With a history that spans more than 152 years, Smart & Final offers customers fresh produce, quality meats and groceries as well as more than 3,000 club-sized items to fit every budget and need. We are the smaller, faster grocery warehouse store – without the membership fee. 

The year was 1871, and Los Angeles' rural setting didn't deter partners Herman Hellman, Jacob Haas (who later became Mayor of Los Angeles), and Bernard Cohn from starting a new grocery business, known as Hellman-Haas Grocery Co. They operated from a two-story brick building on Los Angeles Street selling the essentials of the day, including flour, brown sugar, salt, medicine, rope, sheepherding supplies, chewing tobacco and gunpowder. 

 

Packaged goods were yet unknown, so Hellman-Haas Grocery Co. sold products in bulk, typically by weight. Los Angeles was such a young city that at that time the store was one of only seven names listed in the first Los Angeles phone directory.

 

In 1889, they introduced a line of canned tomatoes called “Iris,” thus creating one of the first private label brands in the U.S. By 1895, sales had reached $2 million – an enormous sum at the time. 

 

By 1900, the company, then known as Haas, Baruch & Co., had become the growing city’s leading wholesale grocer.  

In 1912, the Santa Ana Wholesale Grocery Company was founded to supply feed and grain to local farmers. Two years later Michigan banker J.S. "Jim" Smart bought the company. Soon after H.D. "Hildane" Final joined as a partner, and the company name was changed to Smart & Final Wholesale Grocers. To stay competitive, Smart & Final introduced the "cash and carry" concept in Long Beach.

 

In 1953, Smart & Final merged with Haas, Baruch & Co., keeping the Smart & Final name.  

In 2008, Smart & Final debuted Smart & Final Extra! These were larger stores with a broader range of products for household customers. In 2014, Smart & Final celebrated the opening of its 200th store in Long Beach the same city where it opened its first store under the Smart & Final name 91 years earlier.   

 

Today, Smart & Final operates 255 stores in California, Nevada, and Arizona with more than 11,000 associates. The company continues to call Southern California home, with headquarters in Commerce, Los Angeles in California.