Wakefern shifts ad work to outside agency, cutting 79 jobs

Wakefern Food Corp. is pushing advertising and weekly circular production to an outside agency, a move that will eliminate 79 positions at the ShopRite parent and reshape how one of grocery’s biggest co-ops handles promotional work.

The change takes effect May 16, and Wakefern said the weekly circular will keep running without interruption. Quad will add 19 jobs tied to the work, while Wakefern is creating 54 new roles elsewhere in the organization, bringing 73 jobs available across the two companies. The 54 Wakefern openings are being offered only to employees whose jobs were eliminated.

For Walmart workers, the important detail is not just the headcount cut. It is the logic behind it. Wakefern is not saying advertising is disappearing. It is saying the work needs a different structure, one built around digital and social media marketing rather than a bigger in-house print operation. That is the same playbook retailers keep using when they decide certain jobs can be centralized, standardized or handed to specialists instead of being done by store-adjacent internal teams.

Karen Meleta, Wakefern’s chief communications officer, said the cooperative has grown from one retail banner, ShopRite, to eight banners across nine East Coast states. Wakefern said it now needs four sales and marketing teams for its banners and a separate team for private labels such as Bowl & Basket, Wholesome Pantry and Paperbird. Some of the new Wakefern jobs are at higher grade levels, and some carry managerial responsibilities.

The company said most affected employees are expected to either stay with Wakefern or move to Quad, though some may leave. It also said employees will remain in their current roles until the May 16 effective date. Wakefern previously used an outside company for circular production nearly two decades ago before bringing that work in-house, making this a reversal driven by the company’s changed size and business needs.

That scale matters. Wakefern describes itself as the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States and reported $20.7 billion in retail sales for fiscal 2025, up 3.1% from the prior year. Its banners now stretch from ShopRite and Price Rite Marketplace to The Fresh Grocer, Fairway Market, Gourmet Garage, Di Bruno Bros. and Morton Williams.

The move also lands in a retail market where the promotional side of the business is being reorganized just like everything else. ShopRite’s Can Can Sale has been a Northeast advertising staple for 56 years, which shows how central circulars still are to shopper habits. But the work behind that familiar flyer is increasingly being treated like a specialized function, not a fixed in-house job.

Walmart has made similar choices. In 2025, it cut about 1,500 corporate jobs across global technology, U.S. e-commerce fulfillment and Walmart Connect even as its ad business kept growing, with global advertising revenue reaching $4.4 billion in fiscal 2025, up 27%. The pattern is clear: retailers are keeping the customer-facing message, but moving the machinery behind it into fewer, more digital and more tightly managed hands.