US Trends

who owns grocery outlet

Grocery Outlet is owned by a publicly traded parent company called Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. , so there is no single individual or family “owner.”

Who owns Grocery Outlet?

  • The parent company is Grocery Outlet Holding Corp., listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker “GO.”
  • It is a public company , meaning ownership is spread across many shareholders who own its stock.
  • The largest slice of ownership is held by institutional investors (mutual funds, asset managers, hedge funds, etc.), with smaller portions owned by regular individual investors and company insiders (executives and directors).

Approximate ownership breakdown

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<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Owner type</th>
    <th>Approx. ownership</th>
    <th>Notes</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Institutional investors</td>
    <td>~89%</td>
    <td>Includes mutual funds, pension funds, and other large investment firms.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Individual (retail) investors</td>
    <td>~10%</td>
    <td>Everyday investors who buy shares on the stock market.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Company insiders</td>
    <td>~1%</td>
    <td>Executives and board members with direct shareholdings.</td>
  </tr>
</table>

What about the actual stores?

There are two “layers” of ownership that often confuse people:

  1. Corporate level (the brand and company):
    • Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. owns the brand, systems, and overall business, and is owned by its shareholders as described above.
  1. Store level (your local Grocery Outlet):
    • Most stores are run by independent operators in a 50/50–style partnership structure with the company: Grocery Outlet owns and supplies the inventory and infrastructure, and the local operator runs the day‑to‑day store and shares in the profits.
 * That’s why many locations feel “locally owned” even though they’re part of a national, publicly traded chain.

Brief history of ownership

  • Founded in 1946 by Jim Read (and his wife Bobbie) as a surplus goods business in San Francisco.
  • Private equity firm Berkshire Partners bought a majority stake in 2009.
  • In 2014, private equity firm Hellman & Friedman partnered with management and acquired the company from Berkshire Partners.
  • In 2019, Grocery Outlet completed an IPO and became the widely held public company it is today.

So, if you’re asking “who owns Grocery Outlet” today: it’s primarily large institutional investors and other shareholders of Grocery Outlet Holding Corp., while individual stores are run by independent local operators under that corporate umbrella.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.