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The PondFranklin, Tennessee · Est. 2005
NEIGHBORHOOD PUB · FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE
Since 2005

Late-night dive bar · Live music room · Opens 5:00 PM Tuesday

Serving great drinks & food, good vibes and live music — since 2005

The Pond is Franklin’s original late-night dive bar, open until 3am seven nights a week at 595 Hillsboro Road. It serves cold beer, cocktails and a full bar-food kitchen, hosts live music and karaoke, and keeps a ceiling covered in tap handles. Twenty-one and over. Non-smoking inside; smoking is permitted on the patio.

○ Closed — opens 5:00 PM today

Get directions (opens in a new tab)Call 615-790-1491

To-go orders go straight to the kitchen line.

Eight guests packed together for a photograph under the tap-handle ceiling, a football game on the screen behind them.
Regulars, and the people about to become them
Drinkers along both sides of the bar rail with bottles in front of them, a bartender coming down the duckboards, memorabilia and televisions on every wall.
Seven friends crowded around a high-top table raising cups, balloons overhead and framed jerseys on the wall behind them.

“The kind of place where strangers become regulars!”

— LOYAL CUSTOMER

The board by the door

What's on tonight

Open nightly · Close 3:00 AM

The hours below are the real published hours. What's playing comes straight from The Pond's own calendar, below.

The ceiling over the back hallway papered edge to edge with stapled gig posters and handbills from past shows, beer signs on the walls below.
Twenty years of posters, stapled to the ceiling

Same room, every night

Full hours and house rules are just below.

Bars in Franklin, TN — the late one

Open until 3am,
seven nights

○ Closed now
Opening hours for The Pond, Franklin, Tennessee. Every night closes at 3:00 AM.
NightOpens — closes
Monday5:00 PM — 3:00 AM
TuesdayToday5:00 PM — 3:00 AM
Wednesday5:00 PM — 3:00 AM
Thursday5:00 PM — 3:00 AM
Friday3:00 PM — 3:00 AM
Saturday11:00 AM — 3:00 AM
Sunday11:00 AM — 3:00 AM

Closed — opens 5:00 PM today. Franklin time. The clock above reads live, so what it says is what the door is doing.

Directions to 595 Hillsboro Road (opens in a new tab)
The storefront at night: a lit box sign reading THE POND above windows full of neon beer signs, a red OPEN sign and the koi emblem in the glass.
595 Hillsboro Road, after dark

Read the sign

House rules

21+ · Non-smoking inside

Nobody should drive out to Hillsboro Road and find out at the door. So here it is, plain, up front, no apology.

  1. 01

    Twenty-one and over

    All night, every night. This is a bar, not a venue with an all-ages room, and twenty-one and over is the whole of the door policy.

  2. 02

    Non-smoking inside

    Non-smoking inside; smoking is permitted on the patio.

  3. 03

    Kitchen open until 2:30 AM nightly.

    Straight from the live site, and it means what it says. To-go orders go to the kitchen line on 615-790-1491.

  4. 04

    Last call 2:30 AM, close 3:00 AM

    Seven nights a week. The bar opens at 5:00 PM Monday to Thursday, 3:00 PM Friday, and 11:00 AM Saturday and Sunday during football season.

The back bar: shelves of spirits, a bank of draught taps, stacked plastic cups, and a hand-lettered sign reading “Play Nice or Leave”.
The sign behind the bar has said the same thing for years

Cover charge and parking

Plenty of parking, and no cover charge except on occasion. Call 615-790-1491 if you want to check before a big night.

Franklin, TN nightlife

Live music & karaoke

On the stage

A room built around a stage

The Pond has hosted live music since 2005 — duos with acoustics, full trios, players lit purple and blue against the back wall, and a floor that fills up in front of them. It is a bar first, so the stage sits in the room rather than behind a barrier.

See who’s playing and when in the calendar above, under “What’s on tonight.”

Live music at The Pond →Ask what's on — 615-790-1491
Three musicians on stools with acoustic guitars, playing under blue stage light in front of The Pond’s painted stage sign.
A trio, under the blue
The stage seen over the heads of the crowd, a band playing under pink light with tap handles hanging from the ceiling above.
A four-piece band mid-song, seen past two glasses on a table at the back of the room.
Two guitarists playing on the outdoor patio, one singing, string lights and a patio heater on the fence behind them.
On the patio

Look up

A ceiling covered
in tap handles

The Pond's ceiling
Tap handles hung in long racks across the ceiling between the ductwork, brewery banners pinned above them.
Handles, row on row
Tap handles filling the ceiling racks above a wall of framed football jerseys and photographs.
The ceiling seen end to end, tap handles of every shape and brewery packed across it with string lights threaded between.

Tap handles cover the ceiling — every shape and every brewery, hung in rows over the bar and out across the room. It is the first thing most people look up at, and the reason regulars bring visitors here instead of trying to describe it.

Walls to match: sports and music collectibles, framed and unframed, one of the more unusual interiors in Middle Tennessee. No pretension anywhere in it.

See the ceiling →
A hand-painted THE POND sign on the panelled wall, with a chicken sandwich and fries in a basket and a dark pour on the table in front of it.
Under the painted sign

One of the odder interiors in Middle Tennessee

The room itself

Tap to enlarge

Step inside and unwind. The Pond has been your neighborhood hangout since 2005, where every night feels like a local tradition.

The patio
Indoor seating and an outdoor patio, so the room has an outside to spill onto.
Sports on the walls
Sports and music collectibles cover the walls — framed, pinned, layered up over twenty years.
Darts in the corner
A dartboard area with a throwing line marked on the floor, off to one side of the room.
No pretension
Locals gather. Visitors settle in fast. Nobody is dressed for anything.
Game day at The Pond →See the menu

Bars in Franklin, TN

Find us

595 Hillsboro Road

Admit one · Twenty-one and over

The Pond

595 Hillsboro Road Suite 321
Franklin, TN 37064

615-790-1491

thepond@thepondinfranklin.com

Suite 321, on Hillsboro Road. Look for the boxed THE POND sign above the neon window signs — that is the front door.

Closed — opens 5:00 PM today.

Get directions (opens in a new tab)Call 615-790-1491
Open in Google Maps (opens in a new tab)

A busy night with the room full, people standing shoulder to shoulder between the bar and the tables and a band playing at the far end.
A full room, Hillsboro Road

Before you set off

Full hours and house rules are above. Kitchen is open until 2:30 AM nightly — call ahead for to-go.

○ Closed — opens 5:00 PM today · 21+ · Non-smoking inside

Directions (opens in a new tab)Call