Nashville Bar, Restaurant Temporarily Closed 'Until Science Says It's Safe'

A popular downtown Nashville bar and restaurant announced its decision to temporarily close amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday.

Acme Feed & Seed said it will voluntarily close due to a lack of enforcement of mandates in relation to the pandemic in a post shared on its official Facebook account. The venue acknowledged that the city of Nashville asked local restaurants to close at the beginning of the pandemic in March and it initially decided as a company to "listen to the science."

However, the company said local efforts to encourage reopenings were unsuccessful and a lack of enforcement allowed "rule breakers" to have an "economic advantage and fosters a free for all."

"Our decisions would be primarily based on the safety of our staff and customers, followed by the economics of operating in this climate. We chose to furlough over 200 employees, allowing them to keep their benefits, insurance and an assurance they had a job on the other side of the crisis. We needed strong leadership to set the example for a path forward, leadership never came.

"Locally the efforts were successful to a degree that we felt encouraged to try and reopen and in doing so we could take advantage of the PPP relief dollars. What we have learned is without enforcement of the mandates, those of us who follow them are penalized. Lack of enforcement has given the rule breakers the economic advantage and fosters a free for all, and a general disrespect for our hospitality community. We see the lack of enforcement of their own mandates by the city as the determining factor in our decision to close Acme until science says it’s safe."

Acme Feed & Seed said it decided to furlough more than 200 employees in March as a way to allow them to keep their benefits, insurance and assure them that they had a job once the pandemic was over. The company said it will continue focus on helping the local community through live streams benefitting charities similar to the one hosted in June that raised $50,000 for the Music Health Alliance.

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