Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

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Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

As of yesterday, Smart Foodservice is now owned by US Foods.

Smart & Final is sure lucky this actually went through given what has happened in the restaurant business.

It will be interesting to see what comes of these stores under US Foods, if they continue to be supplied by Supervalu/UNFI, if they continue to be called "Smart Foodservice," if they continue to be open to the public, etc. The article did mention one of the synergies US Foods is looking at is more private label product in the stores so I am expecting the Smart & Final and Supervalu brand items to be gone in short order.

Smart & Final let this Smart Foodservice run independently for the most part but it still seemed to be messed up by Smart & Final's lousy private label items (cannot believe how their quality has fallen in the past 15-20 years both on the food items and on the kitchen gadgets/pans) and more recently severe understaffing.

US Foods has a 4 retail stores under ChefStore or some odd banner but they look a little different from Smart Foodservice. The stores look a lot larger in size. The Smart Foodservice locations I've been into have all been 30k square feet or less.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by jamcool »

Smart & Final’s private brand used to be Iris (which was part of the company’s original name)
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

Iris is long gone and replaced by "First Street" and "Simply Value." First Street is a marginal at best quality product line similar to a typical grocery store private label. Simply Value is a generic product line of bottom level quality.

The old Iris brand was a cut above the typical grocery store private label; it was a restaurant quality label.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

Has Smart & Final ever used SVU brands before?
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

Yes. When Smart & Final Extra started, they had Equaline private label in drug at those stores. That was later replaced by something else before Smart & Final finally started to have its own drug private label items.

Cash & Carry has always ordered from Unified/Supervalu. It was part of the agreement when Cash & Carry was sold to Smart & Final as they bought it from United Grocers (then merged into Unified). So Cash & Carry has always had a very limited assortment of Western Family (now Essential Everyday) items in addition to First Street items. Current items in Essential Everyday include some packaged cookies, chocolate bark, some juices, gallons of water, and a few other random items.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

Went into Smart Foodservice. It appears in the past month they did some remerchandising in the store and added more small unit items like single 5-6oz cans of tuna, single 15oz cans of fruit, etc. More Essential Everyday items are present now than before as well. Definitely does not strike me as the direction these stores will take under US Foods so it must have been one last clueless move by the clueless Smart & Final.

The store was in awful shape with tons of out of stocks. Meat and produce was almost empty. Various canned goods were in short supply. Dairy was also almost empty. If this means that people are still supporting the small restaurants who shop at this store and they have come in and are buying more than ever before, that is a really good thing. If this is due to slow replenishment, then that is not such a good thing.

Also they cut store hours previously opening at 6 AM, now opening at 8 AM.

No sign of any merchandising changes from US Foods yet. Still on Smart & Final systems, private label items, shelf tags, etc.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

US Foods is going to be rebranding Smart Foodservice as US Foods ChefStore within about 2 weeks.

I really find it funny the old Smart & Final company spent millions of dollars rebranding Cash & Carry to Smart Foodservice a couple years before selling it off. The new signs were the same color as old, just said Smart Foodservice instead of Cash & Carry. Total ego move by Smart & Final and all for not now as it is being rebranded by US Foods. I'd get rid of any association with Smart & Final ASAP too. I'm surprised US Foods waited this long.

These stores do still seem to be on Smart & Final's IT though... I thought they switched- and they did do a POS system change last summer- and Smart & Final made the same POS system change a couple months ago.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by bryceleinan »

storewanderer wrote: February 16th, 2021, 11:41 pm US Foods is going to be rebranding Smart Foodservice as US Foods ChefStore within about 2 weeks.

I really find it funny the old Smart & Final company spent millions of dollars rebranding Cash & Carry to Smart Foodservice a couple years before selling it off. The new signs were the same color as old, just said Smart Foodservice instead of Cash & Carry. Total ego move by Smart & Final and all for not now as it is being rebranded by US Foods. I'd get rid of any association with Smart & Final ASAP too. I'm surprised US Foods waited this long.

These stores do still seem to be on Smart & Final's IT though... I thought they switched- and they did do a POS system change last summer- and Smart & Final made the same POS system change a couple months ago.
I hope they don't mess with the supply chain too much... yet. They carry a couple of brands (Franz Bread and Yami yogurt in particular) that are hard to find in Northern Nevada... Winco carries some of them, so it's not all bad. I didn't know that US Foods had ChefStores until recently - looks like they will remain open to the public, so not much of a change there.
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by storewanderer »

bryceleinan wrote: February 17th, 2021, 6:39 pm
I hope they don't mess with the supply chain too much... yet. They carry a couple of brands (Franz Bread and Yami yogurt in particular) that are hard to find in Northern Nevada... Winco carries some of them, so it's not all bad. I didn't know that US Foods had ChefStores until recently - looks like they will remain open to the public, so not much of a change there.
They have a lot of Pacific NW branded food items in Smart Foodservice. Not only the items you describe but also various dairy products, frozen baked goods, tons of "Beaver" table condiments, and more. The supply chain is going to be a delicate issue in some of these cases; small restaurants that routinely buy and serve items from these suppliers, are going to be in a bad spot if the items get discontinued. They added more Franz bread SKUs in toward last September which I thought was interesting- they only have a limited set of Franz items they can get, they are not on a DSD route but get the items on their regular delivery truck.

Costco has a few Franz items in Reno/Carson too and Jacksons has a very few Franz items. Franz DSD route stops somewhere around Gridley/Oroville (Oroville is also the south-most location where Wal Mart's private label bread comes from Franz). It may still be expanded down to Yuba City, it was for a while, but only in WinCo did it have actual shelf space allocated; other stores it was just on secondary displays. Franz also pulled its DSD route from Elko a few years ago after they no longer had the Albertsons private label bread contract there; Smiths, Albertsons, and the various independents were all getting Franz product out there. Ridley's still gets it in Winnemucca somehow- probably on their own truck because it isn't a DSD route and the store is responsible for stocking/rotating that (meaning- check the dates closely when you buy).
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Re: Smart Foodservice now owned by US Foods

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: February 16th, 2021, 11:41 pm US Foods is going to be rebranding Smart Foodservice as US Foods ChefStore within about 2 weeks.

I really find it funny the old Smart & Final company spent millions of dollars rebranding Cash & Carry to Smart Foodservice a couple years before selling it off. The new signs were the same color as old, just said Smart Foodservice instead of Cash & Carry. Total ego move by Smart & Final and all for not now as it is being rebranded by US Foods. I'd get rid of any association with Smart & Final ASAP too. I'm surprised US Foods waited this long.

These stores do still seem to be on Smart & Final's IT though... I thought they switched- and they did do a POS system change last summer- and Smart & Final made the same POS system change a couple months ago.
Over the last few days I have seen TV ads for the ChefStore. I find it interesting because I can't recall any of the previous names doing any radio or TV advertising. (I have seen newspaper ads usually just to advertise a new location)Makes me wonder if they plan to make this more of a mainstream type of store, it would make sense given how restaurants have been limited since COVID came into play.
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