Food City Planning Major Expansion in Alabama

Growing grocer is also hiring for part- and full-time positions throughout its footprint

4/26/2023

Food City is set to expand in Alabama, where it currently operates one store.

K-VA-T Food Stores-owned Food City is planning to build six new stores in Huntsville, Ala., over the next several years, according to a local report. The company is investing $90 million in the project and will create approximately 1,350 jobs in the area.

The first phase of the construction will be completed over the next three years and will include locations at:

North Memorial Parkway near Bob Wade Lane
U.S. Highway 72 East near Shields Road
U.S. Highway 431 in Hampton Cove near Taylor Road

[Read more: “New Food City Store Coming to Kentucky”]

Second phase locations include:

Northwest Huntsville on Alabama Highway 53 north of Research Park Boulevard
Jordan Lane/Patton Road near Interstate 565
West Huntsville near the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing plant

The new stores will have a brick front and include full-service meat and seafood departments, a deli, and will likely be home to Starbucks coffee shops. The city of Birmingham is offering Food City up to $9 million in tax refunds, which will go into effect once the stores in the first phase of construction are completed.

Food City currently has one store in the state of Alabama, located in the city of Albertville, which opened in 2021. A second location is under construction in Gadsden, which is northeast of Birmingham.

Meanwhile, Food City has been celebrating store openings in other parts of the country, and recently broke ground on a smaller-format location in the Southwest Virginia city of Pulaski. The company will hold a company-wide hiring event to include both full-time and part-time positions on April 27 in an effort to hire 1,200 associates for store locations throughout its operation area and its distribution center.

Food City’s parent company, Abingdon, Va.-based K-VA-T Food Stores, operates 140 retail outlets throughout southeast Kentucky, southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, north Georgia and Alabama. K-VA-T is No. 68 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.