Hannaford (supermarket)

Hannaford Brothers Company

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail grocery store
Founded	Portland, Maine 1883; 134 years ago (1883)
Founder	Arthur Hannaford
Headquarters	Scarborough, Maine
Number of locations	189 (2016)
Key people	Michael Vail, President
Products	Bakery, dairy, deli, floral, frozen foods, grocery, liquor, meat, pharmacy, produce, seafood, snacks, sushi
Owner	Delhaize Group (2000–2015) Ahold Delhaize (2015–present)
Website	hannaford.com

Hannaford is a supermarket chain based in Scarborough, Maine. Founded in Portland, Maine, in 1883, Hannaford operates stores in New England and New York. The chain is now part of the Ahold Delhaize group based in the Netherlands.

Hannaford was founded in 1883 by Arthur Hannaford as a small produce store along the Portland, Maine waterfront. He was joined in 1902 by his brothers, Howard and Edward, and they incorporated Hannaford Bros. Co. By 1920 the company became a leading produce wholesaler in northern New England. Hannaford then relocated to a new five-story warehouse on Cross Street. In 1939, with the purchase of Tondreau Supermarkets Inc., sponsor of Red & White stores in Maine, Hannaford expanded into the wholesale grocery business. Late in 1944, Hannaford Co. opened its first retail outlet under an equity partnership arrangement with Adjutor Tondreau.

By 1960, Hannaford Bros. had constructed a 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m²) distribution center in South Portland, Maine to better service more retail stores. With the purchase of 31 Sampson's grocery stores in 1966 as well as the 1967 purchase of Progressive Distributors, Hannaford expanded its retail presence. By 1971, the company's earnings topped $1 million.

Hannaford continued to rapidly expand throughout the 1970s and 1980s by opening a chain of Wellby Drug Stores, many of which were incorporated into Shop 'N' Save retail stores. By 1987 the company had spread into New York and Massachusetts; that same year sales hit $1 billion.

In the 1990s Hannaford began an expansion into the Southeast by purchasing a small Southeastern North Carolina supermarket chain, Wilson's Supermarkets, which served as the foundation of an expansion of Hannaford stores into the Carolinas and Virginia. In 2000, Delhaize America bought Hannaford; the purchase both eliminated an emerging competitor to its Food Lion chain in the Southeast and expanded Delhaize operations into the Northeast. Some Hannaford locations in North Carolina were sold to Lowes Foods upon the buyout by Delhaize while others were closed. However, the move ended up bringing an even bigger competitor into Food Lion's market when national chain Kroger bought 20 of the redundant stores.