Business is buzzing for Haggen Foods’ catering

Sue Bussinger’s catering staff can whip up a meal for eight or 800.

Her event planners can coordinate every detail of even the most haute events, from the decor to the flower arrangements to the wine. Her cake designers can rival any bakery in the area, she said, and her executive chef worked at fine-dining restaurants. A small fleet of vans delivers. She has a wait staff ready and chefs who will prepare a dinner party in your kitchen. Consumers who want convenience can order carry-out catering online.

It sounds chi-chi but customers can find this catering company, known as Market Street Catering, at a local supermarket not far from aisles stocked with pet food, toilet paper and frozen foods.

Haggen quietly launched full-service catering two years ago. Before then Haggen, like many supermarkets in the area, offered carryout items such as party platters and boxed meals, but the company wanted to take catering services to the next level, said Bussinger, the general manager for catering.

The company found customers wanted more appetizer selections and more gourmet options such as artisan cheeses. Now the catering chefs create gourmet dishes and appetizers such as wild mushroom, caramelized onion and goat cheese tarts and bruschetta with roasted garlic, Cambazola and Grape Veronique, both $18 a dozen.

Market Street Catering uses a production kitchen, one in Bellingham and the other in the Marysville store, and the company recently added a Web site feature that allows shoppers to place orders and pay from home. All the area Haggen stores offer kiosks stocked with information including menus, brochures and courtesy phones so customers at any store can use the catering services.

Bussinger describes Market Street Catering as a company within a company. It functions independently but it uses the resources of the grocery store. When the catering chef needs prime rib he walks to the meat department and chats with the manager. The bakery bakes the bread for the catering company. And when a customer wants flowers, the event coordinator uses the store’s floral department. The catering company will use Haggen employees to staff events.

She said this one-stop-shopping model appeals to busy customers who can plan an entire event at one location. About half of their business comes from social events such as weddings and retirement parties and the other half comes from companies that need a picnic or business meeting catered.

“Much of our business results from customers seeing us someplace else and tasting our food and learning about our level of culinary expertise,” Bussinger said. “It’s been a good year for us.”

The addition of full-service catering and a production kitchen in Marysville have contributed to an average growth rate in sales of 33 percent annually in the last four years. In Snoho­mish County alone, the sales have risen 44 percent each of the past two years, according to statistics provided by the company.

Nearly all supermarkets do some level of catering, such as custom cakes from the bakery or prepared party trays from the deli, said Bert Hambleton of Issaquah-based Hambleton Resources Inc., a marketing consultant for retail grocers. He couldn’t name another supermarket in Snohomish County with this level of catering, although he said what Haggen is doing isn’t uncommon in upscale grocers nationwide.

The now defunct Larry’s Markets in Seattle provided full-service catering for years. Ralphs Grocery Co., a chain of upscale supermarkets with headquarters in Los Angeles, offers similar services at some of its markets.

The challenge with this business model, Hambleton said, is it’s outside the scope of how the grocery business model operates.

“A grocery store is a grocery store,” he said. “It makes money by stocking everyday products you need every day. You walk up and down the aisles, fill up your cart, take it through the checkout and take it home. That’s what they’re good at.”

Catering is a different business model and a different avenue for making money, he said. When a supermarket adds what amounts to an entirely new business venture it adds an element of risk. The business faces new issues such as food spoilage, transportation and hiring and training a wait staff.

It often takes a keen financial eye to make this sort of venture work, and what most supermarkets do have on their side are accountants who know how to control costs effectively, Hambleton said. In fact, a supermarket such as Haggen may have an advantage over an independent caterer who cooks up a business from scratch, he said.

Consumers often have trouble making the mental leap from grocery store to catering company, he said. Since people don’t naturally associate grocery stores with upscale catering, a supermarket will have to work hard to convince consumers they can compete with independent catering services.

“Haggen can probably cater the pants off all kinds of people, but getting people to buy it is going to be a little more difficult,” Hambleton said.

It’s all about how consumers perceive the business, he said. Branding the catering side of the business with a different name is one way a supermarket can make such a venture successful. That’s just what the catering service at Haggen has done by calling their catering business Market Street Catering. That gives the catering part of the business some distance from the supermarket image, he said. It also allows the grocery store to recommend the catering company to customers.

Bussinger said running a catering company associated with the Haggen brand is easier than starting a company from scratch because consumers have a positive association with the supermarket.

“The name Haggen in the community is respected as a place to get quality food,” she said. “I think that’s definitely a platform to launch from rather than launching from a platform nobody knows.”

The association also has its downside. Luring qualified culinary experts to the business took time and patience, she said. Not everyone immediately thinks elegant when they think supermarket.

“It is a bit of a challenge,” she said. “When people are looking for culinary opportunities, I don’t think most of them think grocery store on the outset. Many would think they’d be working in a deli in some sort of food-production service. They don’t expect to be exposed to the level of food being done by someone like us.”

Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.