Sweetbay Supermarket

Sweetbay Supermarket was a supermarket chain and wholly-owned subsiderary of Delhaize Group USA, with all stores located entirely within the state of Florida, specifically along Florida's Gulf Coast and around the Tampa Bay area.

Origins and Concept
Sweetbay Supermarket was created as a rebranding of the Kash n' Karry grocery chain. After years of ownership changes and declining sales, Kash n' Karry needed to do something different in order to stay relevant with increasing competition from Publix, Walmart, and the new discount and organic grocery chains growing Florida in the mid-2000's. Sweetbay Supermarket would be a complete rebranding of the dated Kash n' Karry brand, bringing about a refreshed store image and new amenities, such as expanded prepared foods offerings and larger fresh departments. The first Sweetbay Supermarket opened on November 6, 2004 in Seminole, Florida, in a former Kash n' Karry location. All Kash n' Karry stores would complete their conversions to the Sweetbay brand by 2007, at which time the Kash n' Karry name would cease to exist. The Sweetbay stores were modeled after Delhaize's northeastern chain Hannaford, with Sweetbay's interior decor, logo, and pricing strategy all incorporating elements of Hannaford, but with a Floridian twist.

While still facing competitive obstacles, Sweetbay Supermarket continued to open new stores into the 2010s (including locations in Cape Coral and Palm Harbor ). The final Sweetbay store to open was in October 2013 in The Villages, four months after the company announced it would be sold to BI-LO Holdings.

Sale to BI-LO Holdings (now Southeastern Grocers)
After nearly 10 years in operation, the new Sweetbay Supermarket stores were still facing the mounting competitive pressures that its predecessor Kash n' Karry was having trouble fighting. With Sweetbay suffering from being "stuck in the middle", caught between discount chains Save-A-Lot, Walmart, and Aldi, and more upscale chains like Publix and Whole Foods, Sweetbay was continuing to see sales losses and decreasing market share in the increasingly polarized Floridian grocery market. In February 2013, Sweetbay announced it was shuttering 33 of the company's 105 locations at the time. Three months later in May 2013, Delhaize Group USA announced it would be retreating from the Florida market, selling the remaining 72 Sweetbay stores to BI-LO Holdings, parent company of BI-LO and Winn-Dixie (later renamed Southeastern Grocers) for $246 million. Included as part of the sale were two of Delhaize's other banners, Harvey's Supermarket and Reid's. As part of the sale, all of the remaining Sweetbay stores would convert to the Winn-Dixie brand. BI-LO Holdings began its conversions of the newly-acquired Sweetbay stores to the Winn-Dixie brand in March 2014, with the final Sweetbay Supermarket converted to the Winn-Dixie nameplate on April 18, 2014.