New Seasons Market announced Tuesday that its chief executive Wendy Collie will step down as the company rethinks its California expansion spree.

Wendy Collie

The Portland-based natural grocer also said it would close a Sunnyvale, California, store it opened less than a year ago, and that it has scrapped plans for locations in San Francisco, Carmel and Emeryville.

It will continue to operate its four New Leaf Community Markets, a regional California chain New Seasons acquired in 2013. A new location in Aptos, near Santa Cruz, will open this year.

The New Seasons brand will stay in the Pacific Northwest, and no other store closures were in the offing, the company said

Collie, who became the company's third chief executive in 2012, was a former executive at Knowledge Universe, a private education company, and Starbucks Corp.

The company did not indicate the reason for Collie's departure later this month, but said it was implementing a "flatter" leadership structure. She'll be replaced by a pair of co-presidents — Kristi McFarland, the company's chief people officer, and Forrest Hoffmaster, its chief financial officer.

Collie characterized her departure as an amicable and mutual decision with the company's board after six months of planning a new business strategy.

"It's never easy to leave a company, especially a company that you love," she said. "I think it's time for this leadership team to move the company forward."

She directed the grocer at a time of aggressive growth. In 2015, New Seasons said it would open two stores a year in each of its three markets — Seattle, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area — and Collie said she wanted to "serve as many communities as possible." The company grew from 12 to 25 stores during her tenure.

But the Sunnyvale market, the first in California to be built from the ground up under the New Seasons banner, cost significantly more to construct and open than stores in the Northwest. In its initial months, it significantly underperformed against projected revenues, Hoffmaster said. (The privately held company declined to disclose revenue numbers or losses from its expansion effort.)

"We're a small organization with small resources, and we have to make quick decisions," he said. "This is probably one of the hardest decisions we've had to make."

The company also faced growing pressure from new business models, including stores offering in-store pick-up of online orders and meal kit delivery services.

"There's just many more options to get food to the plate," Hoffmaster said. "That's been a storm that we've weathered OK, but now it's our new normal."

The company probably will start to experiment with new delivery models of its own, Collie said. Meanwhile, it will start remodeling some of its older stores.

The moves came as a surprise to some of the company's in-store employees, who learned of Collie's planned departure from managers Tuesday morning.

Last fall, workers launched a unionization drive, which was largely sparked by a rollback of health care coverage. New Seasons has said it is working with employees to ensure they qualify for care if they need it.

Josiah Bone, who works in receiving at New Seasons' store in Sellwood, said the company has grown less hospitable to employees in his five years working there, which roughly correspond to Collie's time at the company. Beyond health care, the company has reduced staffing and directed money away from raises and toward its expansion efforts, he said.

"They promote an image that's very progressive and pro-employee, he said, but "it's gotten a lot harder for the worker than what they promote."

Bone, who's become involved in the unionization effort in recent months, said he hoped the company's new co-presidents would prioritize meeting with the organizing employees.

In December, workers accused the grocer of retaliation and of hiring a "union-busting" consulting firm. New Seasons denied the claims.

"We support and respect their right to continue to talk to each other, and we'd never stand in the way of that," McFarland said.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus