Why Walmart Just Decided to Get Rid of Two Huge Food Brands
Walmart announced this week that it is phasing out two food brands that had both been introduced to Walmart shoppers with much fanfare just a few years ago.
Wild Oats, an organic line launched in 2014 at Walmart and hyped as the mega-retailer’s low-price solution for bringing organic foods to the masses, will disappear from store shelves in the coming months.
Walmart is simultaneously getting rid of another, markedly different food brand with the phasing out of Price First, an ultra-basic, low-cost in-house label featuring the plainest of plain blue packaging. While the Wild Oats move was noticed by media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, only industry publications like Supermarket News reported about the demise of the unloved generic Price First brand.
At first, the two labels seem to have little in common, other than the fact that they were introduced — and then dumped — by Walmart at about the same time. Yet both brands were brought to stores for largely the same reason: to help Walmart cope with a surge of competitors, at the high and low end of the market alike.
At the time Walmart was deciding to introduce these brands, Whole Foods was the grocery industry’s darling; it had pioneered the healthy food supermarket model and inspired copycats to use its approach focused on organic foods and lots of fresh produce. Yet Whole Foods suffered from its “whole paycheck” reputation, and its high prices opened the door to competitors — including Walmart and its expanded organic foods selection.