United Natural Foods, Inc. is one of the silent powerhouses behind many of the products stacked on supermarket shelves. UNFI supplies everything from organic produce to household staples to grocery giant hubs and independent retailers alike. If you’ve ever filled a cart at Whole Foods or a co-op in the Midwest, odds are, UNFI’s trucks made that happen.
Amid pandemic disruptions, UNFI still reported whopping revenues of $26.55 billion. That was a year of strained supply chains, rising logistics costs, and consumer uncertainty, and it still represented a 19% increase over 2019.
Fast-forward five years later, the story looks very different — and not necessarily for the better for consumers.
In 2024? UNFI’s revenues shot to $31.78 billion, an increase of $5.23 billion, or 19.7%.
That might seem modest compared to other distributors’ massive revenue jumps, but here’s the catch: the typical rise in operational costs — fuel, wages, insurance, packaging, standard inflation — averages 2% per year, or roughly 10% across a five-year span. UNFI’s revenue doubled that.
Why? It’s not gas prices, as we’ve proven over and over. What’s their magic corporate-accounting formula? Is it arbitrary? Answer: you know it isn’t. Check the sidebar story about UNFI’s CEO. J. Alexander “Sandy” Douglas has a certain rep with companies and not all of it good.
That means even with diesel costs fluctuating, the math doesn’t add up. UNFI appears to be pulling ahead not because it’s delivering more food, but because it’s charging more for the food it already delivers.
Other company executives might argue that diversified operations and “value chain optimization” justify the margin, but for consumers standing at checkout lines, it’s one more piece of the WalletGate puzzle — how does a small group of food distributors and suppliers leverage BILLIONS of supposed “supply disruptions” into profit engines from dollars that came directly from your pockets.
Whether it’s Sysco’s 50% surge, US Foods’ 66% leap, PFG’s incredible 148% rise or now UNFI’s 20% bump, the pattern still holds: corporate revenues continue to outpace both inflation and real-world costs.
In the end, the question remains the same:
If the food supply chain truly costs more to operate — why are the biggest players consistently earning more than ever before? BILLIONS.
In UNFI’s case, the answers rest with the CEO, J. Alexander “Sandy” Douglas and the CFO, Giorgio “Matteo” Tarditi, who is also President of UNFI.
The UNFI Corporate Line is (401) 528-8634. Find out. Ask the question.
SpokenFood reached out multiple times to UNFI’s corporate media department for comment but received no reply, so we’re going to bring you directly into the equation. Have questions or want more information? Contact United Natural Foods through its Investor Relations office at (952) 828-4144 or via email at [email protected].
That’s a direct line to a (hopefully) meaningful answer. Give them a call.
-Julia Chinier, SF Consumer Rights Correspondent
Sources/Images: UNFI Annual Reports, ASI, Macrotrends, Google Images
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