Our Story

The Flower Kitchen was born out of our kitchen in Nashville, TN, with kids running around our feet, flowers in buckets, and an espresso set up that was entirely too large for our tiny kitchen at the time! I was a stay at home mom with a side hustle designing flowers for weddings, and Lee was working on the road in the music industry. We both graduated from Belmont University and thought we’d be doing the Nashville thing, me singing and Lee working in a studio. While Lee came close, working in music for a non-profit organization for about 8 years, I ended up using flowers as my medium for art and creativity. Over time, my business continued to grow from a small floral design company into a larger one while still at home with the kids.

During a season when Lee worked from home on Fridays, we regularly invited friends over for lattes and cappuccinos. It was a sweet time of community, and we loved serving coffee, many times surrounded by the flowers that were going out for a wedding the next day! It turns out drinking coffee surrounded by flowers is a pretty nice way to start off the day and we started dreaming of what it could look like to actually have a shop one day.

When our kids had all started school, I moved the home studio from the kitchen into a studio space in the Germantown neighborhood. A few years later, a space opened up right next to mine, and we decided to take the leap and open a small coffee shop called Taylor Street Coffee & Tea. We worked side-by-side selling coffee, pastries, and flowers, and it was pretty great, but still not a store-front. We looked at a couple different spaces over the years, but they didn’t work out, so we kept plugging away where we were. In November of 2023, I got a text from a friend about a space she wanted to show us. After seeing it’s potential, in a quaint area of Franklin, TN, we took another leap of faith and decided to sign a lease, partnering up with Emily & Steve Dale of Sopapillas, and we began the adventure of building The Flower Kitchen.

The kitchen is central to a home. Nourishment is created, conversation is easier, we mess things up, and we try again…in the kitchen. There is something about the communal spirit of the kitchen that brings us together. Lee and I love making great coffee, food, and beautiful floral designs, but we love seeing people gathering and connecting at the tables even more. In a really busy town full of creative energy and business, we hope to be a place where folks can drop their bags and pause for a little while. It is a good thing, and we are so thankful to be here.

~Lee and Melissa Broadwell