Stuart Taylor | The Valdosta Daily TimesThe new Piggly Wiggly will be located at the Castle Park Shopping Center.

VALDOSTA — Piggly Wiggly is coming to Valdosta.

Located in the Castle Park Shopping Center, the new Piggly Wiggly grocery store is scheduled to open in the spring.

“We’ve been studying the area there for the past year and a half,” said Tom Coogle with Reynolds Foodliner. “It feels like there’s a gap in the need there. We want to provide a service that as of now has exited the community.”

The store will be a combination Piggly-Wiggly/True Value Hardware.

Coogle expects it to employ around 75 people.

This will be the sixth Piggly Wiggly for Reynolds Foodliner, a Georgia company that runs several Piggly Wiggly stores, including locations in Adel, McCray and Hazlehurst. A Piggly-Wiggly has been located in Valdosta more than two decades ago. 

The company was started by Coogle’s father, Tommy Coogle, in 1976, specializing in IGAs until 1999 when it switched to Piggly Wiggly.

“We don’t have a hard start date yet,” Coogle said. “We’re starting now, preparing for equipment installs which we’ll begin as soon as the equipment arrives.”

The first Piggly Wiggly started in 1916 in Memphis Tennessee.

There are currently 600 independently owned Piggly Wiggly locations in the U.S., mostly in the southeastern U.S, according to the company.

Stuart Taylor is a reporter for the Valdosta Daily Times.