Grocery Story

“Peyton” is scratched large and deep into the surface of one of the old wooden tables in the dining area of Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant. Did the ubiquitous Colts quarterback film one of his gazillion commercials there? Probably not that Peyton, but Puckett’s is no stranger to famous and infamous names. In one three-day period in the fall of 2006, Kelly Clarkson, Reese Witherspoon and newlyweds Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were among those drawn—sans paparazzi—to the most popular gathering spot in Leipers Fork. First in on a Saturday afternoon was Clarkson, who ordered from the meat-and-two menu with two friends. On Sunday, Nashville native Witherspoon came in for the lunch buffet with her parents, Betty and John. The next afternoon, Keith and Nicole dropped in with either his mother or hers, the staff wasn’t sure. The trio didn’t eat, but got some cold drinks and a Puckett’s Grocery ball cap, which is probably hanging on a hook somewhere in Australia.

It wasn’t the Aussie couple’s first visit to Puckett’s or to the tiny hamlet in rural Williamson County. According to a recent news report, Leipers Fork was the first place outside Nashville that Urban took Kidman when they began courting. “I just knew she would love it for the exact same reasons I love it,” he said. So much so that they have sold Urban’s Hillsboro Road bachelor pad and purchased a 40-acre farm in the Leipers Fork area, close enough to Puckett’s that Keith can have the chicken salad sandwiches he favors for lunch every day, if not the oatmeal and egg-white omelets that were the couple’s standing breakfast order at the Green Hills Bread & Company.

Andy Marshall, a member of the Franklin High Class of 1979 who purchased Puckett’s Grocery in 1998, is glad to have the Urbans in the neighborhood, but he has no plans to roll out the red carpet. Everybody who comes to Puckett’s—by pickup truck, horse trailer, BMW or Harley—gets the same laid-back, friendly hello when they walk in the door. Since the 1950s, when the Puckett brothers first opened the little market, Puckett’s has served as an unofficial town hall, as much a place to catch up on the news and trade information as to grab a bottle of milk and a carton of eggs. When Mary Stewart purchased the business from the Pucketts in the late ’80s, she started selling biscuits with sausage or bacon, then added a burger for lunch; it was Marshall who created the restaurant.

A grocer from way back—starting with his first job at 14—Marshall bought his first store in Hopkinsville, Ky. “It was just what I was looking for, a real wreck,” he laughs. He fixed it up and turned it into a Piggly Wiggly, one of three he would eventually own. Ten years ago, he heard there was a market for sale in Williamson County. “I knew of Leipers Fork, since I grew up in the area. So I went to check it out and knew it was right. I just fell in love with its authenticity. It hadn’t changed in almost 50 years. I didn’t want to mess with the look or feel of it, but I was going to make it the coolest little grocery store around,” he recalls. “I added all these interesting foods to the inventory. But people just weren’t doing their weekly shopping here, so I needed to do something to survive. The first thing I did was buy a smoker, and we started doing barbecue.” He took out a couple of shelving units and added some tables. As the menu expanded to add a full breakfast—minus oatmeal and omelets—so did the dining area. “The food part took off, so I kept adding tables.” These days, the front half of the market, with its original polished concrete floor, is filled with wood- or tin-topped kitchen-style tables and mismatched wooden chairs; the back stocks everything from corn flakes to hardware on sturdy wooden shelves.

Puckett’s officially opens at 6 a.m., but regulars start drifting in as early as 5:30. Marshall says most of the breakfast trade is local, folks on their way to jobs in Franklin, Brentwood or Nashville, or to the rolling horse farms and white fencing that line Old Hillsboro Road. A large chalkboard that hangs over the counter lists breakfast options under the cheery title “Good Morning Plates.” And a good day it will be when it starts with one of Puckett’s jumbo biscuits, split in half and filled with thick bacon, spicy sausage, beef tenderloin, country ham or fried chicken. Add an egg for 80 cents, cheese for 50 cents, a cup of stout coffee (don’t even think of asking for a latte) and you’re fueled up and ready to roll. Breakfast is available until 10:30 a.m., but sleep in at your own peril. At two minutes past 10 one recent morning, there was just one sausage-and-egg biscuit and a couple of large cinnamon rolls left, pushed over to the side of the warmer to make room for the trays of meat and vegetables coming out for the midday meal, which starts early in that neck of the woods.