Price Chopper to Replace Discontinued Wild Oats Items

JULIE GALLAGHER

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — Price Chopper stores have begun replacing Wild Oats’ natural and organic store-brand items with 200 products distributed by Topco under its Full Circle line of natural and organic items. Over the past few months, Whole Foods has begun to discontinue some of the Wild Oats store-brand items that Price Chopper was distributing, Mona Golub, spokeswoman for the chain, told SN. “Certainly, when we understood the [Whole Foods/Wild Oats] merger was going to take place, we set about — before the supply source began to dissipate — to replace these items with high-quality products,” she said. “We’ll start off by carrying 200 Full Circle items, but the line is 700 SKUs deep, which is a much broader spectrum than we could have carried with Wild Oats.” The final number of Full Circle grocery and HBC items the grocer will eventually carry is unclear. Price Chopper has been a member of Topco, a $7.3 billion supply cooperative, for a couple of years, according to Topco spokeswoman Virginia Mann. Price Chopper plans to take part in the Overall Nutritional Quality Index rating system that was unveiled by Topco late last year. It will rank the nutritional value of foods with numbers ranging from 1 to 100.

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