| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | NASDAQ: SPTN |
| Industry | Retail (Grocery) |
| Founded | 1917 |
| Headquarters | Byron Township, Michigan |
| Key people | Dennis Eidson, President and CEO Craig Sturken, Executive Chairman |
| Products | Private label grocery brands, Distributor, Grocery Store Management and Operation |
| Website | Spartanstores.com |
Spartan Stores Inc. is an American food distributor and grocery store chain headquartered in Byron Township, Michigan.[1][2] The company distributes national and Spartan brand products to over 400 independent grocery stores in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.
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The chain was founded in 1917 as the Grand Rapids Wholesale Grocery Company. The present name has been used since 1957. For most of its history, Spartan was a cooperative. Spartan changed to "for profit" in the 1970s and was first traded on the NASDAQ in August 2000.
Spartan's retail operations started as independent grocery chains. However, in 1999, it bought the Family Fare, Great Day, Glen's, Ashcraft's, and Prevo's supermarket chains from their respective owners. To simplify advertising, the brands were consolidated into two: Family Fare in the south and Glen's in the north, each being the majority in its respective region.
Family Fare and Glen's now use the same advertising package: "Closer. Faster. Friendlier. You're in the (store name) neighborhood."
In 2000, Spartan Stores merged with the Seaway Food Town company whose operations included 47 Food Town Supermarkets and 26 The Pharm deep-discount drugstores. After the merger, the Food Town stores operated under their own banners, but heavy competition in areas where Food Town and The Pharm operated meant lower margins, and these stores proved to be a drag on the merged company's resources. Between 2000 and 2003, the company closed or sold eight Food Town Supermarkets and five The Pharm drugstores. In 2003, with an unmanageable debt load, Spartan Stores announced that they were selling or closing all the 39 remaining Food Town stores and restructuring the company.
In December 2005, Spartan Stores announced plans to purchase D&W Food Centers. The transaction officially became complete at the end of March 2006. Ten of the twenty stores purchased retained the D&W banner, six others were converted to the Family Fare banner, and the remaining four; Northtown, Norton Shores, Walker, and Zeeland were closed permanently.
In 2006, the company acquired through liquidation, five defunct Carter's Foods the fates of which have not been determined. Felpausch of Hastings, Michigan was acquired in 2007. The company has since renovated one former store, in Williamston, Michigan, to the D&W Fresh Market banner and several others to the Family Fare banner. The future banners of the remaining Felpausch stores remains unannounced.
In April 2008, Spartan announced that "certain assets" from 12 of the 14 remaining Pharm stores will be sold to Rite Aid. The remaining two stores will be sold in separate transactions. At this point, it is unclear which stores will remain open or if the name will be changed. The sale was finalized in late May 2008.
In October 2008, it was announced that Spartan would be purchasing the VGs Grocery and Pharmacy stores in Michigan.
In late January of 2011, another Felpausch store, this time located in Grand Ledge, Michigan, was converted to a Family Fare store.