Natural channel sales: grocers, UNFI, gross profit

Natural channel sales kept climbing at two natural grocers that file with the SEC. Sprouts Farmers Market's net sales rose 14.1% in 2025, to $8.81 billion, and Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage's rose 7.2% to $1.33 billion in its fiscal year to September 2025. UNFI, the public one of the channel's two big distributors, sold $31.15 billion in its fiscal year to August 1, 2026, 2.0% less than a year earlier. This brief sets the three companies' filings side by side for brands that sell through natural retailers and distributors.

Every chart below is built from the companies' annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sources, with links to the filings behind each line, are at the foot of the page. KeHE, the channel's other big distributor, is privately held and files nothing, so only one of the two shows up in public data. Each company also keeps its own fiscal year. Sprouts' ends on the Sunday closest to December 31, Natural Grocers' on September 30 and UNFI's in late July or early August, so a 2025 for one is not the same twelve months as a 2025 for another.

Natural channel sales at two public natural grocers

Between them, the two grocers grew net sales in every year on the chart except one: Sprouts in 2021. Both had their biggest increase in 2020. Sprouts' 10-K for 2021 put the drop down mainly to "cycling the elevated demand driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in the prior year, as well as the 53rd week in 2020" (Sprouts 10-K for 2021). Sprouts' 2020 ran 53 weeks, so its 2020 increase compares 53 weeks with 52, and its 2021 fall compares 52 with 53.

Sprouts has sped up since. It grew faster in 2024 than in any year on the chart except 2020, then faster again in 2025, when sales rose 14.1%. Its 10-K says the 2025 increase "was primarily due to new stores opened since the prior year" and higher sales at stores it already had (Sprouts 10-K for 2025).

Natural Grocers grew 7.2% in its fiscal 2025, its third-fastest year on the chart after fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2024. Its 10-K credits most of the increase to comparable store sales, which it says rose on both a higher "daily average transaction count" and a larger "daily average transaction size" (Natural Grocers 10-K for fiscal 2025). Its year ended in September, three months before Sprouts' did.

If you sell to both, did your sales at each grow as fast as the grocer's own? A gap is worth a closer look: it could be distribution, velocity on the shelf or price, and each has a different fix.

Both grocers are well ahead of 2019

Indexed to each company's own fiscal 2019, Sprouts' net sales were 56% higher in 2025 and Natural Grocers' 47% higher. Both ends of Sprouts' window are 52-week years, and Natural Grocers' years always end on September 30, so neither figure is stretched by an extra week.

The order between them has changed. The two lines finished 2020 almost exactly level. Natural Grocers then led from 2021 to 2023, after holding its 2020 gains while Sprouts gave some back. In 2024 the two were nearly level again, and in 2025 Sprouts moved clearly ahead.

Sprouts names new stores as one source of its growth. Are your items in its newest stores, and on the same shelves there as in its older ones?

UNFI: natural up, total down

UNFI's net sales more than doubled in fiscal 2019. That was not the natural channel growing. In October 2018 UNFI bought Supervalu, which its 10-K calls "the largest publicly traded conventional distributor", and the same filing explains the jump: "The increase in fiscal 2019 net sales was driven by Supervalu net sales" (UNFI 10-K for fiscal 2019). Fiscal 2019 also ran 53 weeks. For both reasons this brief reads UNFI's trend from fiscal 2020, its first full year with Supervalu.

The chart shows each year as UNFI last reported it. Its fiscal 2019 bar is higher than the figure in that year's 10-K, mainly because a year later UNFI revised its statements to "reclassify Retail from discontinued operations to continuing operations", Retail being its own grocery stores, and restated earlier years to match (UNFI 10-K for fiscal 2020).

From fiscal 2020 to fiscal 2025 UNFI's sales rose every year, including fiscal 2025, which had one week fewer than fiscal 2024. In fiscal 2026 they fell 2.0% to $31.15 billion, a 52-week year against a 52-week year. Grocery prices were still rising: the Consumer Price Index for food at home was up 2.2% in the year to August 2026, the month UNFI's fiscal year ended. That index compares two Augusts rather than two years of sales, so the windows overlap without matching.

UNFI's 10-K explains the fall: "The decrease in Net sales was primarily driven by a decrease in Conventional and Retail Net sales, partially offset by an increase in Natural Net sales and lapping the impact of the cybersecurity incident experienced in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025" (UNFI 10-K for fiscal 2026). So UNFI's total is not a measure of the natural channel. It mixes natural distribution with conventional wholesale and its own stores, and the series behind this chart is the company total. The natural segment on its own is in the 10-K's segment table, not here.

If you ship through UNFI, did your volume grow with its natural business in fiscal 2026? And do your orders from UNFI match what the stores it serves sold?

Gross profit rose faster than sales at both grocers

Gross profit is what a company keeps from net sales after the cost of the goods it sold. Natural Grocers' 10-K says its figure "reflects earnings after product and store occupancy costs" (Natural Grocers 10-K for fiscal 2025). Each company decides which costs it counts there, so read each column against itself, not against the others. UNFI's gross profit is a distributor's, earned on far larger sales, and is not comparable with a grocer's at all.

From 2019 to 2025 Sprouts' gross profit rose 80%, against 56% for its net sales. Natural Grocers' rose 67%, against 47%. At both grocers, each dollar of sales left more gross profit in 2025 than in 2019. Natural Grocers' gross profit rose in every year in the table. Sprouts' dipped in 2021, the year its sales fell, and has risen every year since.

UNFI's gross profit has barely moved since fiscal 2022, while its sales rose through fiscal 2025 and then fell.

Is a grocer that keeps more of each sales dollar buying better, selling more of its own brands, changing its mix or promoting less? The filings do not separate those, but a brand can check the part that runs through its own trade spend and costs.

What's next for brands in the channel

Use the grocers' own growth as your yardstick. Sprouts grew 14.1% in 2025 and Natural Grocers 7.2% in its fiscal 2025. If your sales at either grew more slowly over the same months, find out whether the gap is in the stores you are not yet in or in the ones you are. Sprouts says new stores drove part of its growth, so its newest locations are a good place to start.

Read UNFI as more than one business. Its total fell in fiscal 2026 while its natural sales rose. If your UNFI orders fell while its natural sales rose, set them beside what the stores it supplies actually sold before treating it as lower demand.

KeHE files nothing publicly, so the only view of your KeHE business is the data KeHE shares with you. If you sell through both distributors, you need the two side by side to see your whole natural channel, and to spot a retailer that moved from one to the other.

The gross profit table belongs in your line review prep. Both grocers kept more gross profit from each sales dollar in 2025 than in 2019, so go in knowing what your items earn each grocer, as well as what they sell.

Scout reads the retailer portals and syndicated feeds these questions need. To see what the numbers look like for your own brand, ask below.