United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) is a distributor of grocery and non-food products, and support services provider to retailers in the United States and Canada.
The company is uniquely positioned to provide the broadest array of products and services to customers throughout North America. The company’s diversified customer base includes over 30,000 customer locations ranging from some of the largest grocers in the country to smaller independents as well. The company offers approximately 250,000...
United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) is a distributor of grocery and non-food products, and support services provider to retailers in the United States and Canada.
The company is uniquely positioned to provide the broadest array of products and services to customers throughout North America. The company’s diversified customer base includes over 30,000 customer locations ranging from some of the largest grocers in the country to smaller independents as well. The company offers approximately 250,000 products consisting of national, regional and private label brands grouped into the following main product categories: grocery and general merchandise; perishables; frozen foods; wellness and personal care items; and bulk and foodservice products.
The company is North America’s premier grocery wholesaler with 55 distribution centers and warehouses representing approximately 31 million square feet of warehouse space. The company is a coast-to-coast distributor with customers in all 50 states as well as all ten provinces in Canada, making the company a desirable partner for retailers and consumer product manufacturers. The company’s total product assortment and service offerings are unmatched by the company’s wholesale competitors. The company plans to continue to pursue new business opportunities with independent retailers that operate diverse formats, regional and national chains, as well as international customers with wide-ranging needs.
The company’s business is classified into two reportable segments: Wholesale and Retail; and also includes a manufacturing division and a branded product line division.
Strategic Priorities
The company’s strategy is centered on adding value to its customers and suppliers through the company’s expansive assortment of products, services, programs, and insights that help them grow and compete.
During 2024, the company continued to implement near-term initiatives to help improve profitability and strengthen the company’s foundation while the company finalized and began implementing its revised strategy.
Customers
The company maintains long-standing relationships with many of the company’s customers. The company serves over 30,000 unique customer locations, primarily located across the United States and Canada, which the company classifies into five customer types: Chains; Independent retailers; Supernatural; Retail; and Other.
The company’s international Net sales primarily reflect UNFI Canada, Inc. (‘UNFI Canada’), which represented approximately 1% of the company’s Net sales in 2024.
The company also continues to invest in technology and systems with the intent of improving the efficiency of the company’s operations, enhancing the customer experience and growing the company’s services platform, including its eCommerce and innovation businesses. This includes sales to eCommerce companies, as well as business-to-business sales to non-traditional customers. Marketplace by UNFI is the company’s business-to-business digital eCommerce solution for emerging brands looking to expand distribution with UNFI customers. Through this virtual marketplace, suppliers gain immediate access to UNFI’s digital infrastructure to promote and sell their products to UNFI’s broad customer base while UNFI customers gain access to an even broader assortment of unique and local items with flexible order sizes and the convenience of ordering from multiple sources online in one place.
Wholesale
The company organizes and operates its Wholesale reportable segment through three U.S. geographic regions: East, Central and West, each of which is led by a separate regional president responsible for product and service strategy, execution, and financial results; and Canada Wholesale, which is operated separately from the U.S. Wholesale business. Product and service categories include grocery, fresh, private brands, wellness and personal care items, eCommerce and foodservice. This operating structure includes regional sales organizations and distribution center networks, which offer a combination of conventional and natural products to the company’s customers as a consolidated supply solution. Territory managers in these regions sell the company’s complete lines of products, which allows the company to anticipate and identify sales opportunities that result from the company’s customers having a single point of contact for all of the company’s products and services.
Operations
The company has established a national network of strategically located distribution centers utilizing a multi-tiered logistics system. The network includes facilities that carry slow turn or fast turn groceries, perishables, general merchandise and home, health and beauty care products. For financial reporting purposes, sales from the company’s distribution centers to its own Retail stores are eliminated from of the company’s Wholesale segment within Eliminations.
The company offers Wholesale customers a wide variety of food and non-food products, and the company’s own lines of private label products. The company also offers a broad array of professional services. As a logistics provider, efficiency is an important customer service measure. The company is in the process of optimizing its facilities to implement leading warehouse technology, ranging from radio-frequency devices guiding selectors to mechanized facilities with completely automated order selection for dry groceries that help the company delivers aisle-ready pallets to Wholesale customers.
Procurement
The company maintains contracts with suppliers to procure their products. The company’s procurement process includes assessments of demand planning, pricing, seasonality and other factors.
Retail
The company’s Retail segment includes 76 Cub Foods and Shoppers retail grocery stores. The company’s retail stores provide an extensive grocery offering, and depending on size, a variety of additional products, including general merchandise, home, health and beauty care, and pharmacy. The company offers national and local brands, as well as the company’s own private label products. A typical retail store carries approximately 17,000 to 21,000 core SKUs and ranges in size from approximately 50,000 to 70,000 square feet. The company’s retail banners have strong local and regional brand recognition in the markets in which they operate. The company’s Retail operations are principally supplied by six of the company’s Wholesale distribution centers.
Product Offerings
The company’s extensive selection of products includes natural, organic, specialty, produce and conventional grocery, and non-food products. The company offer nationally recognized brand name and private label products, including grocery (both perishable and nonperishable), general merchandise, home, health and beauty care, and pharmacy, which are sold through the company’s Wholesale segment to wholesale customers and the company’s Retail stores. The company offer the following main product categories: grocery and general merchandise; perishables; frozen foods; wellness and personal care items; and bulk and foodservice products.
The company’s owned brands portfolio is a collection of brands that offer high quality solutions for private label to the company’s customers. ESSENTIAL EVERYDAY is the company’s leading national brand equivalent private label solution with nearly 2,200 items for departments throughout the store. It is complemented by SHOPPERS VALUE, which offers the budget conscious consumer quality alternatives to national brands. The company’s WILD HARVEST brand offers a full range of products made with simple, wholesome ingredients across multiple categories, including pet foods. The company’s Field Day brand is primarily sold to natural store / co-op retailers as a private label solution. The company’s category-specific brands, primarily including STONE RIDGE CREAMERY, EQUALINE, and CULINARY CIRCLE, also provide national brand equivalent products at a competitive price.
The company’s Blue Marble Brands portfolio is a collection of national brands that offer United States Department of Agriculture (‘USDA’) organic, non-GMO Project Verified, and specialty food and non-food items. The WOODSTOCK brand has been pioneering organic / non-GMO products for over 35 years and continues to launch innovative products.
The company’s subsidiary doing business as Woodstock Farms Manufacturing specializes in importing, roasting, packaging and distributing nuts, dried fruit, seeds, trail mixes, granola, natural and organic snack items and confections for the company’s customers and in the company’s branded products. The company operate an organic (USDA and Quality Assurance International (‘QAI’)) and kosher (Circle K) certified packaging, roasting, and processing facility in New Jersey that is SQF (Safety Quality Food) level 2 certified. Woodstock Farms Manufacturing sells items manufactured in bulk and through private label packaging arrangements with large health food, supermarket and convenience store chains and independent retailers.
Service Offerings
The company offers a broad array of professional services that provide Wholesale customers with cost-effective and scalable business solutions. The company’s services are designed to help customers address business challenges, better serve their customers and compete in the marketplace. These services include solutions the company develops and provides directly, as well as pass-through programs in which vendors provide services directly to the company’s Wholesale customers. The company provides shelf and planogram management, retail store support, pricing strategy, electronic payments processing, advertising, couponing, store layout and design, equipment sourcing and procurement, point-of-sale hardware and software, network and data hosting solutions, consumer convenience services, eCommerce, automation tools, sustainability services and administrative back-office solutions. The sales and operating results for these services are included within Wholesale.
The company offers a variety of marketing services designed to increase sales for the company’s customers and suppliers, including consumer and trade marketing programs, as well as programs to support suppliers in understanding the company’s markets. Trade and consumer marketing programs are supplier-sponsored programs that cater to a broad range of retail formats. Retail marketing programs offer web and digital marketing services, including websites, mobile applications and eCommerce capabilities, and circular programs for the company’s customers and vendors. Supplier marketing programs include information sharing programs designed to provide heightened transparency to suppliers through demand planning, forecasting and procurement insights. The company has also created a retail media network, the UNFI Media Network (‘UMN’), that enables retailers to reach their consumers digitally while connecting to the company’s large network of suppliers, who in turn, can utilize the platform for personalized and targeted digital marketing. All of the company’s programs and services are designed to educate consumers, profile suppliers and increase sales for retailers, many of which do not have the resources necessary to conduct such marketing programs independently.
In addition to these services, the company provides data, insights and resources that help the company’s customers compete and succeed in their respective markets. The company also offers its customers trends reports in the natural and organic industry:
Product data information such as best seller lists, store usage reports and catalogs;
In-store signage and promotional materials, and assistance with product display planning and set up;
Shelf tags for products; and
A robust retailer portal with product information, search and ordering capabilities, reports and publications.
Distribution Network
Logistics
The company selects the sites for its distribution centers to provide direct access to the markets the company serves and configures them to minimize total operating costs. Products are delivered to the company’s distribution centers primarily by the company’s fleet of leased and owned trucks, contract carriers and the suppliers themselves. When financially advantageous, the company picks up products from suppliers or satellite staging facilities and return them to the company’s distribution centers using the company’s own trucks. Additionally, the scale of the company’s distribution network provides the company with the flexibility to shift volume amongst distribution centers in the case of volume spikes, unique customer needs, temporary inbound fill rate challenges and weather-related events as well as the capacity to support future sales growth.
The majority of the company’s trucks are leased and are maintained by third-party national leasing companies, which in some cases maintain facilities on the company’s premises for the maintenance and service of these vehicles. The company also has facilities where the company operates its own maintenance shops.
The company ships certain orders for supplements or for items that are destined for areas outside of regular delivery routes through independent carriers. Deliveries to areas outside the continental United States and Canada are typically shipped by freight-forwarders through ocean-going containers.
Organic Certification
The company has 33 distribution centers in the United States that are ‘National Organic Program certified as Organic Handlers by QAI’. The company’s California locations are certified as Organic Handlers by QAI, and the company is registered as Organic Handlers with the State of California Department of Public Health Food and Drug Branch and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. In addition, the company’s Canadian distribution center in British Columbia holds an Organic Distributor certification from QAI.
The company maintains a comprehensive quality assurance program. All products the company sells that are represented as organic are required to be certified as such by an independent third-party agency. The company maintains certification affidavits on most organic commodities and produces in order to verify the authenticity of the product. Most potential suppliers of organic products are required to provide such third-party certifications to the company before they are approved as suppliers.
Technology Investments
The company continues to make significant investments in distribution, financial, information and warehouse management systems. The company continually evaluates and upgrades its systems and distribution center infrastructure to enhance security, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and responsiveness to customer needs. These systems include best in class functionality in warehouse management systems, inventory control, labor management, scan-based fulfillment applications, mechanized pick-to-light systems and order management systems. The company is in the process of updating the company’s fulfillment technology with Universal Product Code (‘UPC’) scan-based technology for selection, loading and customer deliveries to ensure order accuracy throughout the supply chain. The company has also begun to make significant investments in warehouse automation solutions to support full case and unit pick fulfillment processes. These investments are intended to unlock the company’s supply chain capabilities, improve customer experience and enable growth. The company continues to leverage a management information system that enables the company to lower inbound transportation costs by making optimum use of the company’s own fleet of trucks and/or by consolidating deliveries to achieve full truckloads. In addition, the company uses cloud solutions to assist the company in developing the most efficient routes, tracking vehicle maintenance and monitoring driver safety and the movement of trucks in real-time. As part of the company’s ‘one company’ approach, the company continues an effort to standardize to best in industry software solutions for inventory procurement, order management, transportation operations and warehouse management systems throughout the company’s network. The company’s investment in technology is intended to improve the company’s supply chain effectiveness for the company’s suppliers, associates and customers enabling the company’s collective success.
Government Regulation
The company’s operations and many of the products that the company distributes in the United States are subject to regulation by state and local health departments, the USDA and the United States Food and Drug Administration (the ‘FDA’), which generally impose standards for product quality and sanitation and are responsible for the administration of bioterrorism legislation. In the United States, the company’s facilities generally are inspected at least once annually by state or federal authorities. For certain product lines, the company is also subject to the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, the Packers and Stockyard Act and regulations promulgated by the USDA to interpret and implement these statutory provisions.
The Surface Transportation Board and the Federal Highway Administration regulate the company’s trucking operations.
The company’s facilities are subject to regulations issued pursuant to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act by the U.S. Department of Labor and similar regulations by state agencies. These regulations require the company to comply with certain health and safety standards to protect the company’s employees from recognized hazards. The company is also subject to the National Labor Relations Act, which provides employees the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employer and to engage in other protected concerted activity, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes minimum wages and overtime standards, among other requirements.
The company’s international business operations are subject to various laws and regulations regarding the import and export of products and preventing corruption and bribery (including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).
Seasonality
The company’s working capital needs are generally greater during the months of and leading up to high sales periods, such as the buildup in inventory leading to the calendar year-end holidays.
History
United Natural Foods, Inc. was founded in 1976. The company was incorporated in 1994.
