HAGGEN ROLLS OUT PREMIUM MUFFIN LINE

LYNNE MILLER

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- Haggen Food and Pharmacy has rolled out a line of made-from-scratch muffins and is pulling out all the stops to make sure consumers know about the new product.

Haggen Premier Muffins are available in cranberry orange walnut, lemon poppy seed, blueberry, carrot raisin, honey bran and chocolate chocolate chip sour cream.

Comparing the new muffins to the line they replaced, a store-level associate told SN, "These are much bigger and have more flavor." The 3-inch-wide muffins are selling briskly at her particular store, the associate said.

The chain officially rolled out the line in January, though this store associate said her store began selling the muffins in November or December. The associate said the muffins sell in packages of four for $4.99, and individually in the donut case for $1.25 apiece.

An associate at another store told SN the muffins "are doing quite well."

The company is promoting the product in a number of ways.

"We do muffin demos," the store associate said. "A person hands out samples for two hours and explains what's in the muffins and gets customer feedback."

The company also features the muffins in newspaper ads, and promotes the muffins over the store public-address system, she said. On Haggen's Web site, the company recently featured photos of the muffins and touted them as "our biggest, tastiest muffins yet!" Haggen operates 27 stores in Washington and Oregon, as Haggen or Top Food & Drug.