The grocery industry is on the brink of seeing a new distribution company with a nationwide reach.
On Monday, C&S Wholesale Grocers announced plans to acquire SpartanNash in a $1.77 billion deal that is expected to close by the end of this year. The companies each operate a distribution network that spans multiple regions, as well as regional grocery banners and private label lines.
The companies have positioned the merger as an opportunity to gain leverage over “extremely large global grocers in the U.S. food-at-home space,” and they aim to do so by bringing together distribution facility portfolios that stretch across different regions of the U.S. and only overlap in three states.
If given the green light to combine, the merged companies will serve nearly 10,000 independent retail locations, according to Monday’s announcement.
C&S has a distribution presence in 15 states, with facilities as well as offices along the West Coast, in the Northeast and across multiple Hawaiian islands. Meanwhile, SpartanNash’s 14 distribution centers are primarily concentrated in the Midwest, with centers in southern and southeastern states, as well.
Only three states are home to both C&S and SpartanNash distribution facilities
Texas, Florida and Maryland are the only states where the companies both have distribution facilities out of the nearly 30 states where they collectively operate.
C&S and SpartanNash’s grocery retail footprints tell a similar story.
SpartanNash operates close to 200 supermarket locations across a dozen grocery banners in 10 states, including Family Fare, Martin’s Super Markets and D&W Fresh Market, per the company’s website. C&S’s company-operated retail business is smaller, consisting of stores across the Piggly Wiggly and Grand Union Supermarkets banners. C&S, which acquired Piggly Wiggly Midwest in 2021, would not confirm how many Piggly Wiggly stores it operates.
The merger would combine SpartanNash’s more than 190 grocery stores with C&S’s smaller retail store holdings
C&S was part of a consortium of investors that, early this year, acquired roughly 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores from Aldi.
C&S lost out on the ability to gain hundreds of grocery stores in the failed Kroger-Albertsons merger. The merger with SpartanNash, however, could help C&S to step up its retail presence with little worry about store overlaps that might draw regulatory scrutiny.
