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US Foods Expands Chef’Store Warehouse Grocery

US Foods Holding Corp. will open US Foods Chef’Store warehouse grocery locations in Merced and Santa Cruz, Calif., Helena, Mont., and Winston-Salem, N.C. The additional stores expand the reach of the Chef’Store offering, providing restaurant operators, food industry professionals, community groups and at-home chefs a warehouse-style retail solution to quickly stock up or replenish ingredients by the case and in individual quantities.

The Merced and Santa Cruz stores will join 15 existing Chef’Store warehouse grocery locations across California. The Merced store will be will offer its customers nearly 19,000-square-feet of shopping space. Both Santa Cruz and Merced stores are scheduled to open in fall 2022. The Santa Cruz store will offer more than 23,000-square-feet for its customers.

The Helena store will bring its third Chef’Store location to the state of Montana, joining existing locations in Kalispell and Missoula. Opening in early 2023, the new Helena Chef’Store will offer 20,000 square feet of shopping space.

The Winston-Salem store will be the second Chef’Store location in North Carolina. Set to open in December 2022, the new Winston-Salem location will boast 23,500 square feet of shopping space.

“The new Chef’Store  will offer foodservice operators across Northern California, Montana and North Carolina a new and convenient retail location for purchasing their much-needed food and supplies,” said John Mathews, vice president of sales and marketing for Chef’Store . “Merced, Santa Cruz, Helena, and Winston-Salem have a growing community of restaurant owners and culinary professionals. Chef’Store is excited to help serve their needs with thousands of restaurant-quality products at competitive prices.”

This year, Chef’Store announced the opening of three stores in Visalia, Calif., Lynchburg, Va., and Spartanburg, S.C. With more than 80 locations across 13 states, Chef’Store offers thousands of restaurant-quality products at competitive prices, including fresh meat, produce, dairy, deli items and frozen seafood to industry professionals and home chefs alike. Customers can also shop for a wide range of cookware, beverages, catering essentials, janitorial supplies and other restaurant essentials.

Chef’Store is open to the public seven days a week and no membership is required.

US Foods acquired Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores in April 2020 to accelerate growth and its footprint in the cash and carry market to provide an omni-channel experience to more customers. The company rebranded all Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores to US Foods Chef’Store in February 2021. With the addition of the four new locations, US Foods will have 87 Chef’Store locations across the continental United States.

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Revela Foods to Unveil Company Rebranding

Food ingredients company Revela Foods will unveil its company rebrand at the IFT First Annual Event and Expo on July 10-13 in Chicago.

The rebrand and restructuring, which combines Welcome, Gamay Food Ingredients and North Star Processing, results in a diversified food ingredients company that brings together world-class flavor innovation and processing facilities to give customers a seamless, uncomplicated experience from start to finish, according to the company.

Revela Foods will be showcasing its new branding and product offerings at IFT First.

Revela Foods will have two booths (S4429 and S3625) at IFT First with samples of some of Revela’s latest creations, crafted by an on-site chef, at booth S4429. Attendees can stop by booth S3625 to meet the Revela Foods sales team who will showcase the branding and product offerings.

Revela Foods will also present at the IFT-hosted Cooking Up Science Demonstration on July 11, from 2-2:30 p.m. at the Cooking Up Science Stage, South Hall.

“Revela is a revelation, and with this rebrand, our goal is to reveal what is possible for our customers by enabling them to create delicious and innovative products,” said CEO Terry Schneider. “We hope our passion for developing quality ingredients inspires our customers to create memorable dishes and moments with loved ones.”

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General Mills Completes $610M Sale of Helper, Suddenly Salad Businesses

General Mills has completed the sale of its Helper main meals and Suddenly Salad side dishes businesses to Eagle Family Foods Group in a cash transaction valued at approximately $610 million.

Eagle Foods, a portfolio company of Kelso & Company, is a leading producer and marketer of canned sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk products and retail snack foods, distributed through U.S. retail channels, foodservice and export, U.S. military and private label channels.

Net sales for the Helper and Suddenly Salad businesses totaled approximately $235 million in fiscal 2021. General Mills included the impact of this transaction in its Fiscal 2023 guidance issued in its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2022 earnings press release on June 29, 2022.

“We are builders of brands, categories, and people,” said Bernard Kreilmann, Eagle Foods CEO. “The Helper and Suddenly Salad brands, with strong heritage and high consumer awareness, are a perfect fit for what Eagle does best – investing in, innovating, and revitalizing brands to drive growth and nurture them to reach their full potential.”

The acquisition creates three diversified platforms within Eagle Foods focused on growing center store categories for retailers – snacks, baking, and meals and sides. Eagle will continue investing in its growing snacks and milk business in parallel with this new investment.

Eagle Foods has been successful in driving brand and category growth by investing in R&D, innovations, marketing and strong supply chain efficiencies. As the leader in the sweetened condensed milk category, Eagle Foods has consistently driven sales and share growth by bringing new households into the category. Eagle Foods also reversed negative share and distribution trends of two struggling popcorn brands it acquired, Cretors and Popcorn Indiana, turning them into two of the fastest growing brands in their category.

“We will leverage our core values of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and quality to grow all of our brands and further expand into the center of the store,” Kreilmann said. “We will immediately start expanding the positioning of these two iconic brands and bring consumers tasty, convenient, and affordable meal solutions.”

Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills generated fiscal 2022 net sales of U.S. $19.0 billion. In addition, the company’s share of non-consolidated joint venture net sales totaled U.S. $1.1 billion.

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