page_title: Haggen
section_title: 2015 expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Haggen / History / 2015 expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: Haggen in Woodland Hills shortly after transitioning from VONS in April 2015
context_page_description: Haggen Food & Pharmacy is a grocery retailer in Washington state.
  Haggen is headquartered in Bellingham, Washington, where it started in 1933 when Ben Haggen, Dorothy Haggen, and Doug Clark opened the first store on Bay Street in Bellingham. For many years, Haggen was the largest independent grocery retailer in the Pacific Northwest, with locations in Washington and Oregon. From 1982 through 2014, Haggen also operated Top Food & Drug.
  In late 2014, Haggen agreed to purchase and rebrand 146 West Coast Vons, Pavilions, Albertsons, and Safeway Inc. locations. This expanded Haggen's territory in Oregon, and to southern California, Nevada and Arizona, increasing the chain's locations from 18 stores with 16 pharmacies to 164 stores with 106 pharmacies, and the number of its employees from about 2,000 to about 10,000. On September 1, 2015, Haggen filed suit against Albertsons for false representations and anti-competitive practices, and on September 8, 2015, Haggen Food & Pharmacy filed for bankruptcy. Subsequent to the bankruptcy filing, Haggen announced that they would abandon the new stores and revert to operating as a strictly Washington state grocery chain.
context_section_description: In late 2014, Haggen agreed to purchase and rebrand 146 West Coast Safeway and Albertsons locations over the coming year as part of anti-monopoly requirements following the Albertsons-Safeway merger. This increased the chain's locations from 18 to 164, and its employees from about 2,000 to about 10,000. In Southern California, the rollout of the new Haggen supermarkets were to be phased in between March and June 2015, with the first Haggen store opening in Carlsbad, California on March 11, 2015. The entire conversion and rebranding process proceeded north to south over the five months from February to June 2015.
  On August 14, 2015, Haggen announced that it was closing 27 stores, including 16 supermarkets in California, 5 in Oregon, 5 in Arizona, and 1 in Washington.
  On September 1, 2015, Haggen announced that the company had filed a lawsuit against Albertsons LLC and Albertsons Holdings LLC ("Albertsons") seeking more than $1 billion in damages. The complaint, which was filed that day in United States District Court for the District of Delaware, alleged that following Haggen's December 2014 purchase of 146 Albertsons and Safeway stores, Albertsons engaged in "coordinated and systematic efforts to eliminate competition and Haggen as a viable competitor in over 130 local grocery markets in five states," and "made false representations to both Haggen and the FTC about Albertsons' commitment to a seamless transformation of the stores into viable competitors under the Haggen banner."
caption: Haggen in Woodland Hills, CA shortly after transitioning from Vons in April 2015. Now subdivided into Pet Food Express and Bristol Farms
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