Scuttling the Hannaford brand is ‘essentially’ hard to swallow

  Three weeks ago my wife, son and I were enjoying dinner at a friend’s home when I noticed the latest addition to their mustard collection. My friend Drew is somewhat of a mustard connoisseur. We both believe that our mustards need to be hot – very hot. Hot enough to require the assistance of the fire department-hot. We discussed different mustard brand names when the conversation turned into a discussion of different brand names in general. Then, Drew turned to me and said “What I really don’t like is how Hannaford has replaced their Hannaford brand with something called My Essentials.”

  This was news to me. I usually go grocery shopping once every two weeks. I told him that I hadn’t seen the My Essentials cans on the shelves at my Forest Ave Hannaford and supposed that he was mistaken and the My Essentials was just an additional brand brought into the store. I couldn’t imagine that Hannaford Brothers would scuttle a long-known brand that to a lot of Mainers is considered a “name brand,” as opposed to a cheap-looking “store brand” like, say, Wal-mart’s “Great Value.”

  Come to find out, Drew was right.

Saying 'so long' to yet another Maine brand

  I was at the Forest Ave Hannaford last Saturday morning doing my “grocery thang.” I navigated through the veggies, grabbed a couple things from the deli and rounded isle four to grab a couple cans of Hannaford French-Style Green Beans. I looked down to the middle row where before me was a sea of canned green beans and couldn’t find it. Focusing harder, there it was. The My Essentials French Style Green Beans stacked oh so neatly with a little one inch by one inch sticker that confirmed Drew’s story. The sign read, printed in a super-small 6 point font, “This My Essentials product has replaced the Hannaford Brand.”

  I picked up a can and gave it a gander. It was cheap-looking. The font describing the product, the picture of the beans and the white background looked as though they had been focus-grouped down in some white-walled room in Arkansas. One could literally cut out a “Great Value” label from a Wal-Mart can, paste it over My Essentials and not tell the difference. I put the can down, picked up a can of Green Giant, and continued shopping. As I did, I noticed the slow rotation that was gradually replacing most of the Hannaford products I had been used to buying for so many years. It was awful.

  After I left the store, knowing full well that more than likely the products were the same contents with just a different label, I asked myself whether this brand change was something that was bothering just me and Drew, as we’re both a little quirky. I certainly hadn’t seen anything in the news about the change and it seems as though Hannaford is trying to quietly extinguish the Hannaford brand in the stores. After a little search, I found out we were not alone.

  I discovered an online message forum that was full of messages from Hannaford customers that shared the same feelings. Comments included “My Essentials sounds lame, bland and cheap” and “As a Mainer, it’s kind of depressing to see Hannaford losing its regional identity.” The last quote served to describe exactly how I feel.

  In stories about Hannaford-parent Delhaize America’s decision to replace all of their store brands, including the Sweet Bay and Food Lion chains’ individual banners with My Essentials, Delhaize explains that they want to increase sales of their generic foods in all their stores. In all their chains, with the exception of Hannaford, it appears that their store brands were not performing well, and My Essentials was the answer to turn that part of their business around. The My Essentials switcharoo has apparently been in the works since July of last year, as a quick search for the My Essentials trademark with the U.S. Trademark office shows that the My Essentials trademark was filed on July 29, 2010. In their other chains, the change to My Essentials is being heralded in the stores and in the media as a good thing. In Hannaford country, it’s happening quietly. Why? It is because it’s a bad idea for the Hannaford chain.

  From a global corporate governance standpoint, the change makes sense. Delhaize will save money by only having to produce one product for all their stores. They even insist that having one brand will enable them to better leverage themselves when purchasing from suppliers. And, the increased sales they expect will certainly reap benefits for investors. Maybe their plan to increase profits in all their stores, even if there is a little dip at Hannaford from formerly-loyal customers, is more clandestine. In one online comment, a Hannaford customer writes: “The rollout of My Essentials at DZA's Hannaford banner is off to a rocky start. Shoppers have noticed, for example, that the 8 ounce light yogurt under the Hannaford brand has been replaced by a 6 ounce My Essentials container with no price change to account for the 25% shrinkage.”

  But to me, if there are enough people that feel the same way I do about the Hannaford brand going the way of Jordan’s Ball Park Franks and Deering Ice Cream, the increased revenue Delhaize is forecasting from increased sales at their other chains and charging the same price for less could potentially be off set by a large decrease of store brand sales in their Hannaford stores. Then what? Will they scuttle the name all together and one day invite us to shop at the Forest Avenue Food Lion? The quick wave of the hand and executive board room decision thousands of miles away from Portland that eliminated the Hannaford brand could make that happen, too. Hannaford would of course claim this would never happen, but what would the leaders of Hannaford say about discontinuing the Hannaford brand if asked in 2006?

  So for me, because nothing says “I’m cheap” to dinner guests like a spice rack full of cheap-looking spice bottles, when my bottle of Hannaford Basil Leaves runs out, I’ll spend the extra buck and buy McCormick, all the while lamenting over the loss of yet another Maine brand to global corporatism.