Taylor Berger, founder of Two Broke Bartenders, is passionate about creating and managing short-term rentals for people who want to experience Memphis.
On Valentine’s Day 2022, Berger and Elliott Ives bought Young Avenue Sound, which they are converting into spaces that can be rented as short-term rentals on the order of Airbnbs. Half of the building will continue to be a recording studio. The overall name for the building is “Young Avenue Sound.”
A grand reopening party for Young Avenue Sound will be September 24th.
Berger’s Two Broke Bartenders team currently manages seven units at Young Avenue Sound. Berger, who began Two Broke Bartenders in 2020, says, “Two Broke Bartenders was founded because all of the service industry was essentially laid off at the same time at the beginning of the pandemic. They needed employment. That’s how it was founded. Then, over time, it ended up specializing in moving and property maintenance and then only recently specializing in short-term rentals like Airbnbs.”
Ives, a songwriter/co-producer and a longtime studio and touring guitarist with Justin Timberlake, will be over the studio side of the building. “I had thought about buying this building in 2018 and just wasn’t able to get the people here to do it,” Ives says. “The studio business is a tough business.
“We own the building and then there’s a few adjacent properties. The house and the back house behind it. Another house across the street on Philadelphia we own together.”
Ives already had been working out of Young Avenue Sound. “The building is so eccentric. All these bits and bogs, nooks and crannies, different styles.”
So, he and Berger thought, “Why not turn it into a short-term living space and take pressure off the studio business? This is either the craziest thing or genius.”
They split the building in half, Ives says. “I built a studio within a studio. I moved the big piano and took my operation, which I had on the other side for seven years, and built a room within a room. And did not how how it was going to turn out. It’s not completely finished yet. It will be within a month. So far, it’s working out great.”
Performers already are working in the new studio space. “We’re working with Jeremy Stanfill doing his new EP. And I’m working with this 17-year-old freaking artist, Ava Wilson.”
They’re currently finishing her EP. Her boyfriend, musician Dylan Dunn, who is related to Donald “Duck” Dunn, is in Memphis from California “playing on her stuff. And they’ve got a band together.”
Berger also partnered with Shelby County Commissioner Reginald Milton’s nonprofit SMA Social Suds Laundromat and community resource center to do laundry for the short-term rentals. “I’ve known Reginald forever and I just had loads and loads of laundry,” Berger says. “I knew he had this laundromat.”
He told Milton, “I’m drowning in laundry. Can you help me?”
“What was so ironic was he had been working on a business plan to start doing laundry for (short-term rental) owners. This gave him a chance to pilot something he’d been wanting to do for months.
“The machines are not being used at night. So, it’s a really good business for him to get into.”
And, Berger says, “This provides jobs to the South Memphis people he is already helping. His mission is a nonprofit. The laundromat just helps sustain their nonprofit mission.”
“One hundred percent of this money we make goes to support our 144 foster youths,” Milton says. “We are presently seeking the donation of a van so we can do the pickup and drop-off services.”
For more photos of Young Avenue Sound, go to offbeat.love and click “book now.”
