Winn-Dixie

Winn-Dixie is a regional supermarket grocer that serves customers across Florida and southern Georgia through full-line grocery stores, liquor stores, and online ordering with delivery and curbside pickup. Its stores focus on everyday neighborhood shopping, with a full assortment of fresh produce, meat, bakery, and prepared foods alongside national brands and private label products. As of November 2025, the company operates approximately 380 locations, most of which function as large-format anchors in busy community and neighborhood centers.

The company’s history stretches back to 1925, when it opened its first store in Miami under the name Winn & Lovett Grocery Co. Over the following decades, Winn-Dixie expanded steadily across the Southeast through both new store growth and acquisitions, building name recognition in multiple southern states. A notable milestone in its growth was the move into Alabama in the 1960s through the acquisition of Hill’s Food Stores, which helped establish Winn-Dixie as a familiar banner across the broader region.

In recent years the business has gone through a series of ownership and capital structure changes. After Chapter 11 reorganizations in 2005 and 2018, its parent company, Southeastern Grocers, was acquired by Aldi Süd in a transaction that closed in March 2024. In 2025, after roughly a year under Aldi ownership, Southeastern Grocers and the Winn-Dixie brand were sold to a group of private investors led by long-time CEO Anthony Hucker. The organization then adopted a new corporate name, The Winn-Dixie Company, and set a clearer course around a smaller but more focused operating footprint.

As of November 2025, Winn-Dixie is actively repositioning itself as a Florida-centric grocer with a selective presence in southern Georgia. The company has announced plans to sell or close 32 Winn-Dixie locations and several Harveys Supermarkets across Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, while at the same time committing capital to three new stores in northern Florida and significant remodel activity in its core markets. Portions of the legacy portfolio in peripheral states are being sold or transitioned to other operators, including Food City, Aldi, and Rouses Markets, and certain underperforming boxes are being closed outright.

Within Florida and southern Georgia, the company is leaning into existing real estate and strong brand familiarity. Winn-Dixie is investing in store upgrades, more modern layouts, and added convenience features. One visible example is the rollout of Amazon return kiosks to dozens of additional Florida stores, which supports more frequent customer trips and helps keep traffic inside current locations. The overall posture is one of pruning non-core markets and reinvesting in key trade areas such as the Jacksonville metro, Central Florida, South Florida, and selected communities in southern Georgia and North Florida growth corridors.

For landlords, brokers, and developers, Winn-Dixie today represents an established grocery anchor with nearly a century of operating experience in the Southeast and deep roots in Florida neighborhoods. The brand is not pursuing aggressive national expansion. Instead it is concentrating on stabilizing and upgrading its Florida and southern Georgia portfolio, adding infill and replacement stores where population growth and center quality support long-term performance, and exiting older or out-of-strategy boxes in outer markets. This shift creates both backfill opportunities for other tenants and potential new Winn-Dixie deals in growth corridors where the company sees a long-term path to traffic and sales.