6 Food City Secrets Employees Wish Tennesseans Knew
You see the aisles and the registers when you shop at Food City.
Tennesseans who shop there may not know what else the company does, or what its staff wishes you understood.
Here are the secrets Food City employees wish Tennesseans knew.
1. Curt’s Ace Hardware
You may know Food City for groceries, but it also runs Curt’s Ace Hardware.
The first Curt’s store opened in Bristol, Virginia, according to a 2022 report from television station WCYB.
The second store opened in Piney Flats, Tennessee, in August 2022.
The Curt’s name honors the grandfather of Food City chief executive Steve Smith.
That grandfather ran a general mercantile store and had the post office in his store.
Food City’s website says the 158-store chain includes 137 Food City locations, 12 Curt’s Ace Hardware stores and others.
Of those 137 Food City locations, 120 have pharmacies and 123 have fuel and convenience stores.
If you live near Seymour, an April 2026 report from television station WVLT covered a groundbreaking for a 12,000-square-foot Curt’s on Chapman Highway, with an opening expected in early spring 2027.
2. Misty Mountain Spring Water
A bottling facility for Misty Mountain Spring Water sits inside Food City’s 1.2-million-square-foot distribution center in Abingdon, Virginia, according to a July 2023 Shelby Report profile.
That distribution center is the main distributor for all Food City locations, including the store you shop at.
Food City bottles pure spring water there for its locations.
The facility also produces private-label water for several other retailers.
So the spring water you’ve put in your cart at Food City, or the store-brand water you’ve picked up elsewhere, may have started in Abingdon.
3. Retail Reserve Team
The July 2023 profile describes Food City’s Retail Reserve Team as about 50 associates from stores in the surrounding area and the company’s headquarters.
The team helps the distribution center flex up, keep deliveries on time and get product to stores as needed.
All of the assistant managers at your local Food City go through a stint on the team at the warehouse as part of their training.
Within the first week of the COVID-19 shutdown, more than 100 Food City retail employees began work in the warehouse to increase distribution.
The company’s chief operating officer said several associates lifted more than a million pounds in a week.
That’s a lot of lifting.
Psst! How much do you know about the grocery chains and food brands of the South? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Southern Grocery IQ
Answer these questions on grocery chains and food brands from across the South. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Barney and Ally Hartman, two brothers in 1940s Knoxville, developed a lemon-lime soda that became which well-known brand?
4. Employee Stock Ownership
Associates own more than 12 percent of the company behind your Food City through its profit-sharing program, according to a June 2023 Shelby Report profile.
As of 2023, Food City had offered an employee stock ownership plan for nearly 40 years.
On Food City's website, you'll see associate ownership put at 11 to 12 percent through its employee profit-sharing plan.
About 10,000 associates take part, or almost 60 percent of them.
5. Required Community Budgets
Who sets up the community budget for your Food City?
That job belongs to Food City's corporate headquarters, according to a June 2023 Shelby Report profile.
It sets a budget for each store, and the store has to spend it in its community.
Little League programs and other nonprofit organizations are examples of where that money goes.
A program also helps store managers join local civic clubs.
The Claude P. Varney Humanitarian Award recognizes outstanding volunteerism among associates, and Varney was a former company president and board vice chairman.
6. Free CDL Training
A July 2023 Shelby Report profile described a free commercial driver's license (CDL) course at K-VA-T Food Stores, which owns Food City.
If you're an associate, that's a 13-week course to earn your license.
Partnerships with local community colleges funded it fully.
Then new drivers rode with an experienced driver for four to six weeks before taking routes.
The 1918 Greeneville Store
Food City's name traces back to 1918, when a store opened in Greeneville, Tennessee, according to the Times Free Press.
Food City's website says the Humphrey family opened that store.
You're in the town where the Food City name started once you reach Greeneville.
K-VA-T Food Stores bought the Food City chain in 1984.
The name on your store's sign came first.
The K-VA-T name is an acronym for the company's original service area of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.
The No-Layoff Claim
The company that owns your Food City, K-VA-T Food Stores, had never laid off an employee, its chief operating officer said in a July 2023 Shelby Report profile.
The profile dates that record to the company's first store, which opened in 1955.
Local Growers
Your Food City can't buy local produce on its own, according to the company's FAQ.
Only the produce buying office monitors and approves local produce.
Food City says it works with more than 20 farms to stock its produce departments.
Stratton Farms in Grainger County sends tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers and beans, and its produce is delivered from field to store within a day.
Strange Honey Farm says it started with hives in Newport, Tennessee, and now has well over a thousand hives in the Smokies.
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