Wolt Must Sell Its Supermarket Arm. The Two Frontrunners Sit at Opposite Ends of Our Price Index

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-03 · 4 min read

31% — How far above the national median Paz's own chain, Yellow, is already priced — per Superclear's index, while Paz competes to buy Wolt Market, which is also already above the median

Wolt has to sell Wolt Market, its digital-grocery arm, after Israel's Competition Authority refused to extend an exemption letting it run both a delivery platform and its own retail chain at the same time. Now that the sale has reached its decision stage, it turns out two of the leading bidders already sit, in our own data, at completely opposite ends of Israel's price spectrum.

A ₪300 million prize — that loses ₪60 million a year

Four groups submitted offers for Wolt Market, with the highest reaching roughly ₪300 million: Paz Retail, led by CEO Nir Stern; Good Pharm's co-founders and co-CEOs, Adam Friedler and Ohad Sandler; Uri Max (of the Max Stock chain) together with Apex Partners; and a private fund led by Tor Rosenberg and Gabi Trabsli, according to reporting from ICE and Ynet (ICE).

Wolt Market is no small operation: 29 "dark stores" spread across roughly 60% of Israel's territory, generating about ₪650 million in revenue in 2025 (ICE). But behind that revenue sits an operating loss of more than ₪60 million a year — roughly a tenth of revenue — driven mainly by the cost of running fulfillment centers, high staff turnover, a delivery fleet, and a strategy that has prioritized selection and packaging over near-term profitability, per Globes' analysis (Globes).

Goldman Sachs, which is running the sale process, has presented every candidate with the same turnaround plan: push gross margins with suppliers up to 36%-37%, close five of the 29 branches, consolidate logistics into a single facility, and cut overhead down to ordinary-retailer scale rather than tech-company scale. The target: annual net profit of ₪10-35 million — a margin of just 1%-3.5% (Globes).

Paz, already Israel's priciest chain, and Good Pharm, half-owned by Rami Levy

Market watchers say the real contest is between Paz and the Friedler-Sandler group, partly because both are seen as plausible strategic owners for Wolt Market. But those two bidders arrive with a history that matters a lot for our purposes: per Superclear's own price index, Paz's "Yellow" chain — the convenience stores it runs at its gas stations — is currently the most expensive chain in Israel out of all 33 chains we track, roughly 31% above the national median (Superclear data, August 2026).

Good Pharm's ownership is more layered: Rami Levy bought a majority stake in the chain back in 2018 — 50.01%, per the original deal reporting (Poenta) — and more recent 2026 coverage puts the stake at roughly 51% today (Ynet). Friedler and Sandler serve as co-CEOs and shareholders, but the holding company above them is controlled by Rami Levy. That's reportedly exactly why one of the more sensitive parts of reviewing their bid is Competition Authority approval: market sources say the Authority could view the Friedler-Sandler offer as effectively an extension of Rami Levy's already-extensive digital operations, rather than an independent acquisition by a rival. Friedler and Sandler, for their part, are reported as saying Rami Levy himself won't be a party to this particular deal, and that they intend to bring in additional partners if they win the bid (Ynet).

What this actually means — per our own data

Wolt (the chain under which Wolt Market publishes its transparency files) currently ranks 7th out of 33 chains on Superclear's index, about 7% above the national median — "expensive," but nowhere near Yellow's league. Good Pharm and Rami Levy himself sit at the completely opposite end: Good Pharm ranks 28th (about 13% below the median) and Rami Levy ranks 29th (about 14% below), both labeled "very cheap" in our data (Superclear data, August 2026).

In other words: Wolt Market's next owner could come from either extreme of Israel's price map — the single most expensive chain in the country, or an empire that includes two of the cheapest. But nothing in the turnaround plan Goldman Sachs presented to both sides guarantees that the buyer's identity will determine where prices actually go. That plan is built around squeezing suppliers and cutting administrative overhead, not around a consumer discount. Even if the new owner comes from the "cheap chain," the official target it's been handed is a few percentage points of profit margin, not a sale.

The bottom line: the forced sale of Wolt Market is meant, per the Competition Authority's own reasoning, to remove a conflict of interest between a delivery platform and the retailer it also owns. It does not promise that whoever buys it next will make your basket any cheaper. And at least one of the two frontrunners already runs, per our own data, the single most expensive chain in Israel.

Sources