FTC Allows for Smooth Transition Without Acknowledging Price Gouging Nationwide
This wasn’t just a merger – it was a further saturation. Between them, these two distributors now move an estimated $31 billion in annual product volume, covering everything from independent grocers and military commissaries to the family-run supermarkets that anchor rural America. With SpartanNash’s $9.9 billion in projected 2025 revenues layered onto C&S’s privately estimated $21–22 billion, they’ve effectively built a shadow grocery empire — one that supplies nearly 10,000 retail locations through a lattice of 60+ distribution centers and 20,000+ employees.
The Quiet Giant
C&S isn’t a household name, and they prefer it that way. Founded in 1918, the New Hampshire–based company has spent a century staying out of the headlines while feeding them. They’re the unseen supplier behind countless independent chains — including Piggly Wiggly’s 500+ stores, countless convenience outlets, and regional markets across the Midwest and South. SpartanNash, on the other hand, was the more visible sibling: a publicly traded distributor-retailer hybrid with banners like Family Fare, Martin’s Super Markets, and D&W Fresh Market.
Together, they now form one of the largest private food distribution networks in the country, rivaling Sysco and US Foods — except their business isn’t built on selling to restaurants, but rather on feeding Main Street’s grocery economy.
That difference matters. Because when the companies controlling shelf access merge, competition on price doesn’t just narrow — it vanishes.
The Middle Turn: When Scale Becomes Leverage
Let’s do the math. If C&S touches roughly 7,500 stores pre-merger and SpartanNash’s wholesale network spans another 2,500, that’s about 10,000 retail outlets whose shelf pricing can be influenced by a single procurement ecosystem. Add in 60 distribution centers, unified freight contracts, centralized purchasing power, and national vendor terms, and you’ve created something close to a food-supply monopoly in everything but name.
This isn’t “efficiency.” It’s leverage.
When fuel costs rise, these distributors move in tandem, padding margins under the banner of “logistics costs.” When fuel costs fall — as they did dramatically post-2022 — retail prices don’t retreat, they linger. The “Mona Lisa Graph” proves it: diesel dropped 40 percent; grocery inflation stayed flat. That isn’t coincidence. It’s structural advantage, fortified now by merger.
Consumers won’t feel the merger in a press release. They’ll feel it in the cereal aisle. In a jar of pasta sauce. In the quiet, relentless uptick of “normal” that isn’t normal anymore.
Take Two: The FTC on Mute
And where’s the referee in all this? The Federal Trade Commission — the agency meant to safeguard consumer markets — has been ghosting the public like a bad date.
I’ve sent five letters to the FTC over the past year, outlining evidence from the WalletGate investigation: food inflation decoupled from energy, profit margins up triple digits, and retail prices locked in even as costs cratered. I’ve heard nothing.
Not a call. Not a question. Not even a form letter.
Except once — when the government shut down — I finally got a reply. An auto-email.
“Due to the shutdown, we may not be able to respond to requests quickly.”
That’s the punchline. Not only has the FTC failed to respond — they’ve institutionalized the silence. When “we may not be able to respond” becomes the standard posture toward a $31 billion consolidation in the middle of a national affordability crisis, it’s no longer bureaucracy. It’s dereliction.
No response is a response. And in Washington, it’s a pattern.
The agency’s chronic inaction toward the grocery and foodservice sectors — from Sysco’s margin spikes to distributor roll-ups like this — has let pricing power coagulate in fewer and fewer hands. Each merger gets rubber-stamped as “market synergy.” Each complaint dies in the inbox. And each American consumer pays a quiet tax on their dinner plate.
The Closing Argument
This isn’t about one merger. It’s about the invisible map of power behind every UPC code and delivery truck. When one company controls that many distribution centers, touches that many stores, and dictates that many vendor contracts, it doesn’t need to fix prices. The structure does it for them.
You don’t need conspiracy when you’ve got consolidation.
The FTC could investigate. They could ask questions about wholesale markups, diesel pass-throughs, vendor rebates, or even pricing transparency in the post-COVID food chain. But they don’t. They can’t — or won’t. And that’s the story.
So SpokenFood will keep asking. Keep publishing. Keep hammering.
Because if they won’t speak for the American grocery buyer, we will.
Sources & Images: LinkedIn, Supermarket News, Federal Trade Commission, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News,