Delivering well-developed patron use and partnering with a communities it serves is what K-VA-T Food Stores’ Food City supermarkets are all about. “We are focused on a business and a community,” President and CEO Steve Smith says.
The Food City ensign dates behind to 1918 when a initial grocery store non-stop in Greeneville, Tenn. K-VA-T Food Stores, Food City’s primogenitor company, began in 1955 when owner Jack C. Smith, his father, Curtis Smith, cousin Ernest Smith and uncle Earl Smith non-stop their initial store in Grundy, Va.
Today, a association operates 105 Food City supermarkets via southwest Virginia, southeast Kentucky and northeast Tennessee and of those, 78 embody a pharmacy and 81 locations offer fuel. K-VA-T Food Stores also operates Misty Mountain Spring Water, L.L.C. and a possess 1.2 million-square-foot Food City placement center. “We are not a ubiquitous sell retailer,” Steve Smith adds. “We are a normal supermarket format.”
The family owned association is also partially employee-owned – and has been for a past 30 years. More than 13 percent is owned by 8,000 of a 13,000 associates by a company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan. “Being employee-owned is a differential advantage for us,” Smith says. “We take caring of a associates, who in spin take caring of a constant customers.”
The association has an endless training module in place for all associates, from entrance spin to management. Upcoming store managers are compulsory to finish a extensive 52-week program. The module includes training in any of a stores’ departments, as good as those during a corporate level, operations and financial skills, tellurian apparatus and caring skills classroom training, evaluations, believe contrast and a four-week smallest duration comment conducted by a store manager.
A series of Food City associates have perceived inhabitant attention awards in approval of their achievements in a areas of patron and village service. The list includes 8 finalists and 3 altogether winners of United Fresh Retail Produce Association’s Retail Produce Manager of a Year, one Food Marketing Institute Retail Store Manager of a Year endowment winner, 6 Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association Retailer of a Year endowment winners, 3 Kentucky Grocer’s Association Retailer of a Year endowment winners and dual Women Grocers of America’s Women Grocer of a Year endowment winners.
Unique Experience
When was a final time we had fun going to a supermarket? Never? That’s substantially since selling during a internal supermarket is an requirement that many consumers don’t demeanour brazen to, though Food City is operative tough to change that notice for a customers. “Our idea is to make any customer’s selling knowledge as prolific and beguiling as possible,” Smith says.
To grasp that goal, Food City ensures that a associates are intensely useful and engaging, while charity a far-reaching accumulation of services and conveniences. Its departments are also filled with top-quality, appealing choices. “We sell what we marketplace and marketplace what we merchandise,” Smith says. The booze and floral departments can be a good place to find an astonishing must-have, though business can also be enticed while browsing by a cheese, bakery or deli departments, that embody an array of specialty epicurean products mingled among a prevalent offerings. Customers can also relax in a café, that offers giveaway Wi-Fi service.
Food City’s full use beef and seafood departments offer pre-marinated and seasoned products, as good as a finish preference of top-quality meats that are all natural, including Certified Angus Beef. In-house beef cutters palm cut steaks, chops and roasts to order. The stretched grocery, solidified food, furnish and health and beauty caring departments go good over a normal transport with a outrageous preference of gourmet, general and hard-to-find items.
Food City’s pharmacies are staffed with rarely lerned professionals whose primary regard is a good being of their customers. Many of a pharmacies are now versed with a drive-thru for incomparable convenience. Food City Gas ‘n Go fuel stations offer rival prices on high-quality gasoline and many now sell diesel fuel.
“In any sell [outlet], one of a biggest opportunities is to not usually keep existent customers, though attract new ones, as well,” Smith says. “One of a many effective methods is by your reputation.” Food City believes some of a best selling comes from a people who transport by a doors and post on amicable media sites about their knowledge or a new apparatus they found. The many successful approach to do it, Smith says, is by holding those additional stairs to safeguard a patron has a certain and singular experience. “We wish a business to be a biggest advocates,” he adds.
Customer Loyalty
Engagement might be one approach to keep new and existent business walking by a doors, though coupons and faithfulness programs don’t harm either. Food City offers a extensive faithfulness program, that enables business to advantage points that can be practical to fuel purchases, reward-based coupons and offers, bar membership and more. “We inspire a business to take advantage of a wine, pet and baby clubs to accept useful information and essential assets on associated apparatus of interest,” Smith says.
Food City offers a accumulation of private tag products for a customers, including Food City, Food Club, Harvest Club, Bistro Deli Classics, Paws, Valu Time, Full Circle, Top Care, World Classics, Academix, Domestix, Electrix and Easy Clix. The vast preference is thanks, in part, to a company’s Topco membership. Topco is a selling commune that includes a series of a top-50 informal retailers, wholesalers and foodservice suppliers. “Non-competing members advantage additional selling power, that is essential to handling on a some-more spin personification margin with incomparable competitors like Walmart,” Smith explains. “It has been a essential event for a association and other informal companies.”
Smith serves as a member of Topco’s Board of Directors and was a former chair of a Food Marketing Institute and ex officio member of a National Grocer’s Association.
The supermarket also offers what it calls bequest brands, including Kay’s Ice Cream, Terry’s Snack Foods, Lay’s Meats, Moore’s Potato Chips, Chuck Wagon Dog Food and Kern’s Bread. “These formerly dropped informal favorites have been brought behind by renouned direct regulating a same recipes and flavors,” Smith says. “They are disdainful to Food City and are therefore not accessible during other retailers.”
Buying Local
Food City is a obvious partner within a communities a association serves.
“The mercantile sourroundings we have been handling in for a past 4 to 5 years is challenging,” Smith says. “There are fewer people in a workforce, income is a disastrous compared to where it once was, and as a consequence, people are spending fewer dollars. The debt and electric bills aren’t negotiable, though people can change what they buy during a supermarket.”
To assistance boost internal economies, Food City hires locally and buys furnish from internal farmers – who were in unfortunate need of an opening some-more than one decade ago.
The diminution in tobacco use left farmers in Food City’s hometowns looking for choice crops to grow. Food City began partnering with them in a early 2000s, Smith says. This gave internal farmers a new source of income by flourishing new crops for a guaranteed buyer.
“We honour ourselves in selecting a best probable products for a business and a internal farms are famous for producing some of a excellent products in a country,” Smith says. “Buying locally is a judicious choice. It provides a business with a freshest furnish possible, while lending additional support to a internal economies.”
What began with a tiny series of apparatus granted by a handful of internal farmers has now grown into a multi-million-dollar operation. On average, Food City buys $6 million in uninformed furnish from internal growers annually. Many apparatus are delivered directly from a plantation to a store a same day they are picked. “It doesn’t get any fresher than that,” Smith notes.
Environmental advantages are an combined reward to a program. Instead of pushing opposite a nation for produce, trucks transport a small 50 to 60 miles, that saves fuel and releases fewer emissions into a air, Smith notes.
On a weekends, farmers have a station invitation to revisit their internal Food City to speak about their crops. “People unequivocally like meaningful that rancher Joe – who they might know privately – is a chairman that grew a squish or tomato they have usually placed into their selling cart,” Smith says. “Having farmers onsite allows a business to hear first-hand what this partnership means to them. Because of it, many [local farmers] have been means to keep their family farm, buy a tractor or compensate their taxes.”
Exemplary Farming
Food City combined a Wayne Scott Memorial Grower of a Year endowment in 2007 to respect one superb grower any year. The endowment is named in respect of Unicoi County, Tenn., rancher Wayne Scott, one of a initial to partner with a company. “Scott’s Strawberries continue to be one of a many sought-after products,” Smith says. “Wayne Scott was one of a finest, many honest group we have ever had a payoff of doing business with. We suspicion it fitting to respect his memory and loyalty to a rural attention with this annual award.”
Harvey Lafollette of Hawkins County, Tenn., a partner to a supermarket sequence for some-more than 15 years, was a 2013 recipient. Farming has been a lifelong career for a Lafollette family, who furnish unresolved baskets, bedding plants and unfeeling plants.
Growing up, Harvey Lafollette worked in his family’s hothouse on evenings, weekends and during summer breaks. He was also a member of his high school’s Future Farmers of America organization. After graduation, he began tillage full-time by formulating plate gardens for sale to a internal florist. He shortly stretched a operation to offer florists via Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky with plate gardens and pleasant and hothouse plants.
In 1996, Lafollette purchased his possess plantation 5 miles divided from his family’s plantation and assembled 20 greenhouses. After he was contacted by Food City to furnish plants for sale in a sell locations, Lafollette built an additional 20 greenhouses and began producing unresolved baskets and bedding plants for a whole supermarket chain. Lafollette hopes to continue a tradition by flitting a family plantation to his sons, Dustin and Jake.
In 2013, Food City purchased some-more than 149,000 plants from a Lafollette greenhouses, as good as cabbage, jumbo garland immature onions, jumbo pumpkins and tumble squashes.
Food City purchases furnish from a series of internal farms, including those in Grainger, Blount, Hawkins, Unicoi, Jefferson and Sullivan counties in Tennessee and Scott and Carroll counties in Virginia.
“We suffer a good partnership with a accumulation of internal farms,” says Mike Tipton, executive of furnish and operations. “And we are unapproachable to be a disdainful sell opening for a series of them and, of course, a business adore a combined convenience.”
Health and Wellness
The association has launched a series of innovative health and wellness initiatives. “As an employer, not usually do we have a shortcoming to yield a associates with a required advantages to safeguard good health, though as one of a region’s largest retailers, we have a shortcoming to a customers, as well,” Smith says. “Healthy eating habits are a critical member to a healthier community. It’s critical that a shoppers know their health risks and a health calm of a dishes they consume. But it’s also critical that we yield healthy choices that are easy, convenient, inexpensive and utterly frankly, that ambience good.”
Its pharmacies yield a series of health screening and programs. More than 100 of a pharmacists are now approved to discharge annual influenza vaccinations. The group has been instrumental in implementing annual screening programs, that yield giveaway in-house health screenings for all Food City associates. Since a module began 4 years ago, a association has seen health caring costs diminution while a weekly cost to a associates has remained stable.
In 2010, Food City launched NuVal, a nutritive scoring system, that scores food on a scale from one to 100 by holding into care some-more than 30 nutrients to establish an altogether nutritive peculiarity measure that is prominently displayed on shelf signage and labels. The module provides shoppers with a required information to make some-more sensitive purchases during a discerning glance.
Food City also partners with a University of Tennessee’s Healthy Living Kitchen, Quillen ETSU Physicians Doc/Chef module and UT Medical Center to offer on-site digital screening mammograms in a series of a locations. The informal Wellmont Health Coach visits several locations and offers physicals and screening mammograms. The association also saved a concession of salad bars to several area schools in and with United Fresh Produce Association’s Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools program.
Community Support
The association also supports a series of village organizations and agencies. Since a inception, Food City’s School Bucks Program has donated some-more than $15 million to area schools. “With a pressures schools have been underneath due to bill constraints, this module helps them do many some-more than they were means to do on their own,” Smith says.
The School Bucks rewards module was instituted to assistance schools squeeze computers and other much-needed equipment. Customers mention a participating propagandize to accept points, that are fitting any time a family shops and are totaled annually to establish a grant that will be awarded to any school. The association commits $600,000 per year to a program.
Food City’s Charity Golf Outing raises some-more than $400,000 annually to advantage internal free organizations, in further to their annual Race Against Hunger expostulate that provides some-more than $400,000 in assistance to internal craving use organizations any year. The company’s Mission Able plan recently donated $135,000 to advantage Paralyzed Veterans of America and committed to be a vital unite for a arriving Medal of Honor gathering to be hold after this year in Knoxville, Tenn. Other initiatives, including United Way, Susan G. Komen, Relay for Life, The American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and Juvenile Diabetes are also upheld by Food City.
Food City is a second-longest-running unite in NASCAR racing by a sponsorship of dual of a sport’s many renouned events – a Food City 500 and Food City 300 – during Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn. It has contributed some-more than $500,000 in deduction from a annual Food City Race Night events to internal nonprofits.
Building for a Future
Food City continues to grow by new store construction and a enlargement and remodeling of a existent locations to safeguard a infrastructure is tolerable for a future. “While we are stability to supplement new locations where warranted, as a housing marketplace has declined over a past several years, we have focused a good understanding of a efforts on updating a existent stores,” Smith explains. When a economy does spin around, he adds that a association will be in a softened position to residence a needs of flourishing communities.
In 2011, a association purchased skill vacated by a internal sanatorium for a purpose of constructing a new corporate domicile to urge a efficiencies. “Prior to constructing a new corporate support center, a group worked from 5 opposite locations travelling a city and country,” Smith says. “The subdivision combined dear duplication of bid and interfered with partnership and a pity of resources.”
Food City spent dual years building a 132,000-square-foot trickery on 17 acres in Abingdon, Va., and 350 of a employees were changed in to a new space in Oct 2013. The building includes a new state-of-the-art information center, that services a whole chain, as good as open spaces for softened teamwork.
In a future, Food City skeleton to sojourn focused on good, fast and essential growth, Smith says. “We don’t wish to get bigger usually to boost a store count,” he adds. “We wish to continue to urge on a operation and precedence a volume indispensable to contest with retailers incomparable than us in a demeanour that doesn’t jeopardise a use or peculiarity of a stores. We’re intensely ardent about what we do and we’re committed to stability a elementary truth a association was founded on scarcely 60 years ago, to ‘run a best store in town.’”