Haggen Food & Pharmacy acquires 10 Arizona grocery stores

Pacific Northwest grocery chain Haggen Food & Pharmacy announced Friday a plan to take over 146 Albertsons and Safeway stores, including 10 in Arizona.

Haggen will be acquiring grocery stores in six states. The stores in Arizona are located in Scottsdale, Tucson, Lake Havasu City, Anthem, Flagstaff, Prescott Valley and Prescott. This will help expand Haggen’s numbers from 18 to 164 total stores, 2,000 to more than 10,000 employees and from 16 to 106 pharmacies.

It’s all thanks to an Federal Trade Commission required divestment brought about by the merger of Safeway and Albertsons, says Amy Hunter with Haggen. The agreement remains subject to FTC approval.

After the transaction closes in 2015, Haggen will convert all of the acquired Albertsons and Safeway stores to the Haggen banner in phases during the first half of 2015, explains Deborah Pleva with Haggen. All employees will then have the chance to become Haggen official employees as their individual stores are transitioned to the Haggen banner.

“We warmly welcome these new employees and stores into the Haggen family. The stores are well run and very successful, thanks to the dedicated store teams,” said Haggen Pacific Northwest CEO John Clougher in a statement. “We want to retain these existing teams while allowing our growing company to build on their past successes. We plan to adopt the best practices of our new stores to offer a superior shopping experience for our valued customers in all of our stores.”

Haggen was founded in 1933 and is a leading Pacific Northwest grocery chain operating out of Bellingham, Washington.