Grocery chain The Fresh Market Inc. on Monday filed for an initial public offering to raise up to $345 million.
Fresh Market, based in Greensboro, N.C., operates 95 stores in the Southeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.
The company said in a regulatory filing that its stores are, on average, half or a third of the size of a conventional supermarket, and it aims for a "neighborhood grocer" appeal to shoppers.
The company didn't say when it planned to go public or how many shares its stockholders planned to sell. Ray and Beverly Berry, Fresh Market's founders, and other company officers are selling all the shares in the offering. All proceeds from the IPO will go to the shareholders.
In 2009, Fresh Market earned $49.2 million on revenue of $861.9 million, up from profit of $31.6 million on revenue of $797.8 million in 2008.
Fresh Market intends to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "TFM."
BofA Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters on the deal.
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