MyWebGrocer announced Monday it is being acquired by Miami-based MI9retail.com, a fast-growing provider of software for e-commerce, inventory management and other aspects of retail sales.

It was not immediately clear what the acquisition will mean for MyWebGrocer in terms of layoffs or remaining in Winooski. The majority owner of MyWebGrocer is HGGC, a private equity firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Tarrant brothers, who founded the company, still hold partial ownership of the company.

Hey, we can help sell groceries online

MyWebGrocer was started in 1999 by Rich Tarrant Jr. with his brothers Jerry and Brian following a family discussion around the dining room table. Rich Tarrant Jr. was working on Wall Street at the time, doing health care mergers and acquisitions, but with the Internet picking up steam, a business based on ordering groceries online sounded eminently plausible. Tarrant began by approaching retail grocery chains.

By spring of 2012, 13 years later, Tarrant told the Burlington Free Press that some 10 million people were placing their grocery order online using MyWebGrocer's tools every month, buying paper towels and cereal on their iPads while watching television on the couch. The company also sold advertising space to consumer packaged goods giants such as Kellogg's and McCormick spices.

Tarrant said the company was experiencing high double-digit growth every year.

More:MyWebGrocer eliminates 18 jobs in Vermont

More:Former employees claim MyWebGrocer shortchanged them on 'phantom shares'

In 2009, MyWebGrocer had about 40 employees and just over $10 million in revenue. Tarrant moved the company from Colchester, where it was first located, to Winooski in June 2011 when he bought the historic Champlain Mill. By 2013, MyWebGrocer had grown to 180 employees in Winooski and 100 overseas. Tarrant said at the time he expected the company to top $50 million in revenue.

In 2013, the California private equity firm HGGC bought a controlling interest in the company, buying out all the other investors except the Tarrants.

Layoffs and 'phantom stock' controversy

Last year, the news coming out of MyWebGrocer was not as uplifting, with the company announcing in December 2017 it had cut 18 jobs. The employees who were let go were offered severance packages, the details of which were not released. MyWebGrocer said at the time it employed about 315 people across the United States, Canada, England and Ireland.

The company had also cut jobs in October 2016 but declined to specify how many, saying only that there were a "few reductions."

In August 2017, the Burlington Free Press reported on a group of former employees who sued MyWebGrocer, alleging the company shorted them on what they were owed through a "phantom stock" plan intended to reward early employees who took pay cuts and worked long hours to help the start-up survive and ultimately succeed.

Phantom stock has no intrinsic value when it's issued, but only assumes value if the company is sold, or goes public. In the case of MyWebGrocer, the triggering event was the sale to HGGC for about $190 million.

Former employee David Tanzer, who was MyWebGrocer's principal database architect, won a judgment of nearly $1.5 million against the company, claiming he was shorted by 25 percent of the phantom stock he owned after he was fired in 2008. MyWebGrocer maintained it paid Tanzer what he was owed, and appealed the judgment to the Vermont Supreme Court.

Tanzer said on Friday that he is still waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court.

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosio@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT.