Meredith Hurley, Southeastern Grocers Inc. senior director of communications, said Aug. 17 that operations are status quo as the Jacksonville-based company and Aldi prepare for a buyout in the coming year.
And maybe after, to some extent.
“We remain committed to conducting business as usual as we work toward satisfying customary closing conditions, including obtaining regulatory approvals,” she said.
Southeastern Grocers, which is the parent company of the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain, announced an agreement Aug. 16 to sell the company to supermarket operator Aldi.
The companies hope to complete the transaction in the first half of 2024.
“Nothing changes today in our stores and at our Jacksonville Store Support Center, which includes our office at Prominence, the distribution center and our Edgewood facilities.”
Hurley said Aldi has shared “that they anticipate very few changes at the Store Support Center in Jacksonville following the completion of the transaction.”
She said the Westside distribution center also remains.
“We have an agreement in place with C&S to operate our distribution centers, and we anticipate no changes whatsoever as we honor our agreement.”
Privately owned Aldi and Southeastern Grocers did not announce terms of the buyout and did not say what will happen to Southeastern Grocers’ headquarters operation in Jacksonville.
Southeastern Grocers leases a building at Prominence Office Park in the Baymeadows area for its headquarters.
It also uses space at the former Winn-Dixie headquarters along Edgewood Court in West Jacksonville.
And C&S Grocer operates the Baldwin distribution center with signs for Winn-Dixie prominent along Interstate 10.
The deal
Southeastern Grocers said it is selling about 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys supermarkets in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi to Aldi.
Southeastern Grocers also operates 28 stores under the Fresco y Más banner, which will be sold separately to an investment group called Fresco Retail Group LLC.
Aldi said it will convert some of the Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores to the Aldi brand but continue to operate the rest under the Winn-Dixie and Harveys banners.
It did not say which stores will be converted.
Winn-Dixie began in the 1920s when the Davis family opened a store in Miami and began expanding with other stores.
The company established its headquarters in Jacksonville in 1944 and became Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. in 1955.
Winn-Dixie went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2005 and 2006.
In 2012, Winn-Dixie merged with Greenville, South Carolina-based Bi-Lo Holdings to form Southeastern Grocers and based the headquarters in Jacksonville.
Southeastern Grocers went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2018, with a group of investment funds taking control of the company.
The company filed plans for an initial public offering in 2020 but pulled the IPO in January 2021, and it has been the subject of buyout rumors since that time.
Prominence Parkway
Southeastern Grocers moved the headquarters in 2016 from 5050 Edgewood Court in West Jacksonville to Building 200 in the Prominence office park at Baymeadows Road and I-95.
It moved into a four-story, 160,000-square-foot building at 8928 Prominence Parkway.
At the time of the move almost 800 Jacksonville Store Support Center headquarters employees were part of the Southeastern Grocers relocation from Westside and from other offices.
Southeastern Grocers said at the time that the move also created more conference space, a state-of-the-art test kitchen, nature paths and more parking.
The workspace is designed as an open environment with no offices but with conference, meeting and other private rooms available as needed.
West Beaver Street/Baldwin
In 2013, after the Bi-Lo merger, Winn-Dixie Properties LLC sold the West Jacksonville distribution center at 15500 W. Beaver St. in Baldwin for almost $100 million as part of a sale-leaseback transaction with Charlotte, North Carolina-based American Realty Capital.
Winn-Dixie developed the 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse campus on 200 acres in 2000-2001.
Also in 2013, Bi-Lo Holding LLC, which was what the parent company of Jacksonville-based Bi-Lo Winn-Dixie was called at first, announced that C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc. would provide warehouse, transportation and most procurement services for all Winn-Dixie and Bi-Lo stores by the end of that year.
C&S Wholesale Grocers leases the Baldwin property.
As part of the agreement, employees in Winn-Dixie’s six distribution centers and the functions that support them became employees of C&S.
The company did not announce how many employees would transition to C&S.
Keene, New Hampshire-based C&S had provided the services for Bi-Lo stores since 2005.
C&S supplies more than 7,500 independent supermarkets, chain stores, military bases and institutions with more than 100,000 products.
Edgewood Court
Winn-Dixie was long headquartered in West Jacksonville at 5050 Edgewood Court, where it built an 892,000-square-foot office-warehouse complex on 46.6 acres from 1953 to 1999.
Euclid Warehouses Inc. of New York City bought the property from a Winn-Dixie-affiliated property company in 1999.
While 790 associates moved to the Baymeadows headquarters, more than 330 remained at Edgewood Court at what was called the Southeastern Grocers Technology Center.
C&S Wholesale Grocers also leases warehouse space at 5050 Edgewood Court and is hiring for jobs there as well as for the Baldwin distribution center.
Property records show the lease is administered through the Southeastern Grocers office.