C&S tries retail, again.

We’ve been vocal about C&S Wholesale Grocers and their questionable track record in retail grocery. When they were set to take on nearly 600 stores from Kroger and Albertsons in a failed merger, the comparisons to the Haggen debacle were obvious. They didn’t have the expertise, they didn’t have the infrastructure, and the stores they were inheriting weren’t exactly the crown jewels of grocery retail. It was a recipe for failure.

But now, with the latest Winn-Dixie acquisition, it’s clear that C&S wants to be in retail. They aren’t just stumbling into these deals—they are actively pursuing them. And that raises a big question: Have they learned anything from their past failures?

Buying 170 Winn-Dixie grocery stores and another 170 liquor stores from ALDI is no small move. This comes after ALDI’s purchase of Southeastern Grocers, where they planned to rebrand around 220 stores under the ALDI name, leaving the remaining locations up for grabs. Enter C&S, stepping in with a consortium of investors, including Winn-Dixie’s current management, to acquire and operate what remains.

Let’s be real—Winn-Dixie is a tough business. They’ve been struggling for years. The locations C&S is acquiring are spread across Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida—states where Winn-Dixie still has a loyal customer base but faces increasing competition from Publix, Walmart, Sprout’s, and now ALDI’s expanding footprint. Running this chain successfully is going to take more than just a bulk buy-and-operate strategy.

What concerns me most is the customer challenge that comes with this deal. C&S is the largest grocery wholesaler in the U.S., but running distribution and managing retail stores are two very different games. They’ve already had difficulties keeping their independent grocers competitive, and Winn-Dixie requires serious investment in pricing, store format, and merchandising. The supply chain alone is a beast—can C&S juggle wholesaling at scale and optimizing retail operations? History suggests they’ll struggle.

Then there’s the customer experience. Winn-Dixie is not known for operational excellence. Many stores are outdated, pricing is inconsistent, and their loyalty program (while decent) hasn’t moved the needle enough to create true differentiation. If C&S thinks they can run this as a "wholesale-first, retail-second" operation, it’s going to backfire. Grocery is hyper-local, and without the right in-store execution, all the supply chain expertise in the world won’t keep customers from switching to Publix or Walmart.

We’ve seen how this plays out before. Piggly Wiggly stores under C&S’s management struggled. Haggen failed spectacularly when taking on too many stores at once. C&S is rolling the dice with Winn-Dixie, and unless they bring in serious retail talent, align pricing with the competition, and rethink their supply chain strategy, this could go down as another costly misstep.

C&S wants to be a retail player. Whether they can be is another story.