Who Owns Smart & Final?

The business dates to 1871, when Herman Hellman and Jacob Haas opened a grocery wholesaler in downtown Los Angeles called Hellman-Haas Grocery Co. The company pioneered cash-and-carry retail, letting restaurants and households buy bulk goods directly from warehouse shelves rather than through a grocer's counter service.

The Smart & Final name arrived in 1914, and the company grew through the mid-20th century into a Southern California institution serving restaurant supply and household bulk buying. It acquired Portland-based Cash & Carry in the 1990s, extending north into Oregon and Washington.

Ownership changed repeatedly in the 2000s: a 2007 buyout by Ares Management, a 2014 IPO that returned it to public markets, and the 2019 Apollo take-private at $1.1 billion. That leveraged deal proved badly timed; pandemic supply disruption and the company's thin value-grocery margins pushed it into Chapter 11 in February 2021.

Chedraui's May 2021 acquisition gave the chain its first stable owner in decades. The Mexican retailer had already spent 24 years building El Super into a major Hispanic grocery chain in the same markets, providing immediate distribution and procurement overlap. Under Chedraui, the chain has held roughly steady at about 250 stores, primarily in California with additional locations in Arizona, Nevada, and northwest Mexico through Chedraui's existing footprint.

The store format continues to evolve. Smart & Final Extra! locations add fresh perishables departments to the traditional dry-goods warehouse model, while smaller Smart & Final Express stores test convenience formats in urban areas.