Aerial view of Swanson's Foods market — 5/23/65 — #48082_1
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Photograph Copyright Anderson & Middleton Company
United States — Washington (State) — Hoquiam
Chehalis River
Swanson's Foods
Thanks to Barbara Peters for contributing information and thanks also to Mark Swanson, third generation owner of Swanson's Foods Inc. The company has three stores in Aberdeen and Hoquiam. Mr. Swanson notes that the Hoquiam store was built in 1959.
Thanks to Sam Talley, who writes: "Swanson's would buy large quantities of an item for a reduced wholesale price and pass the savings on to their customers. That's how they could always outprice the competition. Swanson's also had a restaurant supply business. One time in the 1970's Kraft Foods was going to have a $1/box price increase on 50 lb. boxes of shortening used for deep frying. Chuck Swanson could make one last purchase at the lower price. He figured he'd buy a whole semi-truck load of 300 boxes which were each about 2 cubic feet square. He ordered six truck loads or 1,800 boxes. We filled the storage room with them at the Aberdeen store on Simpson Ave., put all we could in the Ice Palace which was shut down but used for Swanson's storage, and still had one semi-truck load to deliver. There was no place to put it. Chuck said "Take it out to my house in Central Park (across from the drive-in theater) and put it in my garage". We backed the truck up his home driveway to the garage. Mrs. Swanson came out of her house and we explained Mr. Swanson's instruction. 'No you're not' she angrily replied. 'My garage is full of my lawn furniture and stuff. Get that truck out of here.' We drove down the road a short distance and called Mr. Swanson to explain the situation. He told us to wait one hour and go back to his house and he'd have her out of there. We returned to the home and she was gone, so we took all the lawn furniture out of the garage and set it in the yard. We then stuffed three hundred 50 lb boxes of shortening into the garage, closed the door, and got the hell out of there. I never heard another word about the incident. That was the Swanson way of keeping down prices for his customers.”
