Everyone around here has a different story to tell about what hooked them on Franklin, Tennessee. For Jim Kreider, it was a sour cherry pie.
Kreider is a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where his family farmed the land, had a dairy that made ice cream, and even ran a small restaurant as part of the operation. At the top of his list of favorite menu items was that cherry pie that the Mennonite ladies made every day.
“I first came down to Franklin because I was interested in songwriting and wanted to better understand the music business. I wasn’t planning to move here,” he explains. “That was 1993, and I still remember the moment I recognized that the cherry pie at Merridee’s Breadbasket was just like the way they made it back home.”
The following year, Kreider bought Merridee’s, and he’s operated it ever since. But the serendipitous path that allowed that event to transpire is story-worthy.
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Kreider’s friend in the music business wanted to show him where the stars actually lived, which was (and still often is) Williamson County. The friend put him in a car with a real estate agent who knew the area, even though Kreider and his then-wife, Marilyn, weren’t in the market for a new home. While they were in the neighborhood, the agent stopped to see a friend who was very sick.
“That friend was Merridee McCray, who was in the late stages of cancer,” Kreider says. “She passed away not long after, and within a few months, we were moving to Franklin. She was a beautiful soul, and it just felt right to carry on her legacy.”
McCray had developed a reputation for delectable breads and pastries that she baked in a little log cabin out in Fairview. A newspaper feature on her blue-ribbon wins at the state fair caught the eye of Calvin and Marilyn LeHew, the visionaries who were leading the effort to revitalize downtown Franklin as a tourist destination in the mid-1980s.
As restaurateurs and epicureans, the LeHews knew talent when they saw it, and Merridee’s Breadbasket was the perfect use for the old hardware store on Fourth Avenue South.
McCray came by her credentials honestly: her grandmother had been the head baker at Pillsbury, responsible for research and development. Those recipes were at the center of McCray’s business plan when she first opened in Fairview in 1981, and again when she moved to downtown Franklin in 1984.
When Kreider took over the bakery, a box full of those old recipes was one of the business’s most treasured assets, and it still makes up most of the menu today.
Behind the sour cherry pie, he cites the chicken salad sandwich, daily quiches, the flaky pot pie, and the key lime, peanut butter, and French silk cold pies as favorites. Then there are the cinnamon twists, molasses cookies, mint fudge brownie, and fruit tea, all classics. Thanksgiving is the Super Bowl, with thousands of pies baked for the community to enjoy.
And while the menu, mission, and a number of key staff haven’t really changed, much else has evolved over time. Merridee’s has doubled in size, and downtown Franklin has become a nationally known destination.
Kreider is one of its longest-standing merchants, so he’s seen it firsthand.
“The occupancy rate in downtown Franklin had been as low as 30% not too long before we got started,” Kreider remembers. “It was fascinating, and we were all of a sudden in the middle of it.”
He thinks back to a time when Faith Hill would come grab a coffee after a jog, or you might see the Judds having lunch. Despite all the growth, he says Franklin still has a small-town feel, and you never know who might be sitting at the next table.
Kreider only met McCray once before her death. She told him that when she started the bakery, she gave it to God.
“It has been astounding to see how things have changed, and amazing to watch community leaders guide this town forward,” he says. “I feel fortunate to be a part of it all, and I still marvel at how I ended up here. It just fell so perfectly into place, like it was something I needed to do.”
“I can’t believe he brought you all the way from Pennsylvania,” she said.
Every time Kreider walks by the cherry tree planted in McCray’s honor in downtown Franklin, he thinks about that conversation.
“When Merridee gave her bakery to God, I think he decided to keep it. I’m just the caretaker.”
