Site of proposed Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant.By the mid-1990s, middle-Tennessee businessman Andy Marshall, by then in his mid-30s, had checked all the boxes.
The owner of a cluster of Piggly Wiggly supermarkets, Marshall had risen to vice-president of the grocery chain and to president of the Tennessee Grocers Association. But with that success came a gnawing realization that he needed a career change. A self-described “people pleaser,” Marshall says he realized that his stores were only as popular as their weekly advertised specials. He itched for a more personal connection to customers.
“There was something missing,” says Marshall, who eventually sold his supermarkets and bought a little general store in the tiny Leiper’s Fork community just south of Nashville. “I thought to myself, at the very least, I’ll have the coolest country store out there.”
Family members recall – with a trace of irony, now – that the Puckett’s Grocery was supposed to be Marshall’s “retirement project.” And indeed, in those early days, it had the flavor of an enterprise designed more around yearnings than earnings. Customers ate Marshall’s signature cherry-wood smoked barbecue on paper plates, and checkout at Puckett’s was on the honor system – “Whad’ya have today, sir?”
But a funny thing happened on the way to Marshall’s retirement bliss. Nashville’s songwriter community discovered Puckett’s as a place they could try out material in a genial family atmosphere, away from the smoke and rowdiness of the the Music City bar scene. Soon, the combination of award-winning barbecue and world-class music proved to be too lucrative to contain inside the four walls of a country store.