Company News

Stewart's Tops $1 Billion in Sales for Sixth Straight Year

"Quick food" among fastest-growing areas; more new stores, remodels coming
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- Stewart's Shops sales rose $100 million, or 4%, from $1.3 billion in 2009 to $1.4 billion in 2010, company officials said, according to a report by The Saratogian. It marked the sixth straight year sales topped the $1 billion plateau.

One of the fastest growth areas is "quick food" items, said the report.

"We have been fortunate to have continued to grow in these difficult times," president Gary Dake said.

Stewart's has 328 stores in upstate New York and western New England. "We have also had 50 major remodels in other shops, [image-nocss] which helps us improve our standards for customer service," said Dake. "We expect to continue at the same pace in 2011."

Stewart's spokesperson Tom Mailey told the newspaper that more new stores are slated to open this year, although the company is not ready to announce specific locations.

"We also plan on building a replacement store at a new location in Salem [N.Y.]," he said.

However, Stewart's lost several of the area farms it relies on for dairy products in 2010, the report said. The vertically-integrated company now gets milk from 38 farms, down from 56 three years ago.

"As we've lost some farms through attrition, others have grown so it's about the same number of cows and the same amount of milk," Mailey said. "Just fewer farms."

Milk and ice cream, which Stewart's was founded on, represent about 15% of sales, the report said.

Coffee is another high-volume product, it added.

Stewart's has about 4,000 employees, with 3,500 of those in retail shops. Another 350 work at the company's bottling plant and warehouse in Greenfield, N.Y., with another 100 at corporate offices in Malta, N.Y. The company's workforce is expected to grow in 2011, Dake said.

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