06/02/2022
I am heartbroken to announce that the Rustic Cow is now closed. Having a servant’s heart, it crushes me to make this decision. We are proud of all we have done in our journey to provide a true COMMUNITY SPACE with NO DISCRIMINATION to anyone who walked through our doors. I held true to my favorite saying from day one, “because ice cream doesn’t discriminate” and neither do we. While some may disagree and clearly voiced their opinions for us being so welcoming to everyone, in my heart, I know I did and stayed true to the path I was led on. We want to thank all those that have continued to be loyal customers and support us over the last 4-1/2 years. So many different circumstances have led to where we are at now. Unless you have been hiding, everyone knows the last two years have been hard on small business owners and we are no different. The trouble continuing to carry the same brand of ice cream we started with due to not only cost but getting it here to us, additional supplies becoming more difficult to obtain and when we can cost continue to rise. Then add in fewer customers, staffing, and some medical issues it causes a drowning effect.
I truly believe that this journey proved to be successfully, even with the trials and changes. As I reflect and look back over these last years, we have been able to provide our community and tourist with an excellent quality of ice cream, coffee, espresso, sandwich shop and bistro. The merchandise we had available for purchase, all from local artist, and those sales helped support their families. We held four event spaces in which keeping cost down was a priority for anyone to be able to afford to rent for birthdays, weddings, anniversary’s, graduations, retirements, churches, youth, girl scouts, schools, and the list could go on. We provided bingo, karaoke, trivia, art classes, paint and sips, craft making classes from making cards to making soaps, all low cost and taught or presented by local artist or students in the area. We also held over 20 free events to include Christmas events, Halloween events, Barn Bashes, music events, youth talent days and much more. Supported reading programs, dance teams, sports teams, schools, teachers, police, fire, EMS and so many more folks in this community not only with ice cream but monetarily. We have assisted our homeless by providing food, drink, shelter, showing care and compassion while they came into the shop to warm up, cool down, charge a phone, call home, or just feel safe and stay dry on a rainy day. We worked with our local food pantries providing essentials in bags to hand out to those in need, coat drives every year and more.
When we expanded to our largest event space while working with our foundation and aside our event producer bringing in an expansion of a 300-seat event space, something truly unique and unlike anything in our area. We were able to host four national touring music artist, two community events that raised money to support CCHS Big Red Fire Choir and Friends Animal Shelter. We also became a Tennessee Music Pathways Venue.
If you don’t try, you never know if it will work, and it did. As a family-owned business we poured our heart, souls, and everything we had into our business, but it takes your communities continued support from locals to county and city officials support to successfully run a small business. So next time you’re out, keep in mind, behind every small business is a family and a dream.
