Harris Teeter

Harris Teeter

File:Harris Teeter logo.jpg
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail (Grocery)
Founded	1936, Charlotte, North Carolina
Headquarters	Matthews, North Carolina
Number of locations	207 stores (December 2011)
Area served	Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia
Key people	Thomas Dickson, CEO and Chairman Fred Morganthall, President and COO Rodney Antolock, EVP Operations Dan Marrett, Northern Region Vice President Craig McKenzie, Central Region Vice President John Rohr, Southern Region Vice President
Products	Bakery, dairy, deli, frozen foods, grocery, meat, pharmacy, produce, seafood, snacks, and flowers
Revenue	US$3.66 billion (2008)
Number of employees	24,500
Parent	Ruddick Corporation
Website	harristeeter.com

Harris Teeter is a chain of supermarkets based in Matthews, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte. As of December 2011, the chain operates 207 stores in eight Southern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. Harris Teeter is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Charlotte-based Harris Teeter Supermarkets Inc. (NYSE: HTSI). The current president of Harris Teeter is Fred J. Morganthall II. Supermarket News ranked Harris Teeter No. 34 in the 2010 "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" based on 2009 fiscal year sales of $2.92 billion. Based on 2005 revenue, Harris Teeter is the ninety-third largest retailer in the United States.

History

Harris Teeter traces its origins to two pioneering entrepreneurs William Thomas Harris and Willis L. Teeter in Depression-era Charlotte. Harris, an employee of the A&P store on Central Avenue and Pecan that was Charlotte's first supermarket, borrowed funds in 1936 to open the Harris Super Market at 1704 Central Avenue. The store had eight employees. It was primarily a dry goods store because frozen foods and refrigeration did not become common until World War II. To the family and then employees, it was known as Store #1. Today this store, now Harris Teeter store #201, is still in operation but will be replaced by a two story store on the same site. Work will start in Spring of 2012 and will end in Summer of 2013.

Harris' store was the first in North Carolina to allow customers to select their own groceries off shelves. Before this time, customers handed a shopping list to a clerk, who then selected the groceries for the customers. The store was also open until 9:00 p.m. on Fridays, at a time when most grocery stores closed their doors at 5:00. This was done to appeal to working families and to capture their grocery shopping after they were paid on Fridays. Later, the Harris Super Market was the first grocery store in Charlotte to add air conditioning. However, as a devout Baptist, Harris refused to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in any of his stores, including the post-merger Harris Teeter supermarkets until the acquisition by Ruddick.

Harris also ran his own dairy farm and sold products from his dairy in his stores. For his wife, LaVerne, the dairy products carried the brand name of Vernedale Farms. Harris pioneered the first dairy co-op among local dairy farmers. After running the co-op for several years, he negotiated its sale to Pet Dairy.

Harris Super Markets began primarily as a family business. Most of Harris's brothers and sisters were employees, and brothers and brothers-in-law were store managers. His sister, Sarah, ran the accounting department and his wife's sister was Harris's personal secretary. His son, Donald Thomas Harris, began working for the company at 8 years old by sweeping floors. Donald suggested that Harris Teeter should carry more than just food products, and recommended the introduction of health and beauty aids, school supplies, bakeware, kitchen tools, and seasonal items (such as coolers in the summer). His father liked the idea and told Don that he should create and run that division of the company, which he did until his retirement in 1995. He was the last member of the family that worked for the company.

Harris was instrumental in the permanent placement of kindergarten in the North Carolina public school system, and supported the effort to turn Charlotte College into what is known today as the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He was a lifelong trustee for Wingate College, which began as a two year Baptist community college and transformed into the Wingate University. W.T. Harris Boulevard in Charlotte is named after him.

In 1939, Willis L. Teeter – who also worked for A&P, at its Mooresville, North Carolina store – and his brother Paul borrowed $1,700 to open Teeter's Food Mart on Main Street in Mooresville, north of Charlotte. Teeter's store implemented many of the innovations pioneered by Harris at his store, and both stores were successful in fairly short order.

Eventually, the two chains contained 15 total stores by the late 1950s, and in 1958 the companies began sharing storage and buying procedures. The merger of Harris Super Markets and Teeter's Food Marts became official on February 1, 1960; the first store to open under the new banner of Harris Teeter Supermarkets was in Kannapolis.

New ownership and 1980's expansion

Harris Teeter was purchased in 1969 by holding company Ruddick Corporation of Charlotte, North Carolina. After selling its only other holding, American and Efird Thread, this year, Ruddick will now be officially changing its name to the "Harris-Teeter Corporation Inc". This will take place early in 2012 to bring more image recognition for Ruddick through the highly successful Harris-Teeter grocery store chain.

In 1970 the chain introduced the Big M discount concept to compete with Colonial Stores Big Star and A&P's "WEO". Those stores were mainly in working class neighborhoods while upper-class areas retained Harris Teeter. By 1976, the chain merged the two back to Harris Teeter/More Value and finally Harris Teeter in 1979.

Harris Teeter's 1980 purchase of the Hunter Farms dairy in High Point, North Carolina, enabled the company to substantially reduce dairy costs; today, all Harris Teeter-brand and Hunter Farms-brand dairy products come from the Hunter dairy. Hunter also provides dairy products to companies and organizations not associated with Harris Teeter, including convenience stores, schools, Lowe's Foods private label ice creams and the Wendy's Frosty.

In 1984, Harris Teeter purchased several Food World stores in and around Greensboro, also acquiring a warehouse in the western part of Greensboro as part of the purchase. This marked the first foray of the company outside its Charlotte base and also began a demographic shift still in process today. Before this point, the company was a grocer in the vein of Piggly Wiggly, where a mix of rural and urban stores made up the company in general. Past this point, Harris Teeter began to focus more on higher-income urban sites. This trend continued with HT's 1988 purchase of Big Star Supermarkets, giving it a foothold in the Raleigh-Durham market.

Ashcraft retired in 1986, and Edward Dunn took over as president of Harris Teeter in that year. On Dunn's watch, Harris Teeter began expansion outside North Carolina. The first expanded stores were in northern South Carolina, near Charlotte; later expansions led the company to Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. The "Very Important Customer" program, popularly known as VIC, was introduced late in Dunn's tenure. This program was one of the first widespread loyalty card programs now popular throughout American grocery stores. The VIC program advertised "giveaways" such as turkeys for Thanksgiving, beach apparel for the summer, and gift cards to Harris Teeter stores.

Harris Teeter was one of the first chains to test plastic grocery bags, in 1981, and to add child-restraint belts to shopping carts, in 1985.

The chain's flagship store during the 1980s was in Charlotte's Cotswold neighborhood. It featured a waterfall and a fresh orange juice machine in the produce department, and for a brief period stocked fresh truffles that were flown in from France and priced at $300 a pound.

Harris Teeter today and further expansion

States with Harris Teeter stores

Fred Morganthall became president of Harris Teeter upon Dunn's 1997 retirement. Morganthall has overseen further expansion of the supermarket since taking over as company president. His first initial expansions moved Harris Teeter into Nashville, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida which happened right after his take-over as president, through the end of the 1990's. However the moves into Atlanta and Jacksonville ended up proving unsuccessful after a few short years.

During the end of the 1990's was when Harris Teeter briefly expanded into Atlanta with 15 stores around the city and its suburbs. There were plans to further expand in Atlanta, but these plans were only partially fulfilled and poorly executed, leaving the chain to pull out of the Atlanta market altogether in 2001. Atlanta already had an established supermarket base with Publix and Kroger. The former Harris Teeter stores in Atlanta were bought by and converted to Kroger stores after.

Harris Teeter originally operated three stores in the greater Jacksonville area when they expanded into that market in the late 1990's. However only one store remains opened serving Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach, and thus making it Harris Teeter's only Florida location, albeit just south of the Georgia border. The Mandarin area store closed in 2004. October 3, 2006 brought the closing of its Ponte Vedra Beach location.

Starting in the 2000's, Harris Teeter has attempted to differentiate itself from its competitors by providing exceptional customer service and newly "branded" departments. The first department to be "branded" was the meat department, which in June 2002 began offering "Harris Teeter Rancher" beef. This was followed by the introductions of the Farmers' Market (produce department, October 2003), the Fisherman's Market (seafood department, April 2004), and the Fresh Foods Market (deli/bakery, January 2005). Gourmet imported items are sold under the "H.T. Traders" brand.

Harris Teeter stores are now separated into 3 regions and 15 districts. The Northern Region, based in Fairfax, Virginia, encompasses all stores in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the northern coastal area of North Carolina. The Central Region, based in Raleigh, encompasses stores from Greensboro/High Point to Wilmington and Albemarle. The Southern Region, based in Charlotte, contains stores in southwestern North Carolina (including Charlotte and Winston-Salem), Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

The official mascot of Harris Teeter has been "Harry the Happy Dragon" since 1992. Its slogan is "Your Neighborhood Food Market", although the older slogan "The Best Is What We're All About" still appears frequently in stores. An advertising campaign that debuted in 2004 features the slogan "My Harris Teeter", which is used as a jingle.

The first Harris Teeter in Washington, D.C., opened in 2008.

As of August 2007, Harris Teeter has over 18,000 employees, and is the largest supermarket chain in North Carolina (Food Lion being number two).

By the mid to late 2000's, expansion to the Outer Banks of North Carolina has already begun with stores in Corolla (May 2006), Kill Devil Hills (July 2006), and Morehead City (February 2009). The first store in Maryland opened in Darnestown on October 31, 2006; the second opened in May 2008 in Columbia's Village of Kings Contrivance, replacing the closed Safeway. The first store in Washington, D.C. opened in 2008.

Harris Teeter continues its shift into high-income urban areas to this day; most new stores opened in Morganthall's tenure conform to this pattern. Stores such as the original Harris Super Market, located near uptown Charlotte, remain grandfathered into the current system. With Harris Teeter's further expansion into the upscale markets, many of their older stores in lower income neighborhoods or small towns are being shut down as a result. A demographic change or increased competition with stores like Wal-Mart Supercenter could be to blame for decrease in sales at these stores. One of Harris Teeter's oldest stores at Eastland Mall in Charlotte closed on June 22, 2006.

The chain's largest store and new flagship location opened in Greensboro's The Shops at Friendly Center on November 8, 2006, and it encompasses 72,000 square feet (6,700 m²).

The chain's expansion into Baltimore, originally set for 2010, has been delayed due to "construction and financial problems". The store is set to open in the Locust Point neighborhood in 2011.

The parent company currently trades on the New York Stock Exchange as Harris Teeter Supermarkets, Inc. (NYSE: HTSI, formerly Ruddick Corporation (NYSE:RDK), and had consolidated revenues of $4.3 billion for the fiscal year ended October 2, 2011 ("Fiscal 2011").

Harris Teeter Express Lane

Also known as Harris Teeter Home Shopping, Express Lane allows you to shop for your groceries online and pick them up at your neighborhood Harris Teeter. So far, only select stores offer this, due to demand.

Photos

• 
  A store in Apex, NC
• 
  A store in Chapel Hill, NC
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  A store in Charlotte, NC
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  Flagship store in Charlotte, NC
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  An entrance of a store in Apex, NC
• 
  Deli area of a store in Apex, NC

External links

• Official site
• Ruddick Corporation official site