Brad Paisley Opens Up About His Free Grocery Store: ‘I’m Very Proud’
Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, announced earlier this year that they'd be opening a free grocery store in Nashville to help people in need get food to survive. In an interview with Taste of Country Nights, the "Bucked Off" singer explains how a visit to a similar store in Santa Barbara, Calif., inspired the couple to open one in Tennessee.
"I'm very proud of it," Paisley tells show host Sam Alex. "It's a charity that my wife and I and a bunch of other business leaders in Nashville have decided to build here, which is based on one that I saw in Santa Barbara that is essentially a grocery store where if you qualify for it, a certain amount of trips a year are free."
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Paisley hopes his store will help families that are struggling and trying to make ends meet. He says the biggest negative to a person in that situation is a loss of dignity, and he wants to lighten the load.
"You have this 1-year-old kid that's everything to you, and if you lost your job and maybe had some medical bills that are unforeseen, the first thing to go wouldn't be your car or your house ... food would be the type of thing that you start to have trouble with and you're scraping for," he reasons. "The last thing you want to do is to take [your son] and go to the back of a truck where they're handing out [food] or a soup kitchen. The last thing you want your son to see or feel is the angst of that."
Called the Store, the grocery store will be a place parents can take their kids and get everything they need to feed the family. It will look like your typical grocery store, with stocked shelves, shopping carts and even a little mechanical house out front for the kids to ride. This will give shoppers the feeling that it's just a typical visit to a typical store, only they don't have to pay at the end.
"I've seen it really work out west. They serve 22,000 people a year in a town of only 200,000 people and it's pretty neat," Paisley says.
Once open, the establishment will be located near Belmont University, Paisley's alma mater. Its location will give students the opportunity to volunteer. "These kids who go to Belmont are going to have to go help. Imagine, though, if you can impress on somebody the importance of helping people like that in college. It can change their whole path," he explains.
The Store is expected to break ground in 2019 at 2005 12th Ave. S., next to Belmont University’s Ministry Center in Nashville.
Listen to Brad Paisley's Interview With ToC Nights,
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