Market Basket’s multimillion-dollar loss during this summer’s six-week employee walkout and virtual shutdown was rival supermarket Hannaford’s gain.
The Maine-based Hannaford chain saw a $100 million jump in sales when Market Basket customers defected to other supermarkets — largely in its approximately 30 stores that overlap with Market Basket territory — its parent company, Belgium’s Delhaize Group, said in an earnings call Thursday.
The boost from the “temporary competitive dynamics” at Hannaford helped Delhaize America, which also includes the Food Lion chain, to same-store sales growth of 5.3 percent for the third quarter. Total U.S. revenue grew 5.9 percent to $4.66 billion.
“We estimate that such market disruption has increased Delhaize America’s comparable store sales by around 210 basis points for the quarter,” Delhaize Group Chief Financial Officer Pierre Bouchut said. But, he qualified, the additional revenue didn’t translate into a significant gain as Hannaford incurred extra cost, mainly for labor, “to serve our clients as best as possible during these exceptional circumstances.”
“We saw a substantial increase in transaction count during that time,” said Kevin Holt, CEO of Delhaize America. “At the same time, we also worked very hard on trying to improve our store operation and present ourselves better, as well as making some strategic price investments. Our intent is to hold on to all of the customers that we can.”
Market Basket got back into business very quickly, Holt said.
“It’s a little early for us to tell right now how many customers it will actually hold on to,” he said.
Distributed by MCT Information Services