UNFI Names Central Region President
United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) has appointed JJ Schlangen to the position of president of its central region, effective Feb. 5. Schlangen will lead one of the company’s three regional sales divisions and report to Chief Customer Officer Steve Dietz.
Schlangen joined UNFI in 2015 as a member of Supervalu’s financial analyst team. During his time with the company, he has held a range of leadership roles of increasing responsibility, helping to generate customer profitability and supporting strategic investments across wholesale and fresh.
“JJ is a collaborative leader who aligns his teams against both strategy and processes that lead to positive results for customers,” noted Dietz. “He has been a tremendous partner to me over the last several years as we have reimagined our team to focus on helping our retail customers grow, however they are positioned in the market.”
Schlangen’s most recent position was that of VP of sales strategy and operations, a role he assumed in 2022. In that position, he helped develop and implement new sales training and processes, enabling the team to close significant new business, and contributed significantly to the creation of a superior sales and customer support organization.
Schlangen earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota and also graduated from the University of Southern California’s Food Industry Management Program.
Last year, as it worked to better align leadership teams and resources to drive its customer-centric strategy and transformation agenda, UNFI promoted Erin Horvath to the role of COO, while Louis Martin became president of wholesale.
Providence, R.I.-based UNFI delivers a wide variety of products to more than 30,000 customer locations throughout North America, including natural product superstores, independent retailers, conventional supermarket chains, e-commerce retailers and foodservice customers. The largest publicly traded grocery distributor in America, the company is No. 20 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
