BOISE, Idaho – Albertsons Cos. is inviting vendors to join its new digital marketplace for food and wellness products.

The online marketplace, set to open to consumers early this summer, will provide a venue where Albertsons Cos. customers can find and buy hard-to-find products and to discover new items and trends, the company says.

“At Albertsons Companies, we have always prided ourselves on our wide assortment. This offering takes our assortment size to the next level by making the aisle practically infinite” said Narayan Iyengar, the company’s senior vice president of digital marketing and e-commerce. “This is another example of the rapid strides we are making on building digital capabilities that serve our customers, and shows our determination to play a prominent role in the digital food and wellness ecosystem”

The general registration is now open for vendors who want to participate. The marketplace will allow them to grow their business by direct-shipping to Albertsons customers, according to the retailer, which adds that vendors will get a visibility for their products on a world class digital platform that takes care of such  common e-commerce front-end functions as search, product description and ordering.

The marketplace will also generate proprietary data on food and wellness product trends in different markets that merchants can use to help them decide which products they stock in stores, and vendors can use to decide where they should invest in building distribution.

Interested vendors can find more information here.