Scarborough, Maine-based retailer Hannaford Bros. has received positive feedback from its customers since it recently began advertising the local seafood vendors it buys from on its Web site.
The Close to Home program allows customers to search by city and state to find local vendors that supply their Hannaford supermarket. The five-state interactive map features numerous seafood, meat, produce and dry goods vendors from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and New York.
Local seafood vendors featured in the online interactive map include Cozy Harbor Seafood of Portland, Maine; High Liner Foods of Portsmouth, N.H.; and Sea Gold Seafood Products of New Bedford, Mass. In-store maps are also available.
“We have been recognizing that our customer is more interested in local products and really like what we are doing around products that are locally grown or locally made,” said Hannaford spokesperson Michael Norton.
By partnering with local seafood producers, Hannaford is also able to move seafood when there is a glut on the market.
“Last fall, the lobster business took an unfair burden during the financial crisis. [Hannaford] and the Maine Lobster [Promotion] Council did a pretty aggressive job and were able to bend the curve on how much lobster we sold,” said Norton. The retailer priced lobster “very aggressively” and published press releases on how to use lobster during the holiday season.
Buying local and regional products is also helping the 171-store chain become more efficient. “Not only does it help us discover new local legends, it lets us do our part to reduce our carbon footprint,” according to a statement on Hannaford’s Web site.
For example, Hannaford is sourcing fresh tomatoes from farms in Madison, Maine. “We are getting fresh [local] tomatoes year-round, which has allowed us to keep our prices down,” said Norton.
Hannaford is a U.S. subsidiary of the Delhaize Group of Belgium, which operates more than 1,500 stores on the U.S. East Coast.
