United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) announced the realignment of its operating regions and the elimination of 150 jobs to improve its profitability, accelerate decision-making, and reduce the company’s administrative layers.
The company said in a press release that it is consolidating four operating regions into three, called East, Central, and West, and cutting staff primarily in management or supervisory positions.
In March, UNFI named Erin Horvath as Chief Operating Officer and Louis Martin as President of Wholesale to better align leadership teams and resources to drive the company’s customer-centric strategy and its four transformation initiatives to improve efficiency and enhance the customer and supplier experience.
This geographic streamlining across the entire organization is expected to help further simplify the company’s structure and provide a more efficient model for supporting UNFI’s independent retailer and regional customer growth.
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Sandy Douglas, UNFI CEO, said, “These changes are a step in our transformation plan. The regional realignment will decrease layers of administrative management, increase leaders’ span of geographic responsibility, better align us to serve customers with less complexity and support faster decision-making. These changes are also intended to make our company more efficient and more profitable.”
Kelly Sosa will lead the new East Region. It will span from Maine to Florida and as far west as Tennessee. It will encompass 22 distribution centers and serve more than 10,000 customers.
Tandy Harvey will lead the new Central Region, which will cover the Mississippi River to the Rockies, comprising 21 states, 16 distribution centers, and approximately 9,000 customers.
Finally, the new West Region will span ten states, from Utah to Alaska. It will serve approximately 11,000 customers from 14 distribution centers and be led by Bob Garibaldi.
Sosa, Harvey, and Garibaldi will continue to report to Steve Dietz, UNFI’s Chief Customer Officer.
UNFI’s national accounts team will continue to be led by David Matthews. It will support the company’s largest national retailers and serve the growing needs of online and e-commerce retailers.
Stacey Kravitz will also continue to lead our UNFI Canada business. Both Matthews and Kravitz will continue to report to Martin.