In December 2023, Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley opened a free toy store in Nashville for the 400 children of the families their nonprofit grocery was serving. This December, the fourth annual Toy Store is preparing for more than 1,200 children, the most it has ever served.
The idea is simple. Parents facing food insecurity who already shop at The Store, the couple’s free, referral-based grocery, come in during a three-day event in mid-December and choose Christmas gifts for their children at no cost. This year’s event is presented by The Bob Woodruff Foundation.
Brad Paisley Says This Was the Plan From Day One
The Toy Store was not an afterthought. Brad Paisley has said more than once that a Christmas toy store was part of the vision before The Store ever opened.
“This was always my dream. That we would pivot and become a toy store at Christmas just like this.” (Brad Paisley to FOX 17)
Last year he put it another way, saying that when he and Kimberly first started talking about The Store, the Christmas part of it, turning it into a toy store, “was the goal.” He also said there is no better feeling than watching kids come in and pick what they want.
When the first Toy Store opened in 2023, he explained to the Associated Press why choice mattered so much at Christmas. Giving your child something they actually wanted, he said, is different from handing them something just to get through the holidays. For a parent who didn’t think they could manage that, he called it “such a load off” their minds.
From 400 Children to More Than 1,200
That first year, the event ran for two days at The Store, which sits on the campus of Belmont University, Brad Paisley’s alma mater. According to the Associated Press, The Store received about 2,000 donated items and raised $20,000. Volunteers and Belmont staff spent hours sorting toys into sections, and parents could leave their kids at a church next door to play and drink hot chocolate while they shopped and had gifts wrapped.
The crowd kept getting bigger. By 2025, the Toy Store had outgrown its original home and moved to the larger Coleman Park Community Center on Thompson Lane. “We outgrew our original location,” Kimberly Williams-Paisley said. About 600 volunteers helped that year, and more than 1,000 kids came with their parents to pick out toys. Donations included bicycles and guitars.
For 2026, The Store says it needs about 1,200 volunteers. That is double last year’s number, and roughly one volunteer for every child expected to come through the doors.
Why the Need Keeps Growing
The Store opened on March 12, 2020, just days after a tornado tore through parts of Nashville and right before the pandemic made getting food a crisis for many families. The Paisleys modeled it on a free store they had seen years earlier, the Unity Shoppe in Santa Barbara, California. Customers are referred by partner agencies, and the store is set up like a regular grocery, so families choose their own food.
Demand has climbed every year. The Store opened a second location in January and now serves 1,800 households through about 700 grocery shopping trips each week, a big jump from 2025. More grocery customers means more children at Christmas.
“The Store has more customers than ever, and so we want the Toy Store to be more magical than ever!” (Kimberly Williams-Paisley)
How to Help This Year
The Store is asking the community to help in three ways: buy items from its 2026 Toy Wishlist, give financially at thestore.org, or volunteer during the three-day event. New, unwrapped toys can also be dropped off at The Store through December 4. The Store’s event listing places the Toy Store at Coleman Park Community Center, 384 Thompson Lane in Nashville.
What the Children Chose
Kimberly Williams-Paisley shared one detail from last year. Many of the kids who came through the Toy Store did not only shop for themselves. “Many chose gifts they wanted to give away to their loved ones,” she said.
She told WSMV that giving gifts feels good, and that this is exactly what the couple wants to offer their customers: a chance to give back, too.