Unified Grocers

Company Overview

Unified Grocers, originally Unified Western Grocers, was a retailer-owned wholesale grocery cooperative that supplies independent supermarkets in the Western United States. It was formed in 1999 by the merger of two West Coast cooperatives, one based in Oregon and one in Los Angeles: Unified Grocers was the largest retailer-owned wholesaler in the western United States. They served more than 3,000 retail stores and recorded annual sales over $4 billion in 2009. There were over 500 co-op members and customers. In April 2017, the company announced that it had entered into a merger agreement with SuperValu, in which SuperValu would acquire Unified Grocers, at a cost of around $375 million. Unified is now a wholly owned subsidiary of SuperValu. The transaction was completed on June 23, 2017. Bob Ling who was the CEO at the time took a multimillion-dollar payout after his expansion of Haggen grocery stores was one of the most colossal failures in the history of the grocery industry.