The Peanut Shop
19 Arcade. 256-3394
Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
When Kathy Bloodworth was a child, she didn’t play teacher or doctor or actress—she played store. “I made up some play money and a little money box that I carried around with me. I just always loved to play store.” She’s still playing, except now the money, the box and the store are all real.
In December 1989, Bloodworth purchased one of Nashville’s most enduring retail institutions, The Peanut Shop, which is celebrating three-quarters of a century in business this year. The fulfillment of her childhood fantasy is better than she ever imagined it could be. “I look forward to it every day. This place is so much fun. You never know who’s gonna come in.”
On a busy midweek afternoon, it was a steady stream of folks: Sweet Adelines in town for their convention, Hume-Fogg students on their way to the downtown bus stop from school, and downtown workers like Lenny Celauro, who has been coming to The Peanut Shop for more than 30 years. He bought a half-pound of chocolate-covered nuts to fill the candy dish in his office at Allard Architects.
Bloodworth, dressed in a Peanut Shop T-shirt festooned with the banjo-strumming, cowboy-hatted peanut man logo she designed, greets every customer the same way, with a big smile, a hearty hello and a question: “What can I get for you today?”
There were no easy answers for Bloodworth when she purchased the store 13 years ago. She had no actual over-the-counter retail experience and had always worked for someone else. Immediately prior to going nuts, she worked five years’ worth of nights on the line at Nissan. On the way home from work one morning, she was in a serious car accident and spent quite a bit of time laid up, recovering from her injuries. Reading the paper one day, she noticed a tiny ad offering three restaurants for sale. “I had been saving every penny I made,” she says. “I always thought I would buy or open a store of some kind. I called the number, and the man told me to meet him in the Arcade in downtown Nashville. Well, I’m from the country, outside of Goodlettsville. When I was growing up, going downtown meant the Madison Square Shopping Center. I had no idea where the Arcade was.”
She found it, but what she discovered there was not heartening. The century-old Arcade, Nashville’s first enclosed shopping center, runs parallel to Church and Union streets, connecting Fourth and Fifth avenues. Like the rest of downtown Nashville, it has had its ups and downs, and 1989 was decidedly a down year. “I wasn’t interested in the other spots [for sale], but the Peanut Shop was so intriguing to me; I just fell in love with it and bought it. My first day was Dec. 1, 1989, right at the start of the Christmas season. I went from a steady paycheck to a sinking ship. I am sure people thought I had lost my mind. I wasn’t too sure myself. I didn’t know anything about nuts or sales or ordering or anything.”
She knew enough to raise the salary of the veteran saleswoman there, who showed her the ropes. “Rhonda taught me how to roast the nuts, how to order, who the customers were. She knew everybody who came in here. She stayed with me for four years, and I couldn’t have done this without her.”
While learning the business, Bloodworth also learned the history of the store. The Peanut Shop, opened in 1927, was originally one of about 2,000 retail outlets around the country owned by Planter’s Peanuts. The Nashville store was managed by John and Juanita Saunders until 1960, when Planter’s began closing or selling the stores. The Saunderses bought this one and, with some help from their son, kept it until 1980. From 1980 until 1989, there were about seven different owners, with varying degrees of success. Today, the Arcade store is just one of four still in business.
When Bloodworth first saw the shop before buying it, she knew it was in bad shape. “The most recent owner smoked, so instead of that great smell of roasting peanuts, all you could smell was smoke. I made the store no-smoking, added central air, put down hardwood floors, moved some cases and just gave everything a real good cleaning. I also added all of this nostalgic stuff to brighten things up and make it fun again.”
Bloodworth is referring to the hodgepodge of colorful tin advertising signs, vintage peanut paraphernalia and historic photographs that takes up most of the available wall space in the store. She tracked down an old Mr. Peanut costume in Dallas and frequently coaxes a good friend into donning it to make special appearances at events and promotions.
The day after the election, she was busy making gift baskets ordered by candidates for campaign supporters. “We have really expanded our gift basket line, from nothing at all to a pretty good chunk of our business. We do them locally and also ship.”
All the bells and whistles mean nothing without good product, and Bloodworth has gone from knowing nuts about nuts to being an expert. She can tell you a nut’s country of origin, its characteristics and history. At $13 a pound, the most expensive variety is the macadamia, most of which come from Australia. The cashews come from India or Brazil, the ones from India being sweeter. It takes a year for one tree to produce a pound of cashews, which accounts for their precious prices, though at $10 a pound, The Peanut Shop is among the least expensive cashew sources locally.
And then there’s the peanut. Bloodworth buys raw Virginia peanuts—which come from Virginia, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas—by the 50-pound sack. She roasts them in 12-pound batches in Little Bertha, the store’s original roaster, then sells them salted, unsalted, Cajun-style or in the shell. In addition, she sells Spanish peanuts—which come from Mexico.
She also carries that peculiar product of the South, the boiled peanut. “It’s a Southern thing,” Bloodworth says with a laugh. “You can’t ever get a new recruit to eat a boiled peanut. I won’t eat them, but I sell at least a batch a week.” She boils her own in a pot on top of a hot plate, a process that takes 15 hours. “The secret is to steam them first. And make sure you keep adding water to the pot. I used to make them at home, but I burned up my mother’s stove when I forgot to add water once. She still gets mad when she talks about it.”
That’s not Bloodworth’s only mishap in her career as a nut cooker. Not too long ago, something went slightly awry with Little Bertha, and smoke filled the store, pouring out into the Arcade, causing someone to call 911 and report a fire. “Next thing I know, there were about half a dozen of the cutest firefighters you ever saw jammed into my little store. The problem with Bertha was no big deal, just some oil burning off, but I sure was glad to see how fast the fire department responded. They were nice as can be about it, so I sent them off with a big bag of nuts for their fire hall.”
