New grocery store opens in Burbank as Albertsons becomes Haggen
It took about 40 hours for the Albertsons on Verdugo Avenue and Hollywood Way in Burbank to become a Haggen grocery store, but it’s a change that’s more than in name only.
Haggen acquired the store when it agreed to buy more than 140 grocery stores throughout California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada earlier this year, as Albertsons and Safeway shed more than 160 stores to gain federal approval for a merger.
Prior to the acquisition, Bellingham, Wash.-based Haggen did not have a presence outside the Pacific Northwest. The deal allows the company to expand from 18 stores with 16 pharmacies into a large regional chain of 164 stores with 106 pharmacies.
Nicky Graham, the store’s director, worked at the store under other names — Lucky and Albertsons — and she was on hand Thursday afternoon when it opened under the Haggen banner for the first time, after closing on Tuesday evening and undergoing a whirlwind transformation.
Much of the change at the Burbank store, so far, is cosmetic — a new sign out front; new fixtures, art and signage inside and crisp, green Polo shirts for the staff. But one big change, Graham said, is that the store now offers more organic and local products.
“I like the fact that we give our customers choices,” Graham said, noting that the store still offers the products customers are used to, but also has more products than it had before to meet a range of customer needs.
Among the local offerings are fish from Santa Monica Seafood, bagels from Western Bagels in Los Angeles and berries from Rincon Fresh in Camarillo.
Another “major difference” is that the deli and bakery counters will offer more products now made fresh, in-house and from scratch, said Chanel Martinez, head of the deli department for Haggen throughout the Central California Coast and Northern Los Angeles.
Martinez, who worked for close to a decade as a La Cordon Bleu instructor, said she came in to teach employees in the service departments how to make products such as a potato salad that follow the recipe of founder Dorothy Haggen, who helped her husband launch the grocery chain in the 1930s.
Burbank resident Cinde Bost said she posted news of Haggen’s arrival on Facebook and the response from a relative up north made her excited to check it out. She hadn’t planned on shopping, but she left with a few items in her cart Thursday afternoon.
“It was nicely different,” said Bost. “The meat selection was really awesome.”
However, there’s a lot about the store that hasn’t changed, too. Alongside the new products, which also include Haggen private-label items, are brands and staples — such as toilet paper, detergent and sodas — that shoppers are used to.
And while five new employees were hired in the past week, Graham said, all of the former Albertsons employees have stayed. She said she’d heard a lot of feedback from customers who were happy the staff was able to stay.
As a shopper, that continuity was important to Janet Diel, who said it’s her neighborhood store and one she frequents.
“I’m glad that all the employees are the same,” Diel said. “If they weren’t here, I wouldn’t be.”
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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com
Twitter: @chadgarland
