Top Foods being phased out in favor of Haggen

[Brian Lutz]

http://bellevue.komonews.com/news/busin ... -wednesday

This store, originally opened as a Top Food and Drug roughly ten years ago, is being remodeled and rebranded as the prototype for a new concept known as Haggen Northwest Fresh. The article linked above seems to imply that this brand will soon be rolled out throughout the company's stores, which will presumably result in the gradual phasing out of the Top Foods name.

It's no secret that Haggen has been struggling a bit as of late. Too soon to tell if this will turn them around though...

[Super S]

Interesting. Not sure if, in this economy, it is a good idea to move away from the TOP format in favor of an "upscale" type of store. Although it may make sense from a business standpoint, especially with a small chain to focus on ONE format only.

It will be interesting to see if they roll this out in Portland, or if Haggen closes the last few locations remaining. They have not done well in the Portland market.

[marshd1000]

This is a interesting turn of events for Haggen Inc. Other than the stores near Portland, Haggen has never operated Haggen bannered stores south of Snohomish County. In the past, the closest Haggen bannered stores were in the Lynnwood area. Those stores were sold to QFC, which was independent at the time. It also marked QFC first stores outside of King County. Presently, Haggen bannered stores closest to Seattle are in North Snohomish County. The rest of Snohomish is covered by the Top banner. I hope Haggen does well, as I used to shop there when I lived in Bellingham. They are a quality operator that is upscale but not as upscale as Metropolitan Market.

[Super S]

It has been hard to figure out the Haggen/TOP strategy in the area south of Olympia. There was a TOP store in Kelso, but that closed and was sold to Safeway several years ago. I believe Kelso was as far south as the TOP banner went. Haggen had only a few scattered locations around the Portland area, and some have closed and a couple may soon reopen as Walmart "neighborhood markets".

How far east does Haggen/TOP operate? I visited a TOP store in Yakima a couple years ago and it was like a time warp as the store looked identical to the Kelso store when it opened.

[Brian Lutz]

The locations page at http://www.top-foods.com/stores/ does still show a Yakima store, but that's the only one found east of the Cascades.

[storewanderer]

I was in the Yakima Top site last night. It was in really bad shape. I don't expect it to be open much longer. The Starbucks area in the front is closed and the windows are covered in trash bags. I believe Starbucks was leasing space from Haggen, not something where Haggen was licensing. The pharmacy and seafood departments have both been closed. The deli kiosk is filled primarily with beer and soda but the deli area against the wall still has product. The produce area was pretty lightly stocked but what was there looked okay; same for bakery. Meat area didn't look too good. The rest of the store is well stocked enough but very dated. Customer count, well, if you like to shop alone this is your place. Safeway nearby had a lot more activity. The place has an old TOP logo out front that I've never seen before.

I really like Haggen but I've been in quite a few of these Top things that are in really sorry shape. I don't know quite what happened... I think it is something to do with the pricing because their quality is excellent.

[Brian Lutz]

Another article on the remodeled Haggen store in Bellevue, which also confirms that the other remaining 14 Top Foods will all be rebranded as well:

http://www.bellevuereporter.com/busines ... eporter%29

[Super S]

As time has gone on, the TOP stores had more of a feel that they were a failed attempt of Haggen's version of WinCo/Cub. There is a discussion on Groceteria about this:

http://www.groceteria.com/board/viewtop ... =21&t=3216

I wonder if this change is also partly due to the fact that WinCo is expanding into Northwest Washington and Haggen realizes that they can not compete with the TOP format.

Regarding that Yakima location, I was surprised on my trip there two years ago that the old TOP logo was still being used on the signs. Even the Kelso location received the new logo before the store closed. At the time though the store seemed to be in decent overall shape despite appearing to have never been remodeled since the late 80s-early 90s.

[Brian Lutz]

I got a chance to head over to this store this weekend and check it out, and to be honest, I'm not all that impressed. One of the much-touted features of the store is that they've themed all the departments with names specific to the Bellingham area they're based out of, with names like Whatcom Falls Produce and Lummi Bay Fish Market. While that might work in Bellingham, by the time it gets down to Seattle most people won't have a clue what any of those places are, so they might as well be calling them Chesapeake Bay Fish Market and Niagra Falls Produce for all the effect it will have. But that's the least of the store's problems.

The biggest issue with the store is that there's a really disjointed feel to its layout. There's the produce, deli and bakery departments and most of the center store goods on one side of the store, then there's a no-mans-land of the wine section and pharmacy goods right in the middle, with the meats, dairy and frozen foods shoved off in to an inconvenient corner. On top of that, in spite of the remodel the store still looks rather dated, mostly owing to brown tile floors throughout the store that must have looked 20 years old the day they were installed.

All in all, it doesn't seem to be much of an improvement over the store that was there before, to be honest.

[storewanderer]

I am not surprised they did this cheaply. Bellevue isn't the place to play cheap, either, with the first class QFC, an above average Safeway, nice Metropolitan Market just over in Kirkland, and I'm sure some real good other places too.

I would like to think Haggen will be successful in this but my observation of too many of these Top Food units is they are in somewhat out of the way locations and competition has hit them and hit them hard. Their quality offering is very favorable. However, the quality offering at Fred Meyer is also very favorable and comes at a significantly lower price than Top/Haggen.

Still, I think they are a bit lost. For example, at this Yakima Top, I noticed the bakery had a small freestanding bin of 3/1.00 Gonnela Telera or Bolillo Rolls. These are a real low quality offering; I see them at various smaller chains and they are terrible. They work for a chain like Save Mart with no bakery bread program worth mentioning, but Haggen has one of the best if not the best bakery bread program I've seen at any conventional grocer with the best presentation and best quality of product. Putting out a lower end roll product when their program already has all kinds of far higher (and only a couple cents more in price) quality rolls only confuses the customer and sets them up to disappoint the customer.

I do have some photos of the unit in Yakima. http://www.flickr.com/photos/7636026@N04/page2/

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6118/6362 ... c19c_b.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6036/6362 ... 1a82_b.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6055/6362 ... 5799_b.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6214/6362 ... d0e7_b.jpg