Hatch Show Print — Attraction in Nashville-Davidson

Tour lasts about 45 minutes. Super friendly and courteous staff! Wish we could have visited the actual print work area. Book your tickets early before they’re all gone!

Tour guides Greg and Laura were both super knowledgably and friendly.

$20 a person (adult), guided tour lasts about 45 minutes (15 people in our group), but adding some time for the self guided tour before and after the guided part of the tour, planning 1-1.5 hours would be appropriate to fully enjoy this visit.

The tour begins in the atrium 5-10 minutes before your scheduled tour time. Your tickets will be scanned and the guide will give a little quick intro and history info about the place. Then the group will be led to the workshop room behind the gift shop and everyone will be seated (based on your group size, the staff will assign your group on where to sit).

Then you will be given more info about how they do the print and the colors, and more history about the shop. The workshop room has a loooot of printed posters on the walls and the staff will go over the story for many of them. In the meantime, one guest by one guest, you will get a chance to make a souvenir poster and take it home. They will have some pre-printed color on a poster already, and you will make one last color print to finish it (takes 24 hours to dry), and they will put it into a small brown paper bag for you to take home.

The next part of the tour is in the hallway outside of the print work area. The guide will explain the different machines, and things around the shop, and fill in more stories about the history and take questions. I don’t know if it’s because of COVID but we could only see the shop from the outside, and it would be nice if we could get a tour from the inside of the shop to get a closer look at many items.

The last stop of the tour is at the gallery right by the building entrance. It’s a small gallery but with a lot of unique prints on display and some can be purchased.

Overall, we really enjoyed the tour and learned a lot about the printing technique and their shop history. The hands-on printing experience is a nice touch of the tour and everyone gets a souvenir to take home. 10/10 I would recommend this tour for anyone...

I did not find this experience to be worth $22 per person. You're taken into a room behind the gift shop where someone relays the history of the print shop. Not sure if it was just our guide or they were having an off day, but they spoke very quickly and rattled off a bunch of facts to us like they just wanted it to be done with. The room had a lot of cool prints which were nice to see and I enjoyed learning something new, but I was expecting things to be more engaging and interactive. It would have been nice to be able to interact with at least some of the letter blocks for the presses that we were being shown. We were being told about differences and shown things from feet away without ever being able to engage. You are given a chance to make a print to take home, but even after being told all about the printing process you're not able to actually try much yourself since the print you are allowed to do is pre-set, down to the ink color and what the print says. The only option for customization was choosing the color of paper the print went on (which according to our guide is actually rare since they usually only have one option) but not even that felt worth it since there were only 2 options and I personally didnt like either. The experience ends with a "tour" of the workshop which was truly the most underwhelming part. I expected to be able to at least walk through a portion of the area where the actual printing was happening, but instead we were taken back out to the front of the store to observe the printers through the glass at the front. So basically we paid to see what we could have seen through the glass at the front of the shop for free. $22 per person to have someone speak very quickly to us for an extended period of time, ink up and roll the printing block for a preset print, and then observe the workers from a vantage point that the rest of the unpaying public could as well. There was also a supposed discount at the shop because you did the tour, but on our purchase I don't think we even managed to save $ .50...

I am sad to report that Hatch Show Print is no longer printing signs, or at least that is the impression I am under after I went to this location, paid for parking, went inside, and I was told that the signs I saw being sold at a concert I recently attended, printed by Hatch Show Print, not available in the store. It goes just a little deeper than this, though. The employee at the register told me that Hatch Show Print could not reprint the signs or sell their own signs, and, in bewilderment, I slowly turned my head and stared at the all of the signs they have on the wall that are for sale that they have printed and sold. But, wait... It goes deeper, still.

Sunday, April 13, I attended the concert, and I saw the signs that they "sold out" of, even though there was a short stack of signs the employees thought they were hiding behind the tablecloth covered table they were selling them from, and they advised those were not available.

Monday, April 14, I reached out by phone to Hatch Show Print, but, unable to actually reach anyone on the phone, I left a voicemail that was never returned. Later, I emailed Hatch Show Print, and I was told by whomever responded that the department to contact, the department that does not answer the phone or return calls, was the retail department. I responded to the email by asking the employee if there was any way they could look into this, being an employee and all, but just the same as the effort that went into returning my voicemail, no response.

Today, Thursday, April 17, I drive all the way to the Hatch Show Print from 45 minutes away to be told that the business cannot do the very specific and only things that the business does, print signs or sell what they print. Even more odd to me was that the employee did not ask what concert it was and did not try to help me find it in the store. Instead, they just stood exactly where they were as if they couldn't be bothered to do anything else.

Looks like there is a great opportunity for a new printing business...