What's Nashville have that we ain't got in Seattle?

When Starbucks announced plans for its big new office in Nashville, Tenn., last week, it sparked a storm of recrimination in the coffee company's hometown.

Some said Washington's taxes drove Starbucks to Nashville, where it will employ 2,000 people and invest $100 million. Others blamed the antibusiness rhetoric of Seattle politicians.

Amid the bitterness was more than a little envy. Envy at Nashville's rising status as the "it" city, much as Seattle used to be.

But envy also at how skillfully Nashville and Tennessee used their "business friendly" climate and their tax breaks, and the charm offensive by politicians and business leaders, to woo Starbucks.

"It surprised me how wide the effort was to recruit Starbucks," said Bob Donegan, Ivar's president and a Seattle business leader, after watching video of Tennessee politicians and business pooh-bahs rolling out the red carpet for Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol at the Nashville news conference last week.

We don't see that kind of cooperation here," he added.

So how, exactly, did a town nicknamed "Music City" lure a company like Starbucks from its hometown? And what lessons does it hold for Seattle?

Not just hot chicken and bachelorettes

Starbucks isn't Nashville's first rodeo.

Decades of work by city and state officials have turned a city famous for "music … hot chicken and bachelorette parties" into a magnet for business expansions, says Bill Purcell, former mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.

Those efforts have seen the greater Nashville area score hundreds of factories, offices and entire headquarters from some of the biggest names in business, including Nissan, Oracle, Amazon and now Starbucks.

From 2018 and 2024 alone, Nashville gained 35 company headquarters, behind only Austin and Dallas, according to data from real estate firm CBRE.

Media coverage has focused on Tennessee's generous relocation incentives for incoming employers like Starbucks (whose incentive package hasn't been disclosed).

But many states offer relocation incentives, including Washington. And the money Tennessee has paid to previous movers - Oracle got around $11,000 per job - while nice, would barely move the needle for a global player like Starbucks.

Instead, the recruiting success in Tennessee and Nashville rests on a much broader set of economic, political and geographic advantages that have increasingly favored cities in the South and Southeast while putting pressure on coastal centers like Seattle.

Low tax, high skill

Start with taxes.

Tennessee boasts the nation's eighth-best tax climate for business, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation's 2025 survey, which considers taxes on income, businesses, sales and property, and unemployment insurance rates. Washington state ranks 45th.

A Nashville office will save Starbucks tens of millions of dollars a year under Washington's recently enacted IT services tax, though that tax expires in 2029.

And while Starbucks insists it's keeping its Seattle headquarters, Tennessee's lack of a personal income tax might make Nashville especially attractive to some of Starbucks' high earners.

At least six of Starbucks' "named Executive Officers," including Niccol, earned at least $6 million or more in total compensation in fiscal 2025, according to the company's 2026 proxy statement.

Geographically, Nashville is a retailers' dream.

The city is a logistics hub at the nexus of three interstates and a day's drive from half the country's consumers. According to Starbucks, that makes it a perfect regional base for the coffee company, which sees the Southeast, where its products aren't yet as popular, as key to future growth.

An even bigger draw, arguably, is the Nashville area's rapidly growing and high-skilled workforce, which Starbucks executives have praised explicitly since announcing the Nashville office in March.

That talent pool is in part the result of decades of state policies expressly intended "to build a better, higher quality workforce that will attract more businesses," says John Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll.

Tennessee was the first state to make community college free for state high school graduates. State agencies and business groups have aggressively promoted trade and targeted vocational programs aimed at specific industries and in-demand skills.

Better still for employers from high-cost states, Nashville's talent comes at a bargain.

The average hourly wage in the greater Nashville area - $31 - is 5% below the national average and 28% below the Seattle area, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The gap is even greater for some skill positions, such as the IT roles that will make up more than half of jobs in Starbucks' Nashville office.

For computer and mathematical jobs, Nashville's average hourly wage of $48 is 15% below the U.S. average and 41% below Seattle's average wage.

Blue dot in a red sea

For all its economic advantages, Nashville boosters say the city's real leverage comes down to basic livability.

The city boasts a lively arts community, a music scene that extends well beyond the country genre, walkable neighborhoods and half a dozen pro sports teams.

It also has fairly liberal politics. In 2024, Nashville and the rest of Davidson County went for Kamala Harris by nearly 30 points, even as Tennessee as whole went for Trump by about the same margin.

Nashville is "a blue dot in the red sea of Tennessee," quips Vanderbilt's Geer.

To be sure, Nashville's blue dot culture and politics have often put it at odds with the state's increasingly conservative Legislature.

In recent years, state lawmakers have repeatedly "preempted" Nashville and other local governments from enacting labor laws, inclusionary zoning or other regulations that don't align with state policy.

So, for example, in booming, prosperous Nashville, the minimum wage is still $7.25, because Tennessee hews to the federal minimum wage, which hasn't increased since 2009.

But, paradoxically, Tennessee's more conservative stance on issues like taxes has helped Nashville's recruitment efforts, since the blue city can bill itself as a low-tax haven.

And, Geer notes, political tensions with the state has also helped keep Nashville from the more progressive shift in many other blue cities.

The ever-present threat of state preemption "does force the city to be a little bit more moderate in some of its efforts, because they don't want to fire up the state Legislature," said Geer, who routinely polls Nashville residents on political and economic issue.

Notably, city leadership has remained closely in step with the state in its pro-business attitudes and red-carpet treatment for prospective corporate recruits.

That welcoming vibe can be a big selling point for many company executives, particularly from cities where relations between city hall and the business community are frosty.

When corporations go looking for a new headquarters, Nashville is the place "where the leadership of these companies can feel at home," said Seth Bernstein, CEO of the finance firm AllianceBernstein, of the company's 2018 decision to relocate from Manhattan to Nashville.

Growing pains

How long that vibe can last isn't certain. Nashville is already feeling some of the downsides of growth that have pushed other blue cities to embrace more progressive policies.

Housing prices are soaring. Inequality is worsening, and the city's crime rate, though declining, is still high.

Geer's latest poll found nearly three quarters of city residents worried about affordability and being priced out of the city.

"By a 2-to-1 margin, residents feel that recent changes in Nashville have not been good for the city - from traffic concerns to the pace of population growth," Geer noted when the poll was published.

But few expect Nashville or Tennessee to hit the brakes anytime soon. As with many parts of the South and Southeast, Nashville continues to see interest from employers and individuals.

In-migration remains strong, notably from younger professionals looking to settle down.

The share of the Nashville metro area's population that is 25 to 34 with a college degree - 11% - is only a point below Seattle, according to 2019 data in a Johns Hopkins University study.

And judging from last week's news conference for Starbucks in Nashville, state and city officials aren't toning down their pro-business vibe.

One after another, state and local dignitaries extolled Starbucks' decision in terms that would be hard to imagine from a West Coast politician any time in the last 20 years.

"As someone born here who's raising my family here, I can't tell you how proud I am when corporate leaders ... understand the quality of life we built here in Nashville," Mayor Freddie O'Connell, Nashville's self-styled "partner in chief," told a beaming Niccol.

"We are a one-of-a-kind city," O'Connell continued. "We're open for business.

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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 6:35 AM.