Continuing its recent path of providing virtually no capital investment in one of its two remaining retail properties, UNFI announced late last month that it will be closing four Maryland Shoppers Food stores no later than October 11.
The Providence, RI-based company said that stores to be shuttered are all located in Maryland -1200 Eastern Boulevard in Essex, 7790 Riverdale Road in New Carrollton, 1170 W. Smallwood Drive in Waldorf, and 551 Jermor Lane and Westminster.
“We know the impact our stores have for the people who work in, shop in, and live in our communities. Like any other retailer, we’re constantly working to optimize our footprint, which includes investing in stores as well as closing stores where necessary so we can operate as effectively and efficiently as possible.
“We are deeply grateful to our team members for their contributions and will support them through this transition. Shoppers Food remains committed to serving our communities and our customers and looks forward to serving them from other nearby store locations or online via various grocery delivery,” UNFI said in a written statement.
With these closures, the once-dominant regional chain continues to lose significant sales and share in the Baltimore-Washington market, a decline that began more than a decade ago. After the closings, Shoppers Food will operate only 17 stores in the region. The retailer began operations as Jumbo Food Stores in 1939 with a single store in Washington, DC owned by brothers Kenneth and Irving Herman.
UNFI acquired the Bowie, MD-based supermarket operator in 2018 as part of its purchase of Supervalu. Former chief executive Steve Spinner soon began to unload more than a dozen Shoppers locations (most of which were acquired by competitors) and also closed its pharmacies (selling the prescription lists to other retailers). The path towards permanent closure was becoming clear when the COVID pandemic struck in early 2020.
It was at that time that Spinner changed his mind, noting the impact that closing stores would have during a critical time: “We felt like we had a commitment to the communities to make sure those markets were served with food. The thought of saying to an underserved, difficult market that we were going to close a store that they relied on was just not something we could morally get our head around.”
It certainly didn’t hurt matters that virtually all retailers saw sales and earnings soar as consumers significantly increased the amount of food that was consumed at home.
While the supermarkets remained open, little money was invested in improving the stores’ tired presence. When Spinner resigned and current CEO “Sandy” Douglas took the helm in 2021, not much changed. In 2022, it reopened a store (on The Alameda in Baltimore it had sold to Compare Foods in 2020). A year later, Shoppers opened three former locations McKay’s stores in St. Mary’s County (California, Charlotte Hall and Leonardtown) and another in Waldorf, MD. The St. Mary’s County units all closed in less than a year and Waldorf will close in the next month. In April 2025, Jeff Bleichner, VP and general manager of Shoppers Food, retired after 43 years with the company. Since then there has been no local leadership; all major decisions have been made from Minneapolis, where the company also operates its much larger Cub Foods unit.
With no significant investment and new diversified competitors entering the B-W market, Shoppers’ market share continues to severely decline.
To wit: as of March 31, 2025, Shoppers’ annual sales at its then-22 stores were estimated at $592.3 million, good for 1.6 percent of the Baltimore-Washington market. A decade earlier, Shoppers operated 55 stores, rang up annual sales of $1.6 billion and garnered 6.1 percent of the B-W market. In 2005, in what most trade observers consider the regional chain’s halcyon period, Shoppers ran 57 discount supermarkets that amassed $1.62 billion in annual revenue, capturing 8.3 percent of the country’s sixth biggest market.
