A little over 18 months after buying approximately 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys grocery stores (and 170 Winn-Dixie liquor stores), ALDI is selling 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores to a private consortium comprised of C&S Wholesale Grocers and Southeastern Grocers. The purchase includes stores five different states, including Georgia and Florida. According to foodinstitute.com, the purchasers took over the “day-to-day operations immediately.” The deal was announced last week.
When ALDI purchased the Harveys and Winn-Dixie stores, the plan was to convert some to ALDI locations and leave others as they were. ALDI had announced plans to build a store in Douglas in the vacant lot immediately south of Tractor Supply. However, the August 2023 deal altered those plans.
Aldi planned to leave one Douglas store as a Harveys (or turn it into a Winn-Dixie) location and rebrand the other store as an ALDI. The company never announced which store would wear the ALDI badge.
Things are even more complicated now. Not all the Harveys and Winn-Dixie stores are a part of the sale. And no one is saying what will happen to specific stores – including the ones here in Douglas. Monday, DouglasNow sent an email to C&S and Southeastern Grocers asking if the Douglas stores were included in the sale and what the plans were for these locations. A media representative (who did not include his or her name) from Southeastern Grocers sent the following reply: “As previously announced, ALDI will be converting approximately 220 stores and those conversions will conclude in 2027. Approximately 170 stores will remain as SEG locations, including both the Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket banners, and we will be informing our associates first of those decisions as they are finalized, and as market conditions permit. We will share this information with each community once our associates have been appropriately informed.”
Consequently, no one outside of the company knows what will happen to the two Harveys locations in Douglas and there is no timeline for making any kind of announcement. However, there do not appear to be any plans to close either store.