K-VA-T Food City

Food City

Type	Supermarket
Industry	Retail
Founded	1955
Headquarters	Abingdon, Virginia
Number of locations	122
Area served	Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia
Products	Dairy, deli, fresh pizza, frozen foods, grocery, meat, produce, snacks, floral, fuel, pharmacy
Website	foodcity.com

Food City is an American supermarket chain with stores located in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. It offers the house labels "Food Club," "Top Crest", "ValuTime", "Food City Fresh!", "Food City Premium", "Full Circle", "Domestix", "Electrix", "Academix", "Pet Club", and "World Classics" many of which are part of the Topco corporate brand program. Food City is also the exclusive distributor of regional favorites such as "Kay's Ice Cream", "Moore's Classic Snacks", "Terry's Classic Snacks", "Kern's Bread", "Lay's Classic Meats", along with "Chuck Wagon Dog Food".

It is owned by K-VA-T Food Stores, a privately held family and employee-owned corporation (only 13% via ) headquartered in Abingdon, Virginia. K-VA-T Food Stores owns the Food City Distribution Center (formerly Mid-Mountain Foods), 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 Discount Foods, Food City Express and Gas'N Go convenience stores, and two Food City Wine and Spirits liquor store. Many of their grocery stores have their own fuel stations, with the Gas'N Go branding.

K-VA-T Food Stores 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 43-store White Stores chain based out of Knoxville, TN, more than doubling the size of the company.