Sitka family passes ownership of grocery store to Albertsons/Safeway
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 8 minutes ago
- 3 min read
By Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Just before 9 p.m. Tuesday the Hames family and many of their friends gathered around a Sea Mart checkout aisle as store owners Roger and Mary Hames filled their cart to the brim with groceries, and paid with a charge slip, one last time.
In the final moments before Albertsons/Safeway assumed ownership of Sea Mart, Roger joked: “The way we’re shopping you’d think we’re selling the store.”
Roger and Mary Hames announced in November that after carefully considering all options and offers, they would sell Sea Mart, Market Center, Watson Point Liquors, Cascade Convenience Center and, in Ketchikan, Newtown Liquor to Albertsons/Safeway, a national grocery store chain.
The Hames family's grocery business goes back to 1949, when Roger's grandparents, Hopewell and Clarence Rands, opened Market Center at the corner of Baranof and Biorka streets.
“This 77-year relationship with the community of Sitka is and has been very special, and we are just blessed,” Roger Hames said Tuesday evening as he looked out at the ocean from the Sea Mart parking lot.
“It's been a privilege to serve our community for three generations, and with five generations of family members working in our store," he remarked.
“I guess I didn't really quite think it through to this moment — this time,” he said. “Though we've looked forward to this for a long time, when it finally happens, it just boggles my mind.”
“It’s surreal,” said Brian Hames, Roger and Mary’s son who has worked at the stores all his life and now manages the Cascade and Watson Point stores.
“It's surreal that this is my whole life and my dad's whole life,” Brian said. “It hasn't really hit me yet. It's just such a dramatic change for the family, certainly the end of an era."
He will continue managing the two stores, and “starting tomorrow, I'll be a Safeway employee," he said.
“Because of the liquor licenses and the laws around that, we have to wait for those to transfer,” Brian said. “That takes some time, so we're looking at about seven to eight months, probably before the (Cascade and Watson Point) stores are fully switched over.”
“Not knowing what the future holds ... hopefully it's going to remain in some identifiable, familiar way, but it's exciting and it's sad and it's everything else in between,” Brian said.
All the Hames stores will keep their current names, and the same staff teams will keep the stores running, Roger and Mary said in a statement this week.
Over the past few weeks store employees have been busy scanning all grocery and retail items into the Albertsons/Safeway database, and this morning workers were preparing to switch out signs and price tags marking items inside the store.
All the stores were closed from late Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning so that workers could set up the Albertsons/Safeway computer system, install new self-checkout machine consoles in Sea Mart, and complete other steps in the hand-off.
As the 9 p.m. hour struck Tuesday, the Hames family shared emotional moments, and took family photos in the store entryway, before Roger turned his key to lock the sliding entry doors one last time.
“We're grateful,” he told the Sentinel. “We are. If I went back to change anything, I don't think I would change anything. This is our home. This is where I was born. This is where my wife and I have been for our 48 years and one day of knowing each other … It's just been a really great, great place to be and to grow up and do business."
“I'm just honored to be part of this,” Mary said. “We love Sitka so much. And we're not leaving. We're here, but this is a huge, huge emotional deal for us today, and I'm just thankful. Thankful is the word that comes to me all the time.”
• This story originally appeared in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
