UNFI/Key Food in Baltimore

[marketreportblog]

Jumbo Fresh Supermarket, an independent, opened today in a space previously housing a Price Rite in southwestern Baltimore. As are many international/ethnic independents in the mid-Atlantic, it's supplied by UNFI, but unlike others, it's actually a member of New Jersey-based Key Food Stores Cooperative -- their first store in the mid-Atlantic (they have locations roughly from central Massachusetts down to southern New Jersey, and then a cluster in Florida). Key Food has been supplied by UNFI since 2020, and they distribute a storebrand called Urban Meadow to the Key Food stores in MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, and PA. The Florida stores use Essential Everyday. I was surprised to see that Jumbo Fresh is using Urban Meadow rather than Essential Everyday, given that the Shoppers and other assorted independents in the DC/Baltimore area are already getting EE.

I'm not particularly familiar with UNFI's operations in the mid-Atlantic. Are those Shoppers and independent stores being supplied by the same warehouse in the Lehigh Valley of PA that supplies the northern Key Food stores? If not, why would UNFI bother to bring Urban Meadow all the way down there as opposed to just using EE? Is it possible they're looking to offload some of the Shoppers to Key Food, or perhaps consolidate some of the independents they supply under the Key Food program? It doesn't seem like they'd have much incentive to bring UM down to that area if they're not supplied from the same place, or if they're not looking to expand it in some way. You wouldn't bring in a completely new storebrand to a region for a single store, when you already have another storebrand in that region.

Or is it possible that this was a decision on Key Food's part, to require they use a different storebrand from the one that's already there to differentiate the stores from Shoppers? Does someone with more knowledge of UNFI and Shoppers have some insight here?