Soon Murfreesboro will have another café and coffee shop where residents can pick up scratch-made breakfast pastries, omelets, waffles, soups, sandwiches, salads and their daily coffee fix. To be located at 1220 E Northfield Blvd, not too far from the Middle Tennessee State University campus, the husband and wife owners, Raj and Raji Patel, hope it will become a community “hangout.”
The Patels, who also own the laundromat next door, will be offering a drive-thru as well as table service inside Joe and Dough Café. It will feature coffee from the Brass Horn and locally made Indian chai tea. Sweets will include homemade doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, croissants and fritters.
Patel comes from an entrepreneurial family. According to a story in nationallaundryequipment.com, he immigrated with his family from India in 1995 when he was 14 years old. Arriving initially in California with $500 to their name, the family worked there for a year to save enough to move to Chattanooga, Tennessee where they bought a gas station/convenience store.
After seven years in Chattanooga, the family sold the business and moved to Murfreesboro. In Murfreesboro, they purchased Marathon Discount Tobacco, a convenience store with eight gas pumps. Then they opened a liquor store next door, but as profit for the liquor store declined, Patel looked for a replacement business and decided on the laundromat.
Now, they are wanting to complement their other businesses with the opening of Joe and Dough Café, a life-long dream. But he is not new to the food industry, having owned a doughnut shop for many years.
Growth in the area has allowed the Patel’s to succeed, but they are also careful to research everything well before plunging into a new concept. Joe and Dough Café has been something that he and his wife have been planning for a number of years. They hope to have it open by the end of March. Once open, it will operate from 4:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m.
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