Formerly | Waremart (1967–1998) |
---|---|
Company type | Private, employee-owned |
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1967 |
Founders | Ralph Ward and Bud Williams |
Headquarters | Boise, Idaho, U.S. |
Number of locations | 138 [1] |
Area served | 10 U.S. states |
Key people | Gary Piva, Chairman Grant Haag, President/CEO Nathan Tucker, COO Isaac Kimball, CFO |
Products | Bakery, grocery, produce, delicatessen, seafood, bulk foods, snacks, health and beauty products, general merchandise [2] |
Services | Supermarket |
Revenue | US$8.2 billion (2021) [3] |
Number of employees | 20,000 [4] |
Website | www.wincofoods.com |
WinCo Foods, Inc. is a privately held, majority employee-owned [5] [6] [7] American supermarket chain based in Boise, Idaho, with retail stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, [8] Utah, and Washington. It was founded in 1967 as a no-frills warehouse-style store with low prices. The stores feature extensive bulk food sections.
Until 1998, it operated as Waremart and Cub Foods, the latter under a franchise agreement. However, WinCo began re-establishing Waremart Foods in 2017. As of 2022 [update] , WinCo has 138retail stores and six distribution centers, with over 20,000 employees. [1] [9] [10] As of May 2022, WinCo Foods was No. 46 in Forbes.com's list of the largest privately owned companies in the United States.
WinCo Foods is based in Boise, Idaho. It was founded in 1967, and the company is mostly owned by current and former employees through an employee stock ownership plan. WinCo operates distribution centers in the following locations: [1]
The company reduces operating expenses by purchasing directly from manufacturers and farmers, operating basic no-frills stores, and not providing a bagging service. [11] In addition, the company does not accept credit cards for payment due to transaction fees (debit and WIC/EBT cards are accepted). [12]
The company, originally called Waremart, was founded in Boise, Idaho, in 1967 by Ralph Ward and Bud Williams as a no-frills, warehouse-style grocery store focusing on low prices. [7] [13] In 1985, Waremart employees established an employee stock ownership plan and purchased a majority stake of Waremart from the Ward family, making the company employee-owned. [7] [13]
In January 1991, Waremart opened an 82,000-square-foot (7,600-square-meter) store in Boise to replace the two older Boise stores. [14] At the time, Waremart was operating 16 stores in the Northwest and had reported annual sales of more than $300 million. [14]
In October 1998, Waremart changed its name to WinCo Foods, citing confusion with retailers Kmart and Walmart as reason for the new name. [15] The name is a portmanteau of "winning company". [15] Nonetheless, three Oregon stores — those in Independence, Keizer, and Ontario — are branded as "Waremart by WinCo".
In 2007, WinCo Foods accused a competing chain, Save Mart, of directing a lawsuit filed by a neighborhood group Tracy First of Tracy, California, to oppose city approval of a WinCo store. That same year, WinCo Foods opened in Pittsburg, California. [16]
In early 2009, WinCo opened its first two stores in the Spokane, Washington, area. [17] In October, 2009, WinCo expanded to Utah, adding two stores in West Valley City and Midvale. [13] [18] [19] An additional Utah store opened in Roy on June 28, 2010. [20] [21] bringing the total number of stores expanded to Utah to five. [22] WinCo previously operated stores in Utah under the Waremart banner prior to the company's name change. [13] [23]
In January 2011, WinCo began signing leases for an expansion to Southern Nevada and Arizona. [24] The chain opened stores in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada, on March 4, 2012. [25] The company's first two stores in Arizona opened on April 1, 2012, in the Phoenix area. [26] The company opened multiple locations in Texas, primarily in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, beginning in 2014 after it completed a distribution center in the area. [27] [28]
WinCo was named as the sponsor for the WinCo Foods Portland Open in June 2013. [29]
In late 2014, WinCo announced that it would enter the Oklahoma City metro market, starting with stores in Moore and Midwest City, with plans to open two other locations. [30]
In May 2018, Grant Haag was made president and CEO of WinCo Foods. [31]
WinCo was sued in 2023 for the use of excessive force on multiple occasions in the handling of shoplifters. [32] WinCo also faced significant criticism in the treatment of a teenage girl accused of shoplifting at their Vancouver, Washington, store in 2017. [33]
WinCo paid a class action settlement of $3.6 million in 2023. It was alleged that WinCo stores in Portland, Oregon, charged a hidden clean energy surcharge on non-grocery items. [34]
In October 2024, engineering firm JSA Civil filed a proposal for the first WinCo Foods location in Seattle. [35]
Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
Save A Lot Food Stores Ltd. is an American discount supermarket chain store headquartered in St. Ann, Missouri, in Greater St. Louis. It has about 900 independently owned and operated stores across 32 states in the United States with over $4 billion in annual sales.
Piggly Wiggly is an American supermarket chain operating in the American Southern and Midwestern regions run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is notable as the first true self-service grocery store, and the originator of various familiar supermarket features, such as checkout stands, individual item price marking and shopping carts. The company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire. As of 2024, 503 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores currently operate across 18 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops and fuel centers. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons after being acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the Western United States, with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.
Quality Food Centers, Inc., better known as QFC, is an American supermarket chain based in Bellevue, Washington, east of Seattle. It is a subsidiary of Kroger and has 62 stores in western Washington and northwestern Oregon, primarily located in the Puget Sound region and Portland–Vancouver metropolitan area.
Fred Meyer is an American chain of hypermarket superstores founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, United States, by Fred G. Meyer. The stores operate in the northwest U.S., with locations in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. The company was acquired by Kroger in 1998, though the stores are still branded Fred Meyer. The chain was one of the first in the United States to promote one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, bank, clothing, jewelry, home decor, home improvement, garden, electronics, restaurant, shoes, sporting goods, and toys. The Fred Meyer division is headquartered in Portland.
Raley's Supermarkets is an independent, family-owned American grocery and retail technology company headquartered in West Sacramento, California. Raley's was founded in 1935 by Thomas P. Raley in Placerville, California.
A warehouse store or warehouse supermarket is a food and grocery retailer that operates stores geared toward offering deeper discounted prices than a traditional supermarket. These stores offer a no-frills experience and warehouse shelving stocked well with merchandise intended to move at higher volumes. Unlike warehouse clubs, warehouse stores do not require a membership or membership fees. Warehouse stores can also offer a selection of merchandise sold in bulk. Typically, warehouse stores are laid out in a logical format; this leads customers in a certain way around the store to the checkout. For example, as one enters the store they are directed down an aisle of discounted products. From there the layout could then lead to the fresh produce department, followed by the deli and bakery departments at the back of the store. Often, certain customer service niceties, like the bagging of groceries, are not done by store employees; this helps reduce overall cost. Many warehouse stores are operated by traditional grocery chains both as a way to attract lower income, value conscious consumers and to maximize their buying power in order to lower costs at their mainstream stores.
Lucky Stores are a pair of American supermarket chains plus a defunct historical chain. The original chain was founded in San Leandro, California and operated from 1935 until 1999. The Lucky brand was revived circa 2007 and is now operated as two distinct chains: Albertsons operates Lucky in Utah and Save Mart Supermarkets operates Lucky California in Northern California.
The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho, came to have an important impact on merchandising across much of the United States. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name was prominent on hundreds of stores throughout the West and Midwest.
American Stores Company was an American public corporation and a holding company which ran chains of supermarkets and drugstores in the United States from 1917 through 1998. The company was incorporated in 1917 when The Acme Tea Company merged with four small Philadelphia-area grocery stores (Childs, George Dunlap, Bell Company, and A House That Quality Built) to form American Stores. In the following eight decades, the company would expand to 1,575 food and drugstores in 38 states with $20 billion in annual sales in 1998.
Food 4 Less is the name of several grocery store chains, the largest of which is currently owned by Kroger. It is a no-frills grocery store where the customers bag their own groceries at the checkout. Kroger operates Food 4 Less stores in the Chicago metropolitan area and in Southern California. Kroger operates their stores as Foods Co. in northern and central California, including Bakersfield and the Central Coast, because they do not have the rights to the Food 4 Less name in those areas. Other states, such as Nevada, formerly contained Kroger-owned Food 4 Less stores.
Buttrey Food & Drug was a chain of grocery stores founded in Havre, Montana, and formerly headquartered in Great Falls, Montana. The company was founded in 1896 as a chain of department stores branded Buttrey Department Store. The company opened grocery stores in 1935 and sold off its department store division following a 1966 acquisition by The Jewel Companies, Inc. Jewel was sold to American Stores in 1984, and later Buttrey was sold off as a separate company in 1990. The company was sold to its main competitor, Boise, Idaho–based Albertsons, in January 1998 and the Buttrey name was retired. At that time, Buttrey was operating 43 stores in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota with a revenue of US$391.4 million.
Grand Central was a chain of discount department stores based in Salt Lake City, Utah. At its peak, the chain operated over 30 stores in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming. It was acquired by Portland, Oregon-based retailer Fred Meyer in 1984, which rebranded most of the Grand Central locations to Fred Meyer.
Ridley's Family Markets is a family-owned chain of grocery stores based in Jerome, Idaho, United States, with locations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.
Rosauers Supermarkets, Inc. is a regional chain of supermarkets in the Western United States, based in Spokane, Washington. Founded in 1934 by J. Merton Rosauer, Rosauers was sold in 1984 to Spokane-based URM Stores, and it eventually grew to 23 stores under the Huckleberry's Natural Market, Rosauers, and Super 1 Foods brands. Its stores are located in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon.
The Save Mart Companies is an American grocery store operator founded and headquartered in Modesto, California. It owns and operates stores under the Save Mart, Lucky, and FoodMaxx brands. The stores are located in northern and central California and northern Nevada. The company is owned by the Jim Pattison Group.
Henry's Farmers Market was a grocery retailer headquartered in La Mesa, California. In 2011, it started becoming part of the Sprouts Farmers Market chain, with a full acquisition taking place by mid-2013.
Haggen Food & Pharmacy is an American regional chain of grocery stores located in the state of Washington. It was founded in 1933 by Ben Haggen, Dorothy Haggen, and Doug Clark in Bellingham, Washington, where they opened first store on Bay Street. For the majority of its history under the ownership of Haggen, Inc., Haggen was the largest independent grocery retailer in the Pacific Northwest, with locations in Washington and Oregon. From 1982 through 2014, the company also operated the Top Food & Drug chain.
Eighty percent of the company is employee owned.
In Tracy, California, WinCo accused Save Mart in 2007 of directing a lawsuit filed by neighborhood group Tracy First against the city for approving a new WinCo store, according to a state court document.
WinCo opened a distribution center in Boise late in 2009, and it said at the time it needed 10 stores in Utah to make that facility efficient. It has opened five of those stores already, so it seems it is looking to capitalize on the move into Utah and then go into other areas before refocusing its efforts on Southern California.
North Richland Hills is the third North Texas location selected by the company. A store at Sycamore School and Crowley roads in south Fort Worth is expected to open early next year, along with another in McKinney. The company had focused its business in seven Western states, including California, Oregon and Washington.