Wakefern
| Retailers' cooperative. Private. | |
| Founded | 1946 in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Headquarters | Keasbey, New Jersey, U.S. |
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Key people
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| Services |
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| Revenue |
 US$ 16 billion (2016) |
| Members | 50 |
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Number of employees
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70,000 (2014) |
| Divisions |
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| Website | wakefern |
The Wakefern Food Corporation, founded in 1946 and based in Keasbey, New Jersey, U.S., is the largest Retailers' cooperative group of supermarkets in the United States, and the largest employer in New Jersey (36,000 people).
The name "Wakefern" is a portmanteau of the founders' names: W for Louis Weiss, A for Sam and Al Aidekman, K for Abe Kesselman, E for Leo Eisenberg, and FERN for Dave Fern, although the company adopted the name ShopRite for its stores in 1951.
Wakefern owns one of the Northeast's largest trucking fleets and is the fourth-largest cooperative in the United States. In fiscal year 2016, its revenue was US $16 billion. In 2011, Supermarket News gave Wakefern its Retailer Excellence Award and The Griffin Report and Progressive Grocer named Wakefern its Retailer of the Year. In 2012, this company was named one of the Best Places to Work in N.J. by NJBIZ Magazine. As of 2011, Wakefern was ranked 17th by sales among all supermarket operators in the U.S. It operates 353 stores.
Wakefern also created and operates or franchises the Price Rite limited-assortment chain (based in Wethersfield, Connecticut) of stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
On August 1, 2013, Wakefern acquired The Fresh Grocer, an eight-store chain based in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. One of the stores was converted to the ShopRite name, and the other seven will retain the Fresh Grocer name.
Wakefern supplies all of its members' ShopRite stores as well as the Price Rite and The Fresh Grocer chains. In July, 2007, the cooperative announced that for the first time, it was offering its wholesale services to third-party supermarket operators, in the Northeastern United States and other areas of the country. Since then, Wakefern has announced deals to supply the Gristedes and Morton Williams chains of supermarkets in the New York City area, Heinen's Fine Foods chain in Ohio, as well as The Market Place in Bermuda
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