PROVIDENCE – Food wholesaler United Natural Foods, or UNFI, is laying off 121 people and closing its headquarters in Lincoln.
The company will also close its offices next to the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation on Iron Horse Way in Providence and consolidate its operations in a downtown office building.
In a WARN, or Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, notice, Senior Human Resources Director Farhana Mishra wrote that 121 people “associated with Lincoln” will be laid off starting Jan. 24, 2025, with some continuing to work until June 20, 2025.
“While 121 employees have been notified, this workforce is primarily remote and only approximately 50 of these employees live and work in Rhode Island,” Mishra wrote.
The company moved to Rhode Island from Connecticut in 2009.
Among those losing their jobs are:
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48 people with creditors
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17 people in cash requests
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16 people in bills
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14 “HRSS specialists”
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14 supervisors in the areas of accounts payable, accounts receivable, finance, billing and human resources
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5 “ACC Specialist II”
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1 senior vice president of “Shared Services”
In a statement, spokesperson Charles Davis wrote that the company has transferred some of its “high volume and transactional billing, invoicing and payroll functions, as well as contact centers, to a third-party business and technology services provider.”
The company is “a fully remote organization” and will close both its Lincoln office, at 1 Albion Road, and its office space on Iron Horse Way, and move to a new headquarters in downtown Providence by summer 2025, Davis wrote.
The company is moving to 15 Park Row West, also known as the American Express Building or the Gateway Building. The four-story building is located next to Providence Station and adjacent to the State House.
In total, the building has 200,000 square meters of office space and a garage for 150 cars.
“The new space will also be available for meetings and collaboration with employees traveling to the area,” Davis wrote.
When the company opened its Lincoln office in 2017, it was supposed to be a shared center for business services and a source of $1.9 million in skilled jobs tax credits from the Commerce Corporation in exchange for creating 150 jobs.
United Natural Foods is one of ten publicly traded companies in Rhode Island and the second largest by revenue, just behind CVS.
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