CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – From her time in the military to supporting education, and offering a special experience for Clarksville dining, Darla Knight has spent many years of service in her relationships with the community.
Knight enlisted in the Army in 1986 while in California, and after her training she was transferred to Fort Campbell and assigned to flight operations. She served various duties for the next three years on post before leaving the military in 1991.
After her military service, Knight worked in private education in Nashville for 16 years. While on summer break from her education position, her daughter Morgan returned to Clarksville from college in Alabama and mentioned to her mother about a coffee shop that was for sale downtown.
It was 2016 and the coffee shop at the corner of Strawberry Alley and First, known as Hops, Java and Juice, welcomed their new owners and a new name. “The first thing we had to do is rebrand, which really kind of represents who we are. I grew up in New York and I wanted to make a reference to New York. So that’s when we selected Yada, Yada, Yada, as our name,” Knight said.
The original name was Yada, Yada, Yada, Coffee, Deli, Attitude, because she said we’ve got plenty of attitude. “We kind of built this nice little business and it was just the two of us,” Knight said.
Knight shared that “yada, yada, yada,” is Yiddish for “blah, blah, blah,” and you use term when you are very familiar with someone. “What we really did was build community; we built relationships with our customers,” she said.
The opportunity for growth came in the move from Strawberry Alley to Franklin Street, and they once again rebranded the business, this time as simply Yada on Franklin. They continued to base the business on relationships with people, with a focus on quality products, quality ingredients and quality service.
What is cicchetti?
With the move to Franklin Street, they introduced a full-service kitchen and chose a cicchetti style of service because it is communal and is about relationships. “This is the only cicchetti bar in the state of Tennessee,” Knight said.
She described cicchetti as family style, only smaller. “We don’t hold back food, it comes out in waves when it’s done,” Knight said. “When our guests come here, that’s a very special moment, we want to bring people back to the significance of sharing a meal with somebody else.”
They do things the old-fashioned way, and it is their pleasure to provide the best quality food and drink, she said. Yada has the only wood-fired pizza oven in Clarksville, and it was imported from Italy.
When it comes to advice for someone leaving military service, Knight said educate yourself completely on the business you are thinking about getting into. “What is your mission statement? What is it that you want to achieve? And you have to have a business plan,” Knight said.
For more
Yada is at 111 Franklin St., and they are open Tuesday and Wednesday 9 a.m.-8 p.m.; and Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Yada also offers a cicchetti-style brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
To find out more go to yadaonfranklin.com, email alicia@yadaonfranklin.com, or call 931-919-YADA (9232).