As a gathering space, CommonPlace provides coffee, community and company in South Knoxville.
Located at 6000 Chapman Hwy., CommonPlace opened its doors in July 2021. Previously, the location was used as a bank. After renovations, the coffee shop includes café style seating along with living room furniture, like the Vault. They hold several events throughout the week, which they update their Facebook and Twitter accounts about.
CommonPlace Coffee is housed in a renovated bank building and utilizes the previous vault as a lounge and study space to enjoy drinks and company, titled 'The Vault'. Photo taken Wednesday Apr 6, 2022.
Owner Eli Cockrum talked about creating CommonPlace, specifically as a place for South Knoxville.
“The whole idea behind CommonPlace is a community gathering place, and when we started on this journey, we were actually meeting with some families from this community and this idea that South Knoxville doesn’t have a gathering place was discussed,” Cockrum said.
These discussions with members of the community drove him to create CommonPlace.
“That swirled around in my head and I thought about what does this gathering place mean, what does that look like,” Cockrum said. “And we started down this path, and we can do it around coffee and we can make this space available for other community events.”
CommonPlace Coffee offers ample seating for guests to study, chat, read and more inside the previous bank building turned coffee house. Wednesday Apr 6, 2022.
They source their coffee from ShareWell. Based in North Carolina, the roastery shares its community vision while ethically sourcing its coffee beans, as it comes from the farmers to the roasters to CommonPlace.
“Our coffee comes from ShareWell Coffee Roasters over in Hendersonville, North Carolina,” Cockrum said. “We had some personal family contacts with them that over the past several years our family would bring in some coffee like on holidays whenever they would travel home, and we just fell in love with the coffee.”
“So once we knew we were going down this route, we reached out to them to see if they would be interested in being our coffee supplier, and it’s been a great partnership. They work very closely to source the coffee with the farmers directly. So it’s ethically sourced,” Cockrum said.
They feature coffee as well as food items on their menu. Cockrum said that this is because they want to offer food besides the fast food that is prevalent along Chapman Highway. They offer an assortment of bagels and pastries to go along with their drinks.
But more than that, Cockrum said that the service is what he’s most proud of.
A to-go drink at CommonPlace Coffee features the company's specialty sleeves and logo, on Wednesday Apr 6, 2022.
“I think the biggest thing that I hear from customers and when I read customer reviews is the customer service,” Cockrum said. “And that’s something I really work hard on and talk with these guys about. We’re not just trying to sling drinks across the counter and holler the names out. We take the time, if the person is staying here, we’ll bring the drink out to them and talk with them for a couple seconds, a couple minutes.”
“That was the thing that I wanted our shop to be known about. I want my employees to know that they can take the time to talk with our customers, see how their day is going, learn their names, have their drink ready when they walk in the door, those kinds of things,” Cockrum said.
As they greet and meet customers, CommonPlace holds several events and gatherings in the coffee shop, like yoga classes, trivia nights and meetings within their conference room. They also try to be an active part of the community by hosting vendor markets and providing coffee and hot chocolate for school events.
CommonPlace Coffee is located at 6000 Chapman Highway, Knoxville TN, opened in July 2021.
Along with that, Cockrum wants to represent the South Knoxville community. Trail signs and a South High School door and window make up part of the decor. But the biggest example that customers see first is the South Knoxville mural.
“When we knew we were doing this, we knew we wanted to do something like this on the wall big and very obvious South Knoxville, and pointing to the different community things from parks to a few churches and schools,” Cockrum said. “We wanted to highlight the community here in South Knoxville.”
He talked about it through the lens of people growing up in South Knoxville as it’s sometimes seen as the forgotten part of the city. He mentioned that most older maps cut off at the Tennessee River and the Henley and Gay Street bridges. The map mural in CommonPlace is a direct response to that view.
As he provides space, Cockrum hopes to build up his customer base. Having been open for nine months, he still sees new faces that come into CommonPlace just about every day.
“We are still getting our name out in a lot of ways, and telling people that we’re here and introducing them to our products,” Cockrum said.
He hopes that more South Knoxville residents will come in and enjoy some coffee as well as college students. One such regular at CommonPlace is Johnson University student Addie Milligan. Studying education, she first visited the coffee shop in September after moving into the area and has kept coming since then.
“It is honestly the only place I can get my work done,” Milligan said. “I said to my mom, ‘I don’t really know this area very well.’ I said, “But when I come there, it’s a safe place, and I know that I get stuff done.’”
She’s gotten to know the owner and the baristas over time. She can now walk in and strike up a conversation, and they can make a drink based on her mood that day. Along with that, the atmosphere of the shop keeps her coming back.
“It’s just a really good environment, and I’ve come here for meetings like job interviews, I do homework here obviously, sometimes like a little date,” Milligan said. “It’s just good for anything.”
Art mural wall at the forefront of CommonPlace Coffee to welcome guests inside, on Wednesday Apr 6, 2022.
While he builds a customer base and carves his place in South Knoxville, Cockrum has put his focus into CommonPlace and what they’re doing now. As a first-time business owner, he doesn’t have any plans to open a second location, but he talked about trying to open an even more community-focused space.
“We want to partner with local schools or other non-profits in the area and how we can support those with our success,” Cockrum said. “I have kind of a big dream of having another space or another building in this area and building it out for more of a space that can be used for the yoga, or we can work with a dance instructor or a karate instructor … and offer those classes for the community.”
“There’s a very large demographic of South Knoxville that’s underprivileged. Government housing, subsidized housing, that kind of thing. We would love to engage those families and those kids and offer them those kinds of activities and be able to offer them at reduced rates, because we’re a successful coffee shop and we can support something like that,” Cockrum said.
Besides that, Cockrum remains focused on serving the community at CommonPlace’s current location. He believes that it helps satisfy some of the needs of South Knoxville, along with other specialty coffee shops in the area like Honeybee Coffee and South Press Coffee that contribute to the local coffee culture while serving individual communities.
“Though there are three specialty coffee shops within four miles of Henley Street Bridge, I think we’re all offering good products and doing something a little bit different for the community,” Cockrum said.
