09/29/2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Fired Up Ceases Operations at Nashville Farmers' Market, Effective Immediately
Market City BBQ, a separate concept owned by Eric, remains open at Space 101.
Fired Up owner Zachary Bollen says
Executive Director Darrell Lane's June 1 order to take down the Fired Up sign cut sales and made the Cajun concept
impossible to sustain.
Fired Up, the Cajun and gumbo concept operated by Zachary A. Bollen and Fire & Smoke, LLC at Space 101 in the
Nashville Farmers' Market, will cease operations effective immediately. Market City BBQ, a separate concept owned
by Eric, will remain open at Space 101. The two businesses shared a stall and ran two different menus. They were not the
same restaurant.
Owner Zachary A. Bollen places the shutdown of Fired Up directly on Executive Director Darrell Lane. On June 1,
2026, Lane texted Bollen to remove the Fired Up exterior sign and wrote that he was addressing all signs. Other tenant
signs and the Market's own posters stayed up. Bollen said that single decision — taking Fired Up off the street while
customers were still looking for it — is what collapsed the sales that paid the rent.
“The sign was the storefront,” Bollen said. “Darrell Lane took it. May, with the sign up, we did $33,286. June, after he
ordered it down, we did $25,060. That is $8,226 and 284 tickets gone in thirty days. July did not come back to May.
August did not come back to May. People cannot buy gumbo they cannot find. Lane did that. Not the food. Not the
reviews. The Director.”
Fire & Smoke, LLC records, previously given to the Farmers' Market Board, show the drop after the June 1 removal order:
June and July together ran $14,094.88 behind the May pace — the last full month the Fired Up sign was on the building.
August remained $8,755.95 below May. Year-one rent on Space 101 is $9,343 a month. Fired Up is listed at 4.9 stars on
117 Google reviews. “A 4.9-star kitchen does not lose eight thousand dollars a month because the gumbo changed,” Bollen
said. “It loses it when the Director takes the name off the street and leaves other people's signs standing.”
Bollen first raised the uneven sign enforcement with the Board on June 16. That afternoon a photograph was taken of a
closed door. Lane's June 18 memo used that photograph as a default. Metro Legal treated the stall as one lease with two
trade names and advised that either concept open during required hours is compliance.
Bollen said that legal framing does
not change how the two kitchens actually ran: Eric owns Market City BBQ; Bollen ran Fired Up. “I asked for the Fired Up
sign back. I got a file built against me,” Bollen said. “Speaking to a Metro board is not a lease violation. Taking my sign
down while Smokin' Buttz and the Market's own posters stayed up is why Fired Up is done.”
Bollen has also told the Board that Space 101 did not hold the air conditioning Section 8 of the lease requires. Those
conditions, he said, made the line harder to work. The sales hole, he said, started when Lane took the sign on June 1. What
finished Fired Up was that no one treated that hole as urgent.
Bollen first asked the Board for help on June 16. The Board then cancelled its July and August meetings. Two peak
summer months passed with the sign still down, the kitchen still hot, and no Board action. September 15 was the first
meeting after those cancellations. On that date Bollen asked for an on-the-record acknowledgment that sign rules were not
applied evenly, rent abatement tied to the post-sign drop, written rules that bind the Market as well as tenants, and a future
agenda item on whether Lane should remain Director. On September 21 he filed a Rule 10 grievance seeking a formal
hearing on October 20 — four months after he first spoke.
“Summer is when a restaurant puts money in the bank for winter,” Bollen said. “Lane took the sign in June. The Board
cancelled July and August. Nobody put the sign back. Nobody abated the rent. We went through the whole high season
$8,000 a month under May, and now we walk into the slow season with nothing saved. That is why Fired Up closes today.
Not because we did not wait. Because they made us wait through the only months that could have paid for the rest of the
year.”
Bollen said his own health also drove the decision. He has atrial fibrillation. A consumer watch recorded AFib alerts on the
Space 101 line. He underwent cardioversion in early August and a catheter ablation in September. He told the Board those
episodes happened in a kitchen that was not holding the air the lease required, while he was also fighting to get a sign put
back and waiting through cancelled meetings. “The sales hole is why Fired Up cannot pay for itself,” Bollen said. “The
stress is why I cannot keep running it. AFib in a 90-degree kitchen, a Director who would not fix it, and a Board that
cancelled the summer — that is enough. I am closing my concept. Eric's barbecue stays.”
“Market City BBQ is Eric's and it will still be here. Fired Up is mine and it will not,” Bollen said. “Darrell Lane took the
sign that fed my concept. My heart told me I could not keep fighting him through the slow season. That is why Fired Up is
closed today.”
Customers looking for Market City BBQ should continue to Space 101. Fired Up will not serve after this announcement.
