URM Stores Territory Expansion/demise of UNFI/Supervalu

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storewanderer
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URM Stores Territory Expansion/demise of UNFI/Supervalu

Post by storewanderer »

It seems like URM Stores is doing some territory expansion. After what I saw I don't think that Rosauers in Ridgefield is such a far reach anymore for them.

I know a couple years ago URM picked up the old Brown & Cole stores (now called The Markets LLC) up in NW WA which were a long time Supervalu (not Unified) supplied chain. I thought that was a bit of a geographic reach. But it looks like more recently URM has picked up more stores that were previously with UNFI/Supervalu.

I went into an independent in Stevenson, WA "Select Market." Select Market was a buying group supported by United Grocers way back (then Unified, Supervalu/UNFI). This store was interesting in that it still had some old shelf tags up from Unified that were fairly recent and was using Select Markets signage for ad items but looked to have recently transitioned to URM for supply. Private label was Food Club, no Supervalu brands in sight. This isn't that far from Hood River Rosauers so I didn't think this is so much of a territory expansion.

I went into another independent in St. Helens, OR and it too was using URM Stores for supply with Food Club private label, bags, etc. This store looked like it had a painted over IGA logo on its exterior signage- suspect this was another previous Supervalu-supplied store (not Unified) since that is who supported IGA in the NW. Looking at their website http://centerplacemarket.com/locations.html this is quite an assortment of locations spread all over the place and it seems to represent a pretty significant territory expansion for URM.

At this point it seems URM which previously stayed in Eastern Washington is now moving to more and more stores in the I-5 corridor. And this is at the expense of UNFI/Supervalu. URM seems to do a much better job supporting its independent stores, very similar operation to Associated Utah.
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