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Hy-Vee
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Hy-Vee is an employee owned chain of supermarkets located in the Midwestern United States.
As of November 2008, Hy-Vee operates 197 supermarkets and 26 drugstores in seven states. Over 100 of its supermarkets are located in Iowa, with additional stores in Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota with expansion under way into Wisconsin. They also operate 26 Hy-Vee Drugstores (formerly branded as DrugTown) in Iowa and Nebraska. Hy-Vee also operates liquor stores under the names Regal Liquors and Hy-Vee Wine & Spirits.
Most Hy-Vee stores are full-service supermarkets with bakeries, delicatessens, banks, florists, and pharmacies.
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Hy-Vee is an employee owned chain of supermarkets located in the Midwestern United States.
As of November 2008, Hy-Vee operates 197 supermarkets and 26 drugstores in seven states. Over 100 of its supermarkets are located in Iowa, with additional stores in Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota with expansion under way into Wisconsin. They also operate 26 Hy-Vee Drugstores (formerly branded as DrugTown) in Iowa and Nebraska. Hy-Vee also operates liquor stores under the names Regal Liquors and Hy-Vee Wine & Spirits.
Most Hy-Vee stores are full-service supermarkets with bakeries, delicatessens, banks, florists, and pharmacies. To keep pace with Wal-Mart's recent expansion into the gas station business, Hy-Vee has also added gas stations with convenience stores to some of its properties. Customers are often given a discount of several cents per gallon of gas when their grocery receipt is shown.
Hy-Vee is known for its longtime advertising slogan, "Where there's a helpful smile in every aisle", whose music was written by James Poulsen. The slogan was adopted for Hy-Vee's first television commercial in 1963.
Two-time National Football League MVP Kurt Warner once stocked shelves at a Hy-Vee store in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After being cut by the Green Bay Packers at age 24, he thought his football career might be over and worked there to cover bills.
Hy-Vee's largest store is located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which has over of retail space in the store. Hy-Vee keeps opening bigger stores, so the largest store will change every 6 months to every year.
History
The company was founded by Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg, when they opened a general store in Beaconsfield, Iowa, in 1930. More stores were started, and in 1938, the company incorporated into Hyde & Vredenburg, Inc. Hyde & Vredenburg had 15 stores in Iowa and Missouri at that point. In 1945 Hyde & Vredenburg moved its corporate headquarters from Lamoni to Chariton, Iowa, after acquiring the Chariton Wholesale Company.
The Hy-Vee name, a contraction of Hyde and Vredenburg, was adopted in 1952 as the winning entry of an employee contest. The first store to open under the Hy-Vee name opened in Fairfield, Iowa, in 1953. The company's name was officially changed to Hy-Vee
Food Stores, Inc., in 1963. In 1969 Hy-Vee expanded into Minnesota after acquiring the Swanson Stores chain based in Cherokee, Iowa. That year it opened its first DrugTown pharmacy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; in 2005 all DrugTown stores were renamed Hy-Vee Drugstores in order to reflect the relationship between the chain's pharmacies and supermarkets.
Hy-Vee continued expanding during the 1970s and 1980s, opening stores in South Dakota (1975), Nebraska (1977), Illinois (1979), and Kansas (1988). Hy-Vee's 100th store, which was also its first to use electronic cash registers, opened in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1975. By the end of 1989 Hy-Vee had 172 stores in seven states. In 1995 Hy-Vee moved its corporate headquarters from Chariton to its current home in West Des Moines, Iowa, while shortening its name to Hy-Vee, Inc. The company still has its primary distribution center in Chariton; a second distribution center is located in Cherokee, Iowa.
Hy-Vee purchased the naming rights to the Iowa Events Center's exhibition hall in 2001; Hy-Vee Hall was completed in December 2004. Hy-Vee also sponsors the annual Hy-Vee Triathlon in West Des Moines and the Hy-Vee Cy-Hawk Series, a series of athletic competitions between Iowa State University and the University of Iowa that began in 2004. It also sponsored the Legends Tour's Hy-Vee Classic golf tournament in Johnston, Iowa, from 2000 to 2006 before it discontinued the tournament in order to focus on the Hy-Vee Triathlon. Hy-Vee has long served as a sponsor of Major League Baseball's Kansas City Royals. Before and during the 2008 Summer Olympics, Hy-Vee ran a television ad featuring eventual gold medalist Shawn Johnson, who is from West Des Moines, where Hy-Vee is headquartered.
Throughout its history Hy-Vee has branched out from its retail operations by acquiring several companies that provide services to its stores. Hy-Vee's non-retail subsidiaries are:
- D & D Foods, Inc., a supplier of fresh salads based in Omaha, Nebraska
- Florist Distributing, Inc., a distributor of flowers and plants based in Des Moines, Iowa
- Hy-Vee Weitz, L.C., a construction company based in Des Moines
- Lomar Distributing, Inc., a specialty food distributor based in Des Moines
- Midwest Heritage Bank, FSB, a bank based out of Chariton, Iowa
- Perishable Distributors of Iowa, Ltd., a distributor of meat, seafood, and ice cream, based in Ankeny, Iowa
Hy-Vee Inc. employs over 52,000 individuals and is the largest employer in the state of Iowa. The company has annual sales of over $5.84 billion. In 2007, Hy-Vee ranked 47th on Forbes magazine's annual list of the largest privately owned companies in the United States.
When the rival Eagle Food Centers chain of supermarkets ceased operations, Hy-Vee had purchased several of the locations. Initially Hy-Vee intended to remodel the buildings and reopen them as Hy-Vees, however the company later decided to demolish and replace the buildings with newer ones. The company often repeats this process with other purchased locations, in order to maintain a consistent corporate image.
In November 2007, Hy-Vee announced plans to open a store in Madison, Wisconsin, on the site of an abandoned K-Mart. Planning to begin work once approval is given, The company hopes to have the store open within the next year, this would be the first Hy-Vee location in Wisconsin, it Is also looking to tear down a big chunk of the blighted Westgate Mall on the west side of Madison and build a new 83,000-square-foot, full-service grocery. If all the city approvals can be secured, Hy-Vee hopes to open at Westgate by the summer of 2010. Plans call for razing everything in the Westgate mall south of the existing T.J. Maxx store, which would remain. The city's Urban Design Committee approved the plan to build the store on Wednesday night January 21 2009, On February 9 2009.The Madison Plan Commission approved the grocery store at Westgate Mall despite conflicts with the city's long-range plans for the site.
Hy-Vee attorney Henry Gempeler invoked the phrase "shovel ready" in explaining the project will create 350 new jobs while breathing life into the existing mall, which serves 29 other businesses and some 200 employees but has struggled of late.
"This is a business willing to invest its own dollars into a project that is going to be a catalyst for the rest of the area," he said.
Hy-Vee would provide the capital to construct the new grocery store while mall owner J. Herzog & Sons of Denver would retain ownership of the real estate. Hy-Vee would also make improvements to the parking lot and provide a pedestrian access through the site to the park space behind the center on Segoe Road.
If all the city approvals can be secured, Hy-Vee hopes to open at Westgate by the summer of 2010, said spokesman Pete Hosch.
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Hy-Vee Song
The full Hy-Vee song was used in older television commercials. Only the last line is used in current commercials.
More ways to save, more reasons to smile,
Hy-Vee's the store that fits my style!
It's so convenient when I'm on the go,
Always low prices and faces I know!
That's my Hy-Vee (Shop Hy-Vee),
Where there's a helpful smile in every aisle!
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