 30s) are running companies, they often question the value of social media.

WITHEROW: Yeah.

ZRALEK: And to me, companies like yours are a prime example of how social media can help fuel the explosive growth you’ve experienced.

WITHEROW: I think for me and the company, I think that we all just believe in this product. We’re not…we don’t necessarily get into chocolate as like a monetary thing, you know, to make like a bazillion dollars. So it started off with just kind of loving the idea of being able to make chocolate. And then for me it was—I want to make chocolate personable and…I don’t know what this sounds like. But I think that we were successful in making it approachable and, again I don’t mean it arrogantly, but I think we do make a good product, and I think that social media is hugely important as long as you have a good product.

ZRALEK: I agree.

WITHEROW: But I think…

ZRALEK: If you’ve got nothing behind it, it doesn’t matter.

WITHEROW: Yeah, if it’s all this kind of chutes and ladders then you’re only going to go so far with it. But I think that—it’s been great even getting feedback, good and bad. I mean there have been people that have shot me a message on Facebook saying something was up or they noticed something and, like we had one customer who got a chocolate bar that wasn’t up to their standards of what they thought O&S was. And so she Facebooked me and, with the a batch number that we include on every bar, we found out where she bought it. It was poor product placement and it was such an old bar…I mean such an old bar that it shouldn’t have been on the shelf. So we had to go in and make sure that they were off the shelf and that our batch numbers are—they’re done for a reason. So that’s a great part to me.

ZRALEK: So this beer that you’re letting me taste, what’s the best chocolate that goes with it?

WITHEROW: [Handing me a sample of an upcoming release where O&S is collaborating with Benton’s Hams.] It will be a little while before it’s out.

ZRALEK: So what is that that I just tasted?

WITHEROW: It’s a smoked nib.

ZRALEK: From Benton’s Farm…they’re teaming with you?

WITHEROW: Yeah, we’re kind of teaming up for a little project. Hopefully we’ll see it through.

ZRALEK: And what’s that made of…it’s so good. Is there some bacon in there?

WITHEROW: No, [it’s just] nibs [that] are smoked by Alan down in Madisonville.

ZRALEK: So it’s more of the smoked flavor than the bacon.

WITHEROW: Yeah, there is no bacon in there really because it’s just…it’s Alan good quality smoked [flavor]…

ZRALEK: Wow it tastes good. . . .

Tasting of Various O&S Chocolate

ZRALEK: [W]hen did you decide to start this [company]?

WITHEROW: That was somewhere 2008 sometime, I think.

ZRALEK: What were you doing before Oliver & Sinclair?

WITHEROW: Just working in kitchens here in town. At the time I was a pastry chef at F. Scott’s.

ZRALEK: I didn’t know that.

WITHEROW: Yeah, I was there for about three years

ZRALEK: Did you go to culinary school somewhere?

WITHEROW: Yeah I went to Le Cordon Bleu.

ZRALEK: So you don’t recommend just anybody deciding to start their own chocolate shop? Having a little training comes in handy?

WITHEROW: Yeah but I didn’t learn how to make chocolate in culinary school. They didn’t guarantee me that. It’s more of working with chocolate. And I always try telling people it’s kind of like people that really like craft beers tend to start home brewing at some point. And I worked a lot with chocolate so I learned how to make my own chocolate. And I just started doing it.

ZRALEK: Where did you sell to first? Who was your first buyer?

WITHEROW: Mitchell’s Deli.  [Mitchell’s, the best deli in Nashville, is literally upstairs from Olive and Sinclair.]

ZRALEK: Are you selling primarily in Middle Tennessee?

WITHEROW: No, we’re nationwide and in Canada.

ZRALEK: So you started in ’08, it’s now January 2011…

WITHEROW: Well, I say we started in ’08. I started experimenting in ’08 and making test batches.

ZRALEK: So when was your first sale?

WITHEROW: September of 2009.

ZRALEK: Wow. You’re a young company.

WITHEROW: Yeah. We’re a year and three months.

ZRALEK: That’s great. . . .

ZRALEK: [O]bviously you wear a lot of hats. I assume that you [serve as] creative director, HR director, CEO, chief culinary designer and are you also making house calls to these places or do you send somebody else out there for you?

WITHEROW: We don’t call on anybody. We don’t approach someone in hopes that they’ll sell our chocolate. Maybe the first two months some of that went on, maybe three, probably two. But we really tried to slow down after that. We did some here and there during brief interims where we kind of thought it was getting quiet and you start to get kind of nervous as a new company or whatever. And you think well we need to pick up the phone and start cold-calling. But I think that we’ve all really found that just holding tight and just getting the product out there and in other ways. Yeah, that’s kind of how we do it.

ZRALEK: Let me ask you who you’ve teamed up with in terms of making chocolate. So you’ve teamed up with Benton’s Hams.

WITHEROW: Yeah, with Alan. And that’s a new something.

ZRALEK: So that’s on its way. Who else have you teamed up with if anybody?

WITHEROW: Well we teamed up with Terrapin, you know, for the Moo Hoo. And we look at all the local guys. I called the Yazoo boys [Linus Hall and his team] and made sure that [they didn’t mind] cause they’re the home team, so…
ZRALEK: Have you done anything with a coffee company yet?

WITHEROW: Yeah, we do stuff with Bob Bernstein [at Bongo Java]  in our normal coffee line. And then we do a line that’s exclusively at Williams-Sonoma [and one] that we do with my buddy Drew [of Drew’s Brew’s].  And it’s a totally different chocolate and a totally different roasted coffee. So it’s kind of a new interpretation of that.

ZRALEK: Okay, one last question…

WITHEROW: Yazoo as well. I gotta say we have teamed up with Yazoo…

ZRALEK: …and you’re drinking Yazoo as we’re talking.

WITHEROW: Yeah.

ZRALEK: So a good loyal follower.

WITHEROW: Yeah, I’m a big fan.

ZRALEK: Who do you see as your main competitor and who do you see—that’s probably a bad term—but who do you see as…is there any other chocolatier in the US that you think does a really good job like you do?

WITHEROW: I don’t want to look at them as competition. I guess in a way I kind of have to. But…

ZRALEK: Who else is a local chocolatier that you like?

WITHEROW: Well, just to…we’re not really chocolatiers. We don’t make truffles, we don’t…

ZRALEK: Chocolate company…what’s the right word?

WITHEROW: We’re chocolate makers. We import beans [then roast them and temper them].

ZRALEK: So who else does it like you do?

WITHEROW: Nobody in Tennessee.

Imported Cocoa Beans at O&S

***********************************

Copyright Stephen J. Zralek 2011 ©. All Rights Reserved.