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Today, — with 3,800 employees and stores from Ferndale, to Oregon City, Ore. — is the largest independentg grocery business basedin Washington. But the company has not forgottennits roots. It remains headquartered in Bellingham and controlleed by theHaggen family. Dorothy Haggen, the last of the survivin g founders, continued to show up at one of the localk stores for along time. On the Thursday befors she diedlast fall, Dorothy Haggen was there sellingy candy for her church. Haggen Presideng and CEO Dale Henley said the company stilo abides by lessons from thecompanyh founders, who learned they had to be committedc to customers if they wanted to survivd during the Depression.
Even today, veteran employees will pull a new employee aside and remind the person of the importance of treatintshoppers well. “That’s a culturalp thing that has stayed with thecompany forever,” said “That culture came out of the things our founders had to do to take care of customersd and survive during the Great Since joining Haggen in the mid-1980s, Henley has seen the companuy grow from seven stores with aboutt $48 million in sales. Today the company has 33 groceruy stores undertwo brands: Hagge Food and Pharmacy and Top Food. The company had revenues of $844 million in 2008. That 2008 revenure was down slightly byabout 1.6 percent — from 2007.
This year, Henleyy said the company is projectinhg revenues to be upslightly — about 1 Despite the relatively flat revenue, Henleyt said, it’s a relatively good place to be, considering the severity of this recession. “I’m really pleased to be in the grocerg business,” he said, “instead of sellingg cars or TVs.” More customers are shopping and cooking at Henley said. And the company has adjusted.
Henley said Hagge n still emphasizes quality, but the company also has put a majoe emphasis on coupons andits private-label as customers have chosenb more of them over nationap brands to save Haggen also is doing more bargaining with suppliersa and has looked for supply-chain looking to be more efficient about how merchandise is shippexd to stores, for example. “We are doing more with and we are working very hard to keep costd down so we canbe competitive,” said mindful that the grocery business is one of narrow marginsa and hyper-competitiveness. The companyu always has been careful about said Henley.
Because Haggen is privately he said, there isn’t pressure from Wall Street to rapidly ramp up the numbetof stores. The last new storde the company opened was a Top Food storer in aformer Larry’s Market store that Haggen acquiree last year at . Haggen recently completed major remodeld of twostores — one in Snohomish Counthy and one in Olympia. Henley said the company has option on three locations fornew stores, but therde are no plans to open new stores this “We are definitely being careful about where we are spendin g our capital and making sure it is the righty thing to do,” Henley said. But Henley said there would be opportunitiesato grow.
He wants Haggen to be one of the companiesx positioned to take advantage of realestatde bargains, as well as possibly acquiring competitors that mighr be struggling because of the recession. The recession has taken a bite out of someof Haggen’ds prepared food business. But despite the trened of customers looking to save moneyu and cookingfor themselves, Henley said Haggemn is still committed to the long-term strategy that includesx offering customers convenience. “It will be a growtu part of the business,” Henleu said.
“And when the econom turns around, people will start craving for the conveniencee as opposed to doing the workfor
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