New Seasons Market
New Seasons Market or New Seasons is a chain of privately owned grocery stores operating in the Portland, Oregon metro area, southwestern Washington, Seattle, and northern California. Some of the products offered are organic and produced locally in the Pacific Northwest, but conventional groceries are also sold.
Founded by three families and 50 of their friends in 1999, the company was majority acquired by private equity firm Endeavour Capital in 2013 and purchased California-based New Leaf Community Markets in November 2013. In December 2019, a deal was announced to sell New Seasons Market to , a subsidiary of South Korean company E-mart.
The company currently operates 18 stores in the greater Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area, including Hillsboro, Beaverton, Happy Valley, Vancouver, Tualatin, and Lake Oswego; and one store in San Jose, California.
History
New Seasons was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. By 2008, it had grown to nine stores and about 1,800 employees. By November 2013, New Seasons had grown to 15 stores and 3,000 employees, when it purchased California-based New Leaf Community Markets and New Leaf founder Scott Roseman joined the New Seasons Board.New Seasons Market
In November 2013, Endeavour Capital invested $17.5M in New Seasons Market, according to SEC filings. Bradaigh Wagner and Stephen Babson, Managing Directors at Endeavour, now sit on the board of New Seasons Market.
In 2013, New Seasons became the first grocery store in the world to be certified as a B Corporation. B Corp certification is issued by global non-profit B Lab to for-profit companies meeting social sustainability, environmental performance, accountability, and transparency standards. The company earned re-certification in 2015 and 2017, recognized for employee benefits, community non-profit donations and volunteer hours, environmental programs and transparent governance. In December 2017, New Seasons Market employees and the Northwest Accountability Project asked B Lab to review the company's certification based on claims of anti-union activity and Endeavour's financial ties to the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust.
In January 2019, then co-president Forrest Hoffmaster assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, and former co-president Kristi McFarland took on the role of Chief Strategy Officer, alongside Chief Operations Officer Mark Law and Chief Marketing Officer Mary Wright.
In December 2019, parent company Endeavour Capital announced that it would be selling the grocery chain to E-mart in a sale transaction that is expected to be finalized in early 2020. Details of the transaction include the retention of CEO Forrest Hoffmaster who will continue running the business, the continuance of the organization as a B Corp, the halt of existing plans for expanding the chain, and the closure of the store located in the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle.
Stores
- Arbor Lodge is located in North Portland. Built from the ground up in 2005, Arbor Lodge is located next to the Yellow MAX line at N. Rosa Parks Way and Interstate Avenue.
- Ballard, Seattle, opened in May of 2018 on Ballard Way. This is the second store in the greater Seattle area. This location will close by the end of 2019 as part of the sale of the company to e-mart.
- Cedar Hills is located in a former roller skating rink at Cedar Hills Crossing shopping center. Opened in 2006.
- Concordia in Northeast Portland, is located near Concordia University in the neighborhood by the same name. Constructed and opened in 2001 at NE 33rd & Killingsworth.
- Evergreen in San Jose, California, is a rebranded New Leaf Community Markets store, and the first New Seasons location outside of the Portland metropolitan area.
- Fisher's Landing opened in October 2011 in Vancouver, becoming the first New Seasons Market store outside Oregon, in a former Albertsons LLC retail store.
- Grant Park is located at NE 32nd and Broadway in the Grant Park Village development. It opened in November 2014.
- Happy Valley is located in a suburb east of Portland. Opened 2007 at 157th & Sunnyside Road.
- Hawthorne opened in October 2010 at SE 40th & Hawthorne in the Richmond neighborhood, on the site where Daily Grind Natural Foods once stood.
- Mercer Island opened in November 2016 in Mercer Island, Washington, and was the first store in the greater Seattle area.
- Mountain Park opened in 2006 at a long-disused Thriftway in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego.
- Nyberg Rivers is located in a redeveloped shopping center in Tualatin. It opened in October 2014.
- Orenco Station is located in Hillsboro is part of a development near the Westside MAX. Opened in 2001 as the third store in the chain.
- Progress Ridge is located in the Tigard/Beaverton area. Opened in 2011.
- Raleigh Hills is New Seasons Market's first store, opened in 1999, a former Kienow's grocery store site.
- Sellwood is New Seasons Market's second store, on the corner of the Sellwood antique district. The building used to house a Piggly Wiggly, as portrayed within the paint of the store's inside.
- Seven Corners opened in 2004 in a remodeled Red Apple grocery and laundromat. It is located in Southeast Portland neighborhood of Hosford-Abernethy, at the seven corners formed by the intersection of SE Division Street, SE Ladd Avenue, and SE 20th Avenue on the southeast corner of Ladd's Addition.
- Slabtown is located on a former Con-way site at NW 21st and Raleigh in the Northwest District. It opened in August 2015.
- University Park is located at N Lombard and N Westanna in North Portland. It opened in March 2016.
- Williams is located in the Eliot neighborhood of North Portland. Opened in August 2013.
- Woodstock is located at SE Woodstock and 45th. It opened in October 2015.
Former
- Sunnyvale was located at 760 E El Camino Real, between Remington and Wolfe in Sunnyvale, CA.
- Emeryville, scheduled to open in 2018, was to be the anchor tenant of the Emeryville Public Market. In Feb 2018 it was announced they were pulling out of the project before construction was completed, as well as closing the nearby Sunnyvale store.
Community
GMO labeling
After encouraging vendors to voluntarily certify their products as GMO free in 2013, New Seasons publicly endorsed the GMO labeling campaign, Oregon Right to Know, in 2014, with continued public advocacy for non-GMO labeling and certification in 2017Wage initiatives
In 2015, New Seasons took a vocal position in support of raising the minimum wage in Oregon, raising starting wages at all stores to $12 an hour, and testifying at the Oregon State Senate hearings in 2016 in support of raising minimum wage across the state. New Seasons announced pay increases again in 2018, raising minimum pay to $15 across every region, effective February 2019.Controversies
Gentrification contributions
When New Seasons opened stores in the North Williams and St. Johns neighborhoods of Portland, some residents questioned if the stores would contribute to the gentrification of these historically black and working-class neighborhoods. In an interview with The Oregonian newspaper in 2015 former head of store development, Jerry Chevasuss said that the grocery store targets neighborhoods in the process of gentrification, and that often the addition of a New Seasons will push rents and home values higher, adding to that process.Some long-time Seattle residents voiced concerns that a planned store in the Central District, a formerly red-lined, historically black, neighborhood in Seattle currently undergoing rapid gentrification, would cater to new residents and not serve existing communities.