Welcome to Dixieland Foods

From the very beginning, Dixieland Foods has been a work in progress-steadily growing and transforming as the world around it changed and demanded different things. And it began in the most unusual place that a meat company could ever come from-a barber shop.

Owner Melvin Dixon was a barber in Collinwood, TN in 1970 in a little building in downtown. He slowly started selling fresh meats out of out a little cooler in his shop. His new hobby, "peddlin" meat as he likes to call it, soon became more than just a sideline. Eventually he cut down his barber shop to only 3 days a week and took his show on the road. He was what was known as a jobber, mostly for Bryan Meats. He went around to lots of different businesses, mostly little country stores, where bologna, wieners, and hoop cheese were the staple deli items. And in 1976 Dixieland Meats was born. He came up with the name just thinking about his roots and being proud of his southern heritage. Being born and raised in Dixie, he decided to pay tribute to his upbringing when naming his company.

As luck, or fate, would have it, another building came open for sale in downtown Collinwood. It was a shoe store. Melvin's parents bought the building with the store in 1977. It had lots of room for the ever expanding Dixieland Meats, as well as a Melvin's barber shop and a beauty shop upstairs that was Brenda's.

But running a growing meat route all day, barbering when he could, and being a skilled cobbler til all hours of the night soon took its toll. Nobody could keep that pace up, not even Melvin. So in 1980 he decided to hang up the clippers and concentrate on Dixieland Meats. He still cuts hair for family and a few friends from the old days who just refuse to let anyone else touch them but him, but that was the end of that career and the beginning of at least two more.

After years of specializing in just meats products, Melvin saw that the industry was changing once again. So in 2000 he bit the bullet again. He hired some help, bought a huge freezer, and began selling French fries, veggies, and other frozen meats. That's when Dixieland Foods was born.

He had tapped into a growing part of the market and soon outgrew the back of the shoe store. And wouldn't you know it, fate stepped in again and what was once the skating rink in Collinwood was empty after housing several factories including Tennessee River. With plenty of space, a nice loading dock, and offices in the front-he just couldn't pass up the opportunity to grow some more. Now he could sell anything from frozen to refrigerated to dry goods that previously he had no room for. And that's how Dixieland Foods became what and where is it now. With Melvin's vision, and fate stepping in on occasion, who knows where it will be 10 years from now!