Remember the old White Grocery Stores? Here's how the company reinvented itself over a century

Many Knoxville residents might nostalgically recall the White Stores grocery firm, which was the largest independently operated chain in East Tennessee until being sold to Food City’s parent company in 1989.

But White Stores didn't shut down after the sale. It was reinvented with some of its same former executives and managers to White Realty & Service Corp., with real estate and refrigeration equipment sales and repair divisions.

It's still just as much a part of Knoxville's business community, if in a different form. The family-owned company turns 100 this year.

Tracing its founding to when businessman Frank McDonald purchased the L.O. Rogers chain at auction on the local courthouse steps, the firm still has McDonald family descendants and in-laws involved.

And that makes the celebration even more meaningful, said Jerry Bodie, executive vice president and chief operating officer.

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“It’s exciting that a family-owned company is in our sixth generation,” he said, citing such people as Tommy Overton, son Davis Overton, and several other family stockholders. “That in itself is exciting to know that many family members are still a part of it.”

According to a company history document, the company was named White Stores because Frank McDonald wanted a simple name.

However, the ledger books initially showed red. McDonald was able to persuade creditors to give him more time, and eventually the store made a comfortable profit.

By the mid-1940s, younger son Dwight “Dink” McDonald began assuming controls of the company.

An older brother, Roy McDonald, had moved to Chattanooga and began operation of the Home Stores grocery chain and published the Chattanooga News-Free Press.

Saw Farragut's future in '64 land buy

In Knoxville, Dwight McDonald focused on real estate along with selling groceries, and by the 1950s began buying and developing properties, often with the goal of building a White Store.

He bought 30 acres in then-rural Farragut in 1964, and some thought he was a fool, the company history says. But more than a decade later, he developed the profitable Village Green shopping center, with White Stores as its tenant.

By the mid-1960s, Dwight McDonald had opened several suburban stores in such places as Kingston Pike near Northshore Drive, and business was doing well. He was known for working long hours, but also for focusing on his family and treating his employees like family, too, the history says.

Dwight McDonald died unexpectedly in 1975 after the chain grew to dozens of stores. Son-in-law Tommy Overton, who had married daughter Susan and began helping the business in the 1960s with new store development, took over as head at age 34.

Bodie started as a bag boy at the Bearden White Stores as a teenager, and while attending the University of Tennessee he began working in their main office.

“I thought I could make it a career,” he recalls thinking, adding that he later became a buyer for the chain.

White Stores sold to Food City

As grocery store consolidation was taking place in the 1980s, the company leaders sold White Stores to Food City’s parent company, K-VA-T Foods Inc., another family-owned chain.

But the books on the White family company were not shut.

“When Food City bought the operating assets, they didn’t buy the real estate,” said Bodie. “And they did not have an in-house service department that worked on their coolers and display cases.”

As a result, White Realty Co. was formed under Overton, as was Certified Commercial Service and Equipment.

The realty division, with offices behind the Bearden Food City, has expanded over the years into such additional projects as the Dowell Springs Business Park off Middlebrook Pike, which was intended as an upscale development unlike anything found in Knoxville.

The Certified Commercial Service and Equipment branch of the company has grown to include offices and warehouses in Knoxville, Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky. It specializes in supermarket refrigeration equipment, and its customers include Food City, Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco.

The company also has a test kitchen at its Knoxville warehouse where Pilot Company's chefs develop new food products.

Bodie credits Overton, who still serves as president, for the company’s growth since the sale of the grocery chain.

“He really had the vision to take the real estate to the next level,” Bodie said. “And he always encouraged us to go out and seek new opportunities. He has been the biggest part of our success.”

He also said that Overton’s son, Davis, has been serving the company for 27-plus years, and that David Mink, the senior vice president of services, was a former White Stores manager. Several other employees have been with the firm for more than 20 years, he said.

“We’ve got 125 employees and they are the heartbeat of the business,” Bodie said. “We say they are our biggest asset.”

As a result of the company’s positive past and present, he remains optimistic about its future as well, as it embarks on its second century of being in business.

“We are going to continue to grow the company through acquisitions and future real estate development,” he said. “And we see a lot of growth in the equipment sales and services division.”

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How this Knoxville grocery store chain pivoted to real estate