Community staple SKYKING PIZZA celebrates decade on Main St.

SKYKING PIZZA has been slinging pies and serving as a community gathering place for 10 years as of July 5.

Amy and Cole Bruce – the faces and hands behind both SKYKING PIZZA and Turnbull Provisions – said over the last decade the vision for the pizzeria has never changed: a place where people gather with their neighbors and get to know each other.

“I always thought that community was a healer of all the things, and I think Kingston Springs is rare in that it's a lot of different kinds of people,” Amy said. “People from a lot of different backgrounds.”

“It's people who are active in church and people who are not active in church; people who are from all over the nation; people who are liberals and people who are conservatives; people who are business people and artists; brainiacs and blue collars – all living peaceably together here in Kingston Springs, and that is rare,” Amy explained. “And I think what heals division is community, and what heals losses is community, and what heals rejection and abuse and everything is community. And why else are we here?”

SKYKING PIZZA

“I don't think our mission has really changed,” she said. “ If anything, I feel like it’s solidified,” Cole added.

The couple met in Nashville at Amy’s vintage clothing store. The two of them moved to the area more than two decades ago to pursue their individual careers in music. They were in a band together for a short stint before getting married in 2006 – that’s when they moved to Kingston Springs permanently.

Long-time residents of Kingston Springs will remember that before there was SKYKING PIZZA, there was Red Tree Coffee. Amy and her younger sister – Katie Conley – opened the coffee shop together in 2007.

“We had live music here on Friday nights, and it was a lot of fun, but it was not lucrative,” Amy said. “We spent about six years just breaking even. And then providing you a really fun place, but having to really work hard in other areas of our life just to pay those bills.”

Amy said after six years of Red Tree Coffee, they closed. But, it was only a few months until that same space was transformed into what SKYKING PIZZA is today.

“It started off as almost like a pipe dream, but then people responded and became community,” Amy said. “I can tell you that tragedy brings a community together.”

“A big catalyst in building this community was the flood, and when Red Tre

e was the hub of the volunteers for the flood cleanup, and that brought so many people together, and they worked in the trenches next to one another, and it was people they would not hang out with normally – they weren't drawn together but they were thrown together. And then turns out they were good friends. And that, I think, really helped build this community and made us deeper and richer on a lot of levels.”

The couple said that their biggest hardship during the last decade was a time of personal tragedy. SKYKING PIZZA wasn’t even open a whole year before Amy and Cole’s house in Kingston Springs burnt to the ground in 2014.

“We already had a lot of friends and family and friends that feel like family from Red Tree days when our house burnt. So when our house burned down, SKYKING never closed because everybody that worked for us just stepped up a notch,” Amy said. “We didn't have to close a single day,” Cole added.

“That community ended up saving our lives – making it to where we weren’t homeless, and they kept coming to SKYKING,” Amy said. “We lost everything, but we still had the business. And so having that business really saved our lives during that time, too.”

Amy and Cole helping with Dinner on Main in 2018 / Amy Bruce

“That was the hardest time of my life, but also of all of the SKYKING process and story. That two and a half years after our house burned was a real struggle and the community around SKYKING sustained us through all that – and this town,” Amy said. “It was pretty, pretty remarkable. Which brings it all back around to community being a healer.”

Amy and Cole try to give back to the South Cheatham community at every opportunity they get, because feeding someone who is hungry is “clearly the right thing to do,” Amy stated.

“There are so many people within arm's reach of here that have so much and there are so many within an arm's reach that have so little and that imbalance has always been really evident to me – even since I was a child. And I want to right that imbalance as much as I can,” Amy said through tears. “And so if anybody's ever hungry, my god, of course they can come here and have whatever.”

“It's really interesting how this whole town has grown in those areas, and I think the flood was a big catalyst of that but also just people's hearts,” Amy said. “Like people gather in the same areas, and so people with a heart for people were drawn to here – to this area – because there were people already here with a heart for people.”

“I think one major trait of a good person is generosity, and so I always want to be as generous as possible,” Amy said.

In its 10 years on Main St., SKYKING PIZZA, Amy and Cole, and all of their staff have fed hungry families, held baby showers, and threw countless holiday parties. Now, since Turnbull Provisions opened its doors down the strip in 2021, another need in the Kingston Springs community has been fulfilled.