Already headed to court.
It’s been less than 5 months since Kane Brown’s downtown Nashville bar, Kane Brown’s on Broadway, opened its doors. But the bar is already facing a lawsuit from its former owner who claims that the new owners breached their contract and fell behind on millions of dollars worth of payments.
The bar was formerly known as The Valentine, which first opened in 2016. It was later purchased by The Elia Group, a hospitality company out of Michigan that also operates ZuZu, an Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Nashville. But the previous owners allege that The Elia Group failed to make the payments required under the purchase agreement.
The lawsuit was filed in Davidson County Chancery Court by Cusaboo Jr. Operating Company and Benjamin L. Shirah against Iconic Broadway Nashville, the company doing business as Kane Brown’s on Broadway, as well asIconic Nashville Holdco, and Elia Hospitality Investco and founder Zaid Elia.
According to the complaint, which has been obtained and reviewed by Whiskey Riff, the previous owners entered into a purchase agreement with The Elia Group in 2023 for the sale of The Valentine (which didn’t include the property). As part of the agreement, the new owners were to make monthly interest-only payments of $13,333 on a $2 million promissory note, with the $2 million payment for the principal due in May 2026. And the new owners also entered into a consulting agreement with the previous owner, Shirah – who they claim quickly defaulted on both.
In December 2025, the two sides agreed to a settlement that would terminate the consulting agreement, with the new owners paying Shirah $950,000 over the course of the next year and a half. But according to the old owners, the new owners stopped making payments on both the purchase agreement and the settlement agreement in December 2025 and have refused to provide them with financial documents to determine whether they’re able to fulfill their obligations.
Just a couple months later, in February 2026, the two sides entered into yet another agreement that would require the new owners to pay nearly $2.3 million by May of this year. But the old owners claim that The Elia Group failed to pay $2 million owed under the purchase agreement, as well as $13k in legal fees that they had previously agreed to.
In August of this year, the two sides once again entered into an agreement where the previous owners would refrain from filing a lawsuit if the new owners made the agreed upon payments. And, well, you can probably guess what happened since we’re talking about a lawsuit.
Long story short (too late for that I guess) the previous owners claim that they’re still owed damages in the amount of $2,048,525.48, as well as interest in the amount of $673.49 per day, for breach of the purchase agreement, plus $365,910.87 for breach of the consulting agreement and resulting settlement agreement.
The plaintiffs are also asking a judge to require the new owners to turn over financial documents that would allow them to assess their financial situation and ability to fulfill their obligations.
The owners of Kane Brown’s haven’t yet responded to the lawsuit, either publicly or in court, so it’s entirely possible that there’s more to this story. But if not, it doesn’t really bode well for the future of a bar that just opened five months earlier.
