Wakefern, AWG Named Top Two Grocery Cooperatives
The National Cooperative Bank reported Wakefern Food Corp./ShopRite and Associated Wholesale Grocers Inc. were part of its annual Co-op 100, which lists the nation’s top 100 revenue-earning cooperative businesses.
Wakefern, based in Keasbey, N.J., was ranked fourth on the list with $11.8 billion in revenues.
Kansas City, Kan.-based Associated Wholesale Grocers came in sixth and reported $8.9 billion in revenue.
Other grocery industry companies that made the list include:
- 15 – Unified Grocers with $3.7 billion
- 23 – Affiliated Foods Midwest Co-op with $2 billion
- 25 – Central Grocers Cooperative with slightly less than $2 billion
- 26 – Associated Food Stores with $1.9 billion
- 37 – Affiliated Foods with $1.5 billion
- 56 – URM Stores with $1 billion
- 81 – Western Family Holding Co. with $768 million
- 85 – Piggly Wiggly Alabama with $746 million
- 90 – Associated Grocers with $717 million
- 97 – Associated Grocers of Florida with $666 million
The two top spots on the list belonged to the agriculture sector with St. Paul, Minn.-based CHS coming in first with $42.6 billion and Dairy Farmers of America in Kansas City, Mo., ranking second with $17.9 billion.
In 2014, the top 100 cooperative businesses generated $243 billion in revenues, an increase of more than 4 percent from the previous year. Cooperatives, which are owned and controlled by its members who have joined to use the cooperative’s goods, services and facilities to achieve economies of scale, provide more than 2 million jobs and create more than $75 billion in annual wages with revenue of nearly $650 billion.