This comes as Bi-Lo Holdings LLC already operates BI-LO and Winn-Dixie stores and is set to purchase the remaining Sweetbay locations from Sweetbay’s current owner, Belgium-based Delhaize Group.
The transaction will shuffle a few other grocery names. Other Delhaize-owned stores under the “Harvey’s” brand will remain branded as they are today, though a few Harvey’s stores may convert to the Winn-Dixie or BI-LO banner or vice versa. “Reid’s” stores will convert to the BI-LO banner.
Bi-Lo’s transaction is set to close in the first quarter of 2014, pending regulatory approvals, which marks only the latest gyration of brand identity for the grocery company. Years ago known as Kash n’ Karry, the company transformed in the mid-2000s into “Sweetbay” in a drive to become more upscale.
In January this year, then-parent company Delhaize announced plans to close 33 “underperforming” Sweetbay stores of 105 in Florida, all of them by February. That included prominent locations such as those at Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa and a location in south St. Petersburg in the Midtown shopping center. (Wal-Mart has since announced plans to open a Neighborhood Market there.)
Then in May, Bi-Lo Holdings LLC announced a deal with Delhaize to acquire substantially all of the stores in the Sweetbay, Harveys and Reid’s supermarket chains from Delhaize for $265 million in cash, and re-open some closed Sweetbays. In the following months, Bi-Lo cut other deals to acquire 22 Piggly Wiggly stores in South Carolina and coastal Georgia, and then sell seven Bi-Lo supermarkets in North and South Carolina to Publix Super Markets.
Then on Sept. 26, the parent company of both BI-LO and Winn-Dixie announced plans to launch an initial public offering of stock, just as the original deal with Delhaize is set to close.
