[T]he Vermont software and digital media company MyWebGrocer has been acquired by a Miami company, but its staff and headquarters will stay in Winooski.
Mi9 Retail announced Monday that it had acquired MyWebGrocer, a company that was started in 1999 and is now owned by a private equity firm in California. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Charles Kaplan, chief marketing officer for Mi9 Retail, said there are no plans to move MyWebGrocer or change staffing there. Mi9 Retail has acquired several companies around the U.S., some smaller than MyWebGrocer, and has operated them from Miami without moving staff, said Kaplan, who works for Mi9 from northern Virginia.
“We have no plan on our horizon to relocate or move or shut that down or anything,” Kaplan said. “As we’ve done with other locations, many of which are in North America, we’ve tried to keep teams intact and tried to keep them operating in their facilities.”
It’s not clear how many people work at MyWebGrocer in Winooski. Kaplan estimated there were about 100. The company has been reduced in recent months; late last year, when it announced it was laying off 18 people, MyWebGrocer had 315 employees in the United States, Canada, Ireland and England.
MyWebGrocer officials didn’t return calls seeking information.
The acquisition illustrates a trend of consolidation in the grocery industry, according to Progressive Grocer, an industry news website.
MyWebGrocer was previously owned by HGGC LLC, a private equity firm located in Palo Alto, California. HGGC will join Mi9 investors General Atlantic and Respida as investors in Mi9, Mi9 said in its statement.
The company was started in 1999 by three brothers: Jerry, Brian and Rich Tarrant Jr., who still own part of the company. Their father, Rich Tarrant, was a co-founder of IDX, a medical software company.
