Nope. California, but yes it was Haggen. Thanks for reminding me of the name, I had forgotten it! I remember going there once and being gobsmacked at how expensive the place was. Like they were trying to charge Whole Foods prices for a regular grocery store.

> Trying to take over 5X times as many stores as you were running before is a huge operational challenge.

It reminded me of Frontier (tiny little telco) buying up a huge chunk of Verizon's wireline business in 2009. They still run it, but it's been rough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications#Purcha...

The firm that owned Haggen paid for most of those stores by selling off most of the real estate and sticking the stores with rental payments. As I recall they expanded into CA, AZ, and NV before failing.

I don't have a good timeline in my head but I remember they did a push to make the stores nicer, adding things like a wine bar. And then suddenly they were heading downhill. They had good produce, but I think some of that was turnover. Once the customers moved stores that went away.