Dive Brief:
- Aldi has sold Southeastern Grocers and its Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket banners to a consortium of private investors led by Anthony Hucker, the current president and CEO of Southeastern Grocers, and C&S Wholesale Grocers, according to a Friday announcement. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- Aldi is selling roughly 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores to the consortium along with Winn-Dixie’s liquor store business. The discounter plans to convert 220 Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores it previously acquired into Aldi locations.
- The deal creates a new regional grocery competitor in the Southeast and marks a course change for C&S, which had been slated to acquire nearly 600 supermarkets from Kroger and Albertsons in connection with those retailers’ unsuccessful plan to merge.
Dive Insight:
This complex deal marks significant developments for both Aldi and C&S Wholesale Grocers.
After facing significant pushback from regulators skeptical of C&S’s ability to run a larger fleet of retail stores, C&S now has a significant stake in around a third as many stores as it would have acquired from Kroger and Albertsons.
The concentration of the former Aldi locations in the Southeast could prove beneficial from a distribution standpoint for C&S, which has supplied Southeastern Grocers for 20 years.
Southeastern Grocers said it will continue to run the stores Aldi plans to convert to its own banner until each one is closed for that transition. The roughly 170 stores the consortium acquired are located in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.
With the divestiture, Aldi is offloading roughly 42% of the approximately 400 stores it bought in 2024 along with the Southeastern Grocers business.
The discounter said Friday it expects to open 225 new stores in the U.S. in 2025, in part by converting Winn-Dixie and Harvey’s locations it is retaining. That’s the largest annual growth projection the company has ever laid out in the U.S., the announcement noted.
By the end of 2027, Aldi said it plans to transition approximately 220 Southeastern Grocers locations to its own format, with roughly 100 slated to reopen as Aldi stores by the end of this year.
Aldi said that the transaction allows it to create a “focused conversion portfolio” in the Southeast.
When Aldi announced in 2023 it was acquiring Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket, it wasn’t clear what role — if any — those brands would continue to play in the Southeast grocery scene. With this deal, the consortium led by Hucker, who has been with Southeastern Grocers since 2016, and C&S are signaling that Winn-Dixie and Harveys will remain viable competitors.
“[O]ur commitment to thoughtful, purpose-driven growth remains strong and propels us forward with renewed momentum,” Hucker said in a statement. “As we reinvest in the store fleet, we are inspired by listening loudly to the voices of our customers, to elevate and revolutionize our customer experience and store offerings, so that each step we take will reflect our dedication to our people and our communities.”
Jeff Wells contributed reporting
