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United Natural Foods

American health and organic food wholesaler

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ7888979 ↗
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “United Natural Foods” is american health and organic food wholesaler. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, Natural and Foods, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2018, 2025, 1996, 1976—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1996. For this dossier, United, Natural and Foods is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american health and organic food wholesaler” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7888979. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2025, 1996 and 1976.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “United Natural Foods”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow United Natural Foods primary sources, United Natural Foods archive and United research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “United Natural Foods”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

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.