Retailer Spotlight: Hollywood Feed
Hollywood Feed wrapped up 2024 coming in as the 11th largest pet retailer in North America by locations, with 165 stores across the Midwest and Southern US. The pace of growth does not appear to be slowing as industry media is peppered with reports of new store openings and expansions planned in states including Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. Lauded for its customer service—Newsweek added it to their America’s Best Retailers list for 2022—the Memphis, TN-based pet retailer is continuing to make both infrastructure improvements to ensure efficiencies for its staff and customers and celebrating all things American-made through its many exclusive brands.
Celebrating USA Manufacturers
Hollywood Feed first opened in the 50s in Memphis, TN, primarily as a livestock feed supply store. The business evolved in the next few decades into a local pet resource with three locations before Shawn and Jean McGhee took ownership of Hollywood Feed in 2006.
“I didn’t really decide to purchase Hollywood Feed,” McGhee said. “I wrote a business plan in 2005 to approach the pet industry in what I thought was a different way. And what I believed was happening in the pet industry at the time was a misallocation of capital, and because of that misallocation of capital, I thought that we could be disruptive in the pet industry by taking a different approach. There were three failing pet stores in Memphis, TN, but we liked a lot of the infrastructure that they had in place and thought it would be a good starting point. So, we were fortunately able to acquire it.”
The McGhee’s vision and tenacity saw to it the company continued to grow its footprint and evolve its products and services to become an example to others in the industry. “We’re one of the few chains that own our own warehouse, we own our own truck fleet, we own our own home delivery fleet,” he said. “I think we’re the only one that owns all of that together, and I think it really gives us the opportunity to control our own destiny, and we look at everyone else; they’re trying to use distributors on the truck fleet side and they’re trying to use Uber and DoorDash on the home fleet delivery side. We just don’t see either one of those as being great, viable alternatives when you put the customer first.”
Part of Hollywood Feed’s unique appeal is its adherence to the importance of Made in the USA. “Because it’s right,” said McGhee. “At the end of the day, you can world source at this stage in life, but to be able to go out and create things in your own backyards that create the jobs, that create the revenues for those subsequent businesses, that creates a virtuous circle that comes back into our front doors. And if we can help those communities that have been hard hit because of some devastation like a pandemic or whatever it happens to be, if we can go into those communities and we can do something unique, we create jobs. I believe that endears us to those communities and makes us a better neighborhood leader.”
The Mississippi Made program is an example of turning a challenge into an opportunity. McGhee explained, “When President Bush joined the World Trade Organization, the furniture industry was devastated, and Mississippi was a very strong manufacturing state in those days. So, you had huge unemployment within the furniture industry, and the two young ladies that started that company originally looked at it and said, ‘well, a dog bed is nothing more than a really big sofa cushion.’ All of the expertise was sitting there, all of the raw materials were sitting there, and the manufacturing process was there, and they started pulling that business together.”
Presently, Hollywood Feed’s exclusive brands include Mississippi Made dog beds, collars and leashes; Georgia Smoked dog treats; New York Made stain and odor removing products; Ohio Made collars, leashes and harnesses; Carolina Made dog treats; Colorado Made cat litter; and Wisconsin Made rawhide chews.
Leadership
Shawn McGhee is currently President of Hollywood Feed. Prior to purchasing the company, he was executive vice president of merchandising, marketing and supply chain at AutoZone. “Your first few months after you’ve written a plan and start to put the plan into action, you’re validating your assumptions,” he reflected. “In the process of doing that, you’re constantly iterating on the plan based on what your insider knowledge suddenly reveals to you. The interesting thing is during those early years, I had everyone telling me that what I wanted to do wouldn’t work, which is not uncommon when you’re trying to be disruptive. Fortunately, we were able to make it work and here we are today.”
Evanthia Martin is currently SVP of Technology and Strategy, and she came to the company with a unique background. “My career before Hollywood Feed was focused on creating experiences for people,” she said. “I started in the music industry building concerts and festivals, then I moved to creating parades and shows at Walt Disney World. Then I was picked up by American Girl where I opened more stores than I can count while also delighting little girls every day. It truly feeds my soul to create a certain warmth and experience that people will not forget. So, why Hollywood Feed? I was in my late 20s and was based in Chicago, but my husband and I wanted to move back to Memphis. My sister-in-law told me about a pet supply retailer she was working for that deeply valued employee education because it drove the customer experience. She told me they were heading into growth mode and recommended I meet Jean McGhee. All it took was that one conversation. Shortly after that conversation, we moved back to Memphis, and I have been focused on the mission of ‘doing what’s right by the customer’ ever since.”
Craig Barnes came to his Chief Operating Officer position in 2022. He previously held leadership roles at Advance Auto Parts and Fred’s Inc. “I have been frequently asked why I joined Hollywood Feed,” Barnes said in a company statement. “My answer is consistent: I joined because my family and I are pet-loving people. I love the industry, and the Hollywood Feed team members are an amazing group of people to work with and for. I highly value our culture, and it’s an environment where the focus on customers, community, team members and financial performances are in balance.”
In 2024, Sarah Eccles was promoted to SVP of Store Operations. She previously served as Hollywood Feed’s Director of Operations, supporting the retail locations while attracting and retaining top talent in an effort to increase sales and performance. Prior to joining Hollywood Feed, Eccles served in a variety of retail-related leadership and operational roles spanning two decades that included Williams-Sonoma, Designer Brands and J.Crew.
Recent News
Hollywood Feed acquired PetPeople and its 75 locations in 2022 and made quick work of integration.
“The great thing about the Hollywood Feed tech stack is we were able to replace all PetPeople systems across all stores within 105 days of their acquisition,” McGhee said.
Upgrading systems continues. Last June, Legion Technologies, a developer of workforce management systems, announced its partnership with Hollywood Feed to improve labor efficiency and employee engagement.
Barnes said, “At the heart of our business, we have a ‘Do what’s right’ approach—whether that’s doing what’s right for our customers or for our employees. With Legion WFM, we’ll be able to streamline our operations by intelligently automating a wide scope of manual activities, from reporting to demand forecasting, scheduling to employee communication. Legion WFM will enable us to free up a significant amount of time for our managers while ensuring we have the best people working at the best times.”
Meanwhile, in 2024, the company opened locations in Conway, TX; Cypress, TX; Fayetteville, AR; and Summerville, SC.
In 2025, store expansions were reportedly in the works for locations including Augusta, GA, Colleyville, TX and Charleston, SC. New store openings were also reported for Aiken, SC and North Fort Worth, TX.
“We have always had this strategy of putting the business and the customer first,” said McGhee. “I think that we are one of the few left that have the long term generational point of view and the capital to be able to continue to grow. And I think most of the others are waiting to be sold. And when I say most of the others, I’m talking about the brands that are cheap scale. All of them are either public at this point, in which case they’re fighting the quarter to quarter issues or they’re sitting there trying to figure out how they’re going to get out of an investment that they have. I think we are one of the few sitting here right now saying, ‘How do we keep doing what we’re doing better every single day?’”
That ability to look forward gives McGhee an optimistic view on how technologies will help to improve existing business infrastructure.
“When you look at AI, I don’t look at it as this world changing event,” he said. “I look at it as a continual evolution of what’s happening with math that we were already using whether that math was linear regression or whether that math was probability analysis, we’ve been using that for decades. AI is really tying some of those pieces together and allowing us to automate—at least at the application layer—a lot of real time data that we weren’t able to automate in the past, and it’s really giving us efficiencies that we haven’t seen before. And whether those efficiencies are on cost or those efficiencies are around compliance, safety, performance, all of those are huge windfalls for the customer, and that’s where we’ve got to keep focused.”
Hollywood Feed is demonstrating that growth is not only defined by new store locations but also the updating, renovation and sometimes expansion of established locations to continue supporting the communities they serve. Combined with its dedication to uplifting American-made products, the pet retailer is on a strong trajectory for continued growth in 2025 and beyond.
