United Natural Foods
American health and organic food wholesaler

United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) is a Providence, Rhode Island–based natural and organic food company. The largest publicly traded wholesale distributor of health and specialty food in the United States and Canada, it is Whole Foods Market's main supplier, with their traffic making up over a third of its revenue in 2018. In 2025, the company offered approximately 230,000 products to 52 distribution centers.
History
UNFI was founded in 1996 by the merger of two regional distributors—Mountain People's Warehouse (founded in 1976, serving the Western U.S.) and Cornucopia Natural Foods (founded in 1977, serving the Eastern U.S.)—forming the first natural products distributorship with national scope.
Leadership
J. Alexander (Sandy) Douglas has served as UNFI's chief executive officer and a member of its board of directors since August 2021. He succeeded former CEO, Steven Spinner.
In August 2026, UNFI named new executive leadership officers. Giorgio Matteo Tarditi was named president and chief operating officer, with responsibility for product sales organizations, enterprise customer relationships, supply chain operations, technology and lean implementation. Alfredo Luchini became chief financial officer.
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This entry incorporates text from “United Natural Foods” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.