Piggly Wiggly Stores Sold: 29 Stores Offloaded to Bi-Lo, Harris Teeter
Piggly Wiggly stores has sold 29 of its outlets, according to reports, with 22 stores to be sold to Bi-Lo, and the other 7 being sold to Harris Teeter. The news will be disappointing to fans of the privately owned grocery store chain.
There are more than 600 Piggly Wiggly branded stores across nation, however, the South Carolina-based chain Piggly Wiggly Carolina Company only owns around 100 of the stores.
That means that the company will be selling of 29 percent of its stores. Piggly Wiggly spokesman Christopher Ibsen has said the decision to sell the more than two-dozen stores came partly due to other grocery store mergers being announced, such as the Kroger-Harris Teeter merger.
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Ibsen said, "The environment that has heated up dramatically in the past six months in the grocery industry with mergers and acquisitions created an opportunity for us to ensure the value of our employee-owned company."
The news will have come as a shock to an estimated 1200 employees working at the Piggly Wiggly stores being sold, however, it is expected that all of them will be retained in the acquisition.
Randall Onstead, president and CEO of Bi-Lo Holdings has said, "We look forward to welcoming these new associates to the Bi-Lo Holdings family and to building on the strength of these stores. We will continue to fine-tune our company and network of stores so that we can reinvest in what matters most for our customers."
Bi-Lo has also announced the selling of a few of its stores to Publix. Those stores will be sold in the Charlotte, NC area.
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