In the end, no one could have been very surprised. After more than a century as a family-owned company in Nashville, H.G. Hill Food Stores has been sold to an Oklahoma City-based food company, according to a company statement released Tuesday.
The local grocery store company has signed a letter of intent with Fleming Foods, of Oklahoma City, which supplies food and related products to approximately 3,000 supermakets, including about 280 company-owned stores in 42 states.
“As soon as practical,” the H.G. Hill statement said, “Fleming-sponsored, independent owner-operators will assume control of each store.”
H.G. Hill Realty Company, a separate business, will continue to own and lease the retail locations. At least to all outward appearances, it has been the real estate operations of the Nashville-based Hill companies that have seen the most growth in recent years.
Ashley Caldwell says the decision to explore the stores’ future was made upon the death of her grandfather, H.G. Hill Jr., six years ago. Consultants advised that “long term, H.G. Hill’s would have to grow or go,” Caldwell says.
In 1895, Horace Greely Hill opened the first H.G. Hill grocery store at the intersection of 18th Avenue and State Street. By 1929, the company owned some 600 neighborhood grocery stores stretching from Knoxville to New Orleans. Over time, those numbers consolidated, and in recent years, national chains like Kroger, and gourmet-oriented foodstores like Harris Teeter, made serious inroads into the Nashville market, and H.G. Hill’s clientele in particular.
H.G. Hill customers were loyal. They were also prototypically white, old, and natives of the city. They were attracted to the stores because the stores were clean, and the products were familiar. They went to Hill’s because they always had. Caldwell emphasized, “Fleming bought the name, and therefore they bought the feel” of the stores.
“I’m proud the name remains,” she added.
