NEWPORT, Maine — Months into an organized campaign against Hannaford’s prices and policies, many Mainers shopping at the store said they were unaware of a public push to bring down the grocer’s prices.
A group called the New England Consumer Alliance has been organizing a “What Happened to Hannaford?” campaign with ads, mailers and protests outside some stores since the fall. The group, which is run from Pennsylvania despite its name, began by focusing on Hannaford’s sale of eggs from caged hens.
Hannaford’s parent company, the Dutch firm Ahold Delhaize, had previously said it would go to all cage-free eggs by 2025. While cage-free eggs are routinely available at stores here, the company says it is now aiming to meet its pledge to sell only cage-free eggs by 2032.
The campaign is continuing to expand. Recently, it has focused on affordability at the brand that dominates Maine’s grocery landscape with 68 stores from York to Fort Kent. Hannaford has disputed many of the claims. Outside the Newport store on Friday, many shoppers said they had not heard of the campaign, though several expressed concern about affordability at the store.
Scott Boisvert had not noticed any organized campaign, but he wasn’t surprised to hear there was one. He noted the area’s limited grocery options, saying he still shops at Hannaford while noting the Walmart just down the street but over the Palmyra line.
“Unless you want to drive to Bangor or Waterville, that’s really it,” he said.
The alliance recently published a “Poverty Tax Report,” claiming that Hannaford stores in lower-income areas charge more for identical baskets of groceries. Hannaford has said prices vary by location for reasons including geographic and inventory considerations but not the income level of the area.
“We do not under any circumstances take a community’s demographics into consideration when setting prices,” Ericka Dodge Katz, a spokesperson for the brand, said in a statement.
Hannaford was founded in Portland in 1883 and became a dominant grocery wholesaler in the region by 1920 and acquired stores in the 1960s. A predecessor to Ahold acquired the brand in 2000, merging it with former New England competitor Stop & Shop. The company operates the Food Lion brand in other parts of the country.
“For many folks, it is the only grocery store which is one of the more unique situations in the US, where Hannaford operates effectively local monopolies in some small towns,” Taylor Warren, the leader of the alliance, said.
The group’s parent organization, the Center for Responsible Food Business, has a broader aim at reforming America’s agribusiness sector, Warren said. It has gotten donations from groups tied to animal-rights causes, including $280,000 in 2024 from the California-based Good Ventures Foundation.
It’s unclear how big the campaign is. Warren’s group spent at least $116,000 on ads on two Portland TV affiliates between December and January, according to federal filings. It isn’t required to disclose digital ad spending on Facebook and sister platforms. There was also a mailer that went widely to Maine households earlier last year.
Gloria Denicola said she has shopped at the location in Newport for 50 years, often with her dog, Lucy. She had not heard of the campaign, but said that nowadays she only shops at Hannaford for “oddball things,” instead preferring to get other groceries from local shops.
Only one shopper who stopped to talk with a reporter in Newport, Kaleigh Haskell of Saint Albans, said she saw the campaign on social media. She mostly travels to Bangor to shop at BJ’s Wholesale Club but she chooses Hannaford as her more local option.
“I don’t really know what’s true and what’s not,” she said of the campaign.
Warren says Hannaford is just the beginning of his group’s effort. It isn’t done with the Maine chain, either.
“We can’t change the grocery sector overnight,” he said. “We have to start somewhere.”
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
