Dive Brief:

• SpartanNash plans to consolidate its fleet of supermarkets under four banners as it looks to sharpen its value proposition with shoppers and consumers, the company revealed during its inaugural investor day last Wednesday.
• Going forward, the grocery distributor and wholesaler will operate all of its stores under its Family Fare, Supermercado, Martin’s and D&W banners, Chief Strategy and Information Officer Masiar Tayebi said.
• The banner consolidation is among a series of steps SpartanNash has announced in recent months as it looks to demonstrate to investors that it is on firm financial footing and positioned for growth.

Dive Insight:

SpartanNash’s management team decided that culling its current portfolio of 10 supermarket banners down to four would be in the best interest of its shareholders, Tayebi said.

The company’s plans call for Family Fare to comprise SpartanNash’s mass market stores, while upmarket stores will fall under the Martin’s and D&W names and ethnic stores will sport the Supermercado brand, he said.

The company, which currently runs 147 supermarkets in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin, has already changed the names of some stores, and plans to continue the rebranding process during the coming year, CEO Tony Sarsam said.

“We’ve made acquisitions of [stores] at great relevance in their community, and we kept the banners in many cases, and we see that we have now something we can actually pull together in terms of a really advertisable benefit for our core banners,” Sarsam said.

SpartanNash Chief Financial Officer Jason Monaco said the company’s effort to sharpen its branding strategy are connected with its strategy to better serve shoppers, noting that SpartanNash is also working to upgrade many of its stores.

“We're going to continue to upgrade the experience. That's going to range from big projects and small, and that will link together with the banner consolidation, so we get a terrific customer experience … and deliver the right return on invested capital,” Monaco said.

SpartanNash has been trying to draw attention to steps it has taken to improve its financial performance. The company, which fought off an effort by a group of activist investors to remake its board of directors earlier this year, has seen its stock price triple since early 2020.

Last week, SpartanNash said it expects revenue for 2022 to come in at a higher level than it had previously forecast. The company is scheduled to release its third-quarter results on Wednesday.

SpartanNash acquired Shop-N-Save, a chain of three family-owned supermarkets in Michigan, in June. In October, the company sold four food production and distribution facilities to Provender Partners, a real estate investment company that focuses on food-related properties. 

SpartanNash also plans to increase its private label penetration by more than 20% and add more than 1,000 new products to its own brands to its assortment by 2025, Tayebi said during SpartanNash’s presentation to investors.