Businesses in Tennessee: 150,129 workplaces and the 25 biggest public headquarters, from Memphis to Kingsport

This page is for anyone who needs to find or size businesses in Tennessee: suppliers and partners, job seekers, researchers and B2B sellers working out how to cover a state with four distinct metros. It covers the Census count of businesses by county and sector, the 25 biggest public headquarters, the largest employers in the Nashville area, the state's business records, and a worked example for selling to Memphis-area distribution centers.

How many businesses are in Tennessee

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts locations with paid employees. For Tennessee in 2023:

In bands: 123,695 establishments (82.4%) have 1 to 19 employees, 21,840 have 20 to 99 and 4,594 have 100 or more.

Davidson and Shelby counties hold 27.6% of establishments and 33 to 37 large workplaces each. Williamson County, south of Nashville, has the highest average pay of the six. Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. CBP counts locations rather than companies and leaves out the self-employed and government, and it measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023.

The 25 biggest companies headquartered in Tennessee

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest annual report on Form 10-K, with the head office from its cover page:

First Horizon's revenue is net interest income plus noninterest income. FedEx's 10-K gives headcounts by operating company; Federal Express alone had about 233,000 full-time and 219,000 part-time employees in May 2026. Dollar General's figure is as of February 27, 2026. Tractor Supply's figure is about 26,000 full-time and 26,000 part-time team members. FedEx Freight Holding, also in Memphis, reported $8.80 billion for the same year to May 2026, but it earned that as part of FedEx before FedEx completed the spin-off on 1 June 2026, so it isn't ranked separately here.

Six of the Nashville 16 run hospitals, behavioral health, surgery centers or senior living (HCA, Community Health, Ardent, Acadia, Surgery Partners and Brookdale), with $104.23 billion of revenue between them. Memphis's seven lean toward logistics, paper and retail. For each metro in detail, see companies in Nashville, companies in Memphis and companies in Chattanooga.

Who employs the most people in the Nashville area

The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County publishes the area's principal employers in its financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025, using Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and Nashville Business Journal figures for the metro:

The ten employ 177,936 people, 15.73% of the metro's employment. HCA's local headcount nearly quadrupled on this measure, while Nissan's fell by 3,650. Community Health Systems, Asurion and Randstad have dropped out of the top ten since 2016.

What Tennessee businesses do

Big workplaces define the state. Health care has 46 of the 212 private establishments with 1,000 or more employees, manufacturing 34 and administrative and support services another 34, most of them employment services (149,084 employees at 1,266 establishments) that staff warehouses and plants. The 1,311 corporate and regional head offices in management of companies employ 118,357 people at average pay of $106,248, 20 of them with 1,000 or more staff. Warehousing and storage (NAICS 4931) has 605 establishments and 52,817 employees, a figure the Census Bureau flags as moderately affected by its confidentiality noise. For the sectors in detail, see manufacturing companies in Tennessee and trucking companies in Tennessee.

How to look up a Tennessee business

Tennessee cities and counties issue their own business licenses, so a supplier should hold one where it operates as well as a state registration.

Prospecting Memphis-area distribution centers

Memphis is where Tennessee's warehouses cluster: Shelby County has 177 of the state's 605 warehousing establishments and 19,200 of their employees, and 4 of its warehouses have 1,000 or more staff. Operators buy maintenance, equipment and labor services site by site, usually through a general manager and a facilities or maintenance manager.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Bluff City Dock Service (bluffcitydock.example) maintains dock doors, levelers and restraints and wants Tennessee warehouses with 100 or more employees.

• Warehousing and storage establishments with 100 to 249 employees: 63; 250 to 499: 28; 500 to 999: 14; 1,000 or more: 10. That's 115 buildings statewide.
• It starts in Shelby County, which has 29.3% of the state's warehouses, and plans on about 35 buildings within an hour of its shop.
• Eight annual maintenance contracts at $36,000 each would be $288,000.

It targets the facilities or maintenance manager first and the general manager second, and times outreach to peak-season planning in late summer, when operators want doors fixed before volume rises. Finding which operator runs each building, and who owns maintenance there, is the research Bebop does for each account.

Subject: Dock doors at [Site] before peak

Hi [first name],

A dock door or leveler that fails in November costs a building trucks and overtime when it can least afford it.

We maintain doors, levelers and restraints for distribution centers across Shelby and DeSoto counties on a fixed monthly schedule, with same-day repairs. Could we walk your docks for an hour and give you a list of what needs work before peak?

[Your name], Bluff City Dock Service

Next step: turn a market like this into a working list with how to build a prospect list.