Earlier today, Food City received the 2023 Exceptional Goal Achievement from EPA’s GreenChill Program at the FMI Energy & Store Development Conference in Baltimore, MD. The acknowledgement recognizes partners that achieve their stretch refrigerant emissions reduction goal. This goal is more difficult to achieve than the goal recognized with Superior Goal Achievement. 

“Food City is committed to increasing sustainability throughout our market area. We are proud to incorporate a number of award-winning energy saving technologies in our stores, ranging from energy efficient glass cooler doors and LED lighting to refrigeration systems and motion sensors,” says Steven C. Smith, Food City president and chief executive officer. “We would like to commend our dedicated team of refrigeration service technicians for their efforts in ensuring that our systems operate at peak efficiency.”  

The goals of the GreenChill Partnership are to provide supermarkets and other industry stakeholders with information and assistance to: transition to environmentally friendlier refrigerants; reduce the amount of refrigerant used by stores and eliminate leaks; and adopt green refrigeration technologies and environmental best practices. 

“Food City should be proud of their achievements in the last year,” said Bella Maranion, senior advisor in EPA's Stratospheric Protection Division and member of the GreenChill Team. “Food City is one of GreenChill’s newer Partners, but is already leading the industry by surpassing its refrigerant emissions reduction goals.”

Food City reduced their refrigeration & HVAC emissions, which are already well below supermarket average by 1.60% in 2023. For more information on EPA’s GreenChill Program, please visit www.epa.gov/greenchill.

Headquartered in Abingdon, Virginia, K-VA-T Food Stores (Food City’s parent company) operates 157 retail outlets throughout southeast Kentucky, southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, north Georgia, and Alabama.