Food City dates back to 1918 when a store was opened in Greeneville, Tennessee, but K-VA-T Food Stores’ official beginning took place in 1955 when founder Jack C. Smith — with his father, Curtis and uncle, Earl — opened the first store in Grundy, Virginia. Since that time, Food City has grown in leaps through the acquisition of several Piggly Wiggly operations in Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, along with Quality Foods/Food City, White Stores, Winn Dixie and BI-LO units in east Tennessee. The company has also grown steadily by expansion into new market areas while remodeling and replacing existing locations as needed to best serve their customers.

K-VA-T Food Stores owns and operates the 1.1 million square-foot Food City Distribution Center, located in Abingdon, Virginia and continues to grow every year through our profit-sharing plan. “About 14% of the company is owned by our associates,” says Smith. K-VA-T Food Stores ranked 40th on the 2008 Progressive Grocer’s List of America’s 50 Largest Supermarket Chains, 55th on Supermarket News’ Top 74 North American Food Retailers (in 2008 with over 1.6 billion dollars in sales) and 269th on Forbes Magazine’s List of the Largest Privately-Held Companies is 2007.