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February 25, 2010 Bangorbiz

Old Town Hannaford gets a makeover

By Robert M. Cook

The completely remodeled Hannaford supermarket welcomed shoppers with a re-grand opening last weekend following six months of extensive renovations.

Michael Norton, who serves as director of communications at the supermarket chain's Scarborough headquarters, says company officials recognized the 22-year-old building needed a makeover to please its customers.

The 49,000-square-foot grocery store now has a new floor, new T-1 energy efficient lighting fixtures and several new refrigeration cases for many of its fresh food products, Norton says. It also features updated aisle signage and a revamped customer service desk that makes it quicker for customers to move through lines.

The six-month remodeling project that began in November did not involve adding any new departments, but the end result is a much more inviting and customer-friendly shopping space.

"It will do well because it will be more pleasant to be in and in some cases it will be easier to find things," Norton says. "It was always a good store and now it will be able to strut its stuff."

Norton says Hannaford typically invests anywhere from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million when it remodels any of the 71 stores it operates in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont and New York.

"There are pretty significant investments," Norton says.

In every case, Norton says the company sees a good return on its investment. Remodeling often is accompanied by an uptick in business volume, Norton added. He says it also inspires greater customer loyalty and attracts new customers.

The Old Town Hannaford employs 125- to 150 full- and part-time employees. Hannaford Bros. Co. is owned by the Belgium-based Delhaize Group, a global company that owns 2,500 grocery stores worldwide.

He says the company also relies on customer feedback that it gathers from survey forms at the store's registers when it does a remodeling project so the company can give customers what they want.

Norton says Hannaford's redesign projects are not cookie-cutter. In fact, he says it is quite common to see Hannaford supermarkets with some unique design features depending on whether they are new buildings or remodeled stores.

Norton says company surveys show their customers care about price, top quality food, good customer service and shopping convenience.

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