page_title: Food City (K-VA-T)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Food City (K-VA-T) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the food city located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. CVS is at the side of the photo. (Nabbed from my flickr: www.flickr.com/jjbers)
context_page_description: Food City is an American supermarket chain with stores located in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. It is owned by K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc., a privately held family and employee-owned corporation headquartered in Abingdon, Virginia. K-VA-T Food Stores owns the Food City Distribution Center, a distribution center K-VA-T helped form in 1974 and acquired full control of in 1998, Misty Mountain Spring Water, LLC, a producer of bottled water, as well as limited-assortment grocery stores named Super Dollar Food Center, Food City Express convenience stores, and two Wine and Spirits liquor stores. Many of their grocery stores have their own fuel stations, with the Gas'N Go branding. It offers many private label product choices under the brands "Food Club," "TopCare", "ValuTime", "That's Smart!", "Food City Fresh!", "Full Circle", "Paws Happy Life", "Simply Done", "Wide Awake Coffee Co.", "Tippy Toes", "Harvest Club", "Evolve", "Over the Top", "Nostimo", "@ease", "CharKing", "Misty Mountain", "Flock's Finest", "b-lieve", "Culinary Tours", "Pure Harmony" and more, many of which are part of the Topco corporate brand program.
context_section_description: K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc. traces its history to 1955, when company founder Jack Smith opened his first 8,800-square-foot (820 m²) Piggly Wiggly store in Grundy, Virginia, with the help of three special stockholders: his father, Curtis Smith, uncle, Earl Smith and cousin, Ernest Smith. In 1963, Smith added a second store in South Williamson, Kentucky, followed by a newly constructed third location in Pikeville, Kentucky, in 1965, and a store in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, in 1967.
  The company continued to grow steadily until 1984 when they acquired Quality Foods, a 19-store chain (founded in 1918), that operated under the Food City name. The Smiths adopted Food City as the new nameplate, along with its heritage, for all of their stores going forward. In 1989, Food City purchased the 37-store White Stores chain based out of Knoxville, Tennessee, more than doubling the size of the company.
  In 1998, Food City acquired the 11-store Kennedy Piggly Wiggly chain as well as full control of Mid-Mountain Foods, the current Food City Distribution Center. The following year, Winn-Dixie pulled out of the Knoxville market and sold their seven stores to Food City. In February 2006, Food City announced the purchase of eight Bi-Lo locations in Knoxville, Maryville, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
  K-VA-T celebrated its 50th anniversary November 17, 2005, by opening a 46,500 square feet (4,320 m²) store in Vansant, Virginia, just outside Grundy. Three years later, in October 2008, K-VA-T opened its 100th store in Rogersville, Tennessee. The company celebrated this event by sending a special commemorative I-beam to every store in the company where employees signed it as a goodwill gesture for the new store. The beam sits above the entrance way in the 100th store.
  In December 2010, K-VA-T purchased Old Town Market in Tazewell, Tennessee, as a replacement store for their New Tazewell, Tennessee, location.
  In July 2015, Food City announced the purchase of 21 BI-LO locations in the Chattanooga, Tennessee market as well as eight BI-LO stores in Northern Georgia from Southeastern Grocers. The company plans to invest over $40 million in capital improvements to the locations during the first year as well as install Gas'N Go fuel stations in as many locations as possible. K-VA-T reached a milestone in October 2015 by opening its first Georgia location, a converted BI-LO, in Rossville, Georgia. That same month, K-VA-T opened a 62,000 square feet (5,800 m²) Food City in Johnson City, Tennessee, the largest store ever constructed by the company.
  In November 2017, Food City opened its first in-store Starbucks in a newly built location in Athens, Tennessee.  As of January, 2020, the company operates 15 Starbucks in-store locations.
  In February 2020, The National Grocers Association named K-VA-T Food Stores and Food City as Outstanding Marketer at the 2020 NGA Creative Choice Awards.
  In June 2020, K-VA-T announced that they were expanding into their fifth state with plans to construct a 54,000 square feet (5,000 m²) supermarket in Albertville, Alabama.
caption: A Food City location in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-H300", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "3.0000", "Image DateTime": "2017:07:19 14:33:05", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Copyright 2009", "Image ExifOffset": "308", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-H300", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10718", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8860", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "59/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:07:19 14:33:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:07:19 14:33:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "287183/88872", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "2411/250", "EXIF ApertureValue": "5121/1000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "317/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "MultiSpot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "1571/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5152", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3864", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10542", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "876", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}