Chappell’s Home Town Foods was born in Middle Tennessee in 1962, when Chappell’s Cee Bee in Hilltop, just outside Clarksville, opened its doors.
Founder Jack Chappell and his wife, Kate, worked for two years straight, opening and closing the store every day, until they were able to open a second location in 1964 in Charlotte. Two years after that, in 1966, they opened their first store in Dickson, at the corner of Main Street and Rickert Avenue.
The couple worked almost daily in the stores for more than 30 years until their son, James Phillip “Phil” Chappell, purchased them in 1993.
In turn, Phil ran the stores for 30-plus years before selling the five Chappell’s stores to daughters Emily Blankenship and Caroline Pace, who became the owner-operators at the beginning of 2025.
Their sisters, Hallie and Molly, also are part of the Chappell’s team. Hallie handles administrative duties and oversees the real estate side of the business, while Mollie is a scan coordinator. (Two other sisters, Natalie and Stacie, are not involved in the day-to-day operations.)
With 63 years of history buoying them along, the Chappell family and the stores’ team members continue to strive to provide area residents with a shopping experience that is strong on fresh food and fellowship.
Setting themselves apart
Chappell’s stores are all in the 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot range and located within a short driving distance of each other, at most 45 minutes apart. Three are Dickson County – two in the city of Dickson and one in White Bluff. Another is in McEwen, which is in Humphreys County, and one is in Centerville, in Hickman County.
“We have quite a bit of competition with our Dickson County stores,” Blankenship said. “They compete with Kroger, Walmart Supercenter, dollar stores out the wazoo, Aldi. We have a couple of independents also operating in the area, and Publix.”
Chappell’s seeks to maintain and grow its shopper base through its fresh departments, such as produce. The company buys from local farmers when possible and also purchases products like honey from local producers. It also tries to keep a finger on the pulse of shoppers and makes adjustments when needed, such as adding freezer doors or expanding the deli department.
The sisters credit their primary wholesaler, Associated Wholesale Grocers’ Nashville division, as being very responsive to their needs.
“We’re proud to be partners with them,” Pace said.
She added that being aligned with Alliance Retail Group, the country’s largest self-negotiating grocery ad group, has helped Chappell’s stay competitive as well.
Blankenship added, “They have great vendor relationships, and that translates really seamlessly into our ad and allows our customers to save more money. It’s savings we are grateful to pass on.”
Keeping up store conditions and making the shopping experience as easy as possible for shoppers also rank high on the Chappell’s priority list.
“We try to offer a clean, fresh, friendly environment so that our customers feel at home when they come to see us,” Blankenship said. “They can get in and out in a fast, efficient manner, and the product we carry is always fresh and well stocked.”
Another thing that sets Chappell’s apart is relationships.
“We’re hometown, we’re local,” Pace said. “All of our people are local, and we still carry groceries out to the customer’s car… It’s relationship based.”
Blankenship added, “We see ourselves being very customer service oriented.”
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Employees key to success
The Chappell’s team includes both longtime workers and high school kids and everything in between.
“[Local] high school kids work there, and we want their kids to come in and work one day,” Pace said.
“And some of them have been with us long enough we consider them family,” Blankenship said. “And I hope they feel the same. We try to be a company that they’re proud to work for. And they certainly are the key to our success. We want to invest in them the way they invest in us. That’s very important to us.”
Chappell’s also supports schools and the local community “the way they support us,” Pace said.
Both sisters started working in the family stores as teenagers.
Pace started as a cashier at 16. When she was in college, she worked during summers. After college, she worked at an attorney’s office in Nashville. After getting married and having children, returning to the family business felt right. A position was open in accounting, so she “worked in handling money and all that in just about every store,” she said.
Today, she does “a little bit of everything. I pay the bills, payroll, a little HR, a little tech/IT person thrown in there.”
Blankenship also started working in the stores at about 16 and continued working at the stores during her college days. She had a “small job in my field” – the music recording industry – after college, but that’s highly competitive in the Nashville area, so she opted to return to the family business as an office manager at one of the stores.
“I found out that I was much better at managing people and managing the business than I was at anything else I was doing,” she said. “It was one of those things that didn’t call to me immediately, but once I got into it and really dedicated myself to it, it just felt right.”
Her recording industry training is helpful when it comes to “tech stuff – I understand it a little better than maybe I would have. And the business perspective of that was helpful” as well, she said.
Chappell’s is working toward a more digital platform with its ads, but they want to be careful to “adapt and change what we’re doing in a way that’s not too jarring” to some customers.
They’re also open to the possibility of growing their store base “in a healthy way,” Blankenship said. “That’s something we’re certainly open to. We just want to make sure we’re in a place to do that.”
Asked if it was scary to take over the family business, she said, “Yeah, we’re still scared.”
“But it’s been a good thing. We’ve been preparing for it for the last 20 years, probably. It’s been a smooth transition so far. And, of course, Dad is still very involved and will continue to be. He’s in and out of the stores every day.
“We just hope to make him proud and be able to take the business where it needs to go.”
