Food Distributors NAICS 4244

Oct 30, 2025 - More Grocers Self-Distributing

• Sprouts Farmers Market is among the latest grocery chains to assert greater control over its supply chain by bringing more sourcing in-house, Grocery Dive reports. The 440-plus-store natural and organic grocery retailer began sourcing fresh meat and seafood from its own distribution centers in the third quarter. Sprouts' move mirrors that of other grocers, including Walmart, which opened its first owned-and-operated case-ready beef facility in June, and Costco. Grocery Dive posits that Sprouts’ self-distribution push could signal that in-house sourcing isn’t just for the big national players who benefit from scale or for small independents with strong local ties, but also for regional and medium-sized chains. Given consolidation in the food distribution industry, which leaves smaller operators with less leverage to negotiate prices, and UNFI’s recent cyberattack, Grocery Dive writes that categories like fresh foods seem like ripe opportunities for supermarkets to explore for self-distribution.
• Food prices are rising faster than overall inflation, according to the latest Food Price Outlook report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS). While the Consumer Price Index rose 2.9% on an annual basis in August 2025, the CPI for all food increased 3.2% year over year. Broken out, the food-at-home (grocery store or supermarket food purchases) CPI increased 2.7% YoY, while the food-away-from-home (restaurant and other foodservice purchases) CPI rose 3.9% over the same period. In 2025, overall food prices are anticipated to rise 3%, faster than the historical average, per ERS projections. By comparison, in 2026, overall food prices are expected to increase more slowly. Prices for all food are predicted to increase 2.7% next year, while food-at-home prices are predicted to increase 2.3% and food-away-from-home prices are predicted to rise 3.3%, per the ERS report.

• A June cyberattack at United Natural Foods -- one of the nation’s largest food distributors -- left shelves sparsely stocked or empty at some of its grocery store customers, The Wall Street Journal reports. The incident exposed the food supply chain’s vulnerability to cyberattacks, with some retailers unable to place orders with the distributor and UNFI unable to order from food companies. Cyberattacks are costly, with UNFI estimating losses of up to $425 million in lost sales and breach-related expenses. UNFI first detected the cyberattack on June 5 and shut down its entire network on June 6, leaving customers in limbo for days. UNFI restored its ordering systems on June 16. CEO Sandy Douglas during a guidance call said the distributor had restored its core systems and “broadly returned to more normal operating capacity” across its distribution network by June 26. By mid-July the company said it was almost fully recovered.
• Producer prices for grocery and related product merchant wholesalers rose 10.2% in August compared to a year ago, after jumping 12.2% in the previous August-versus-August annual comparison, according to the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Wholesale grocery prices have been rising steeply since about mid-2021, but have eased somewhat from their peak in March of this year. Employment by grocery distributors grew 1% year over year in July, while the average industry wage inched up 0.6% over the same period to $27.61 per hour, just shy of its peak in June, BLS data show.