New customer additions and recent acquisition fuel growth helped Nash Finch post a 13.5 percent first-quarter sales gain of $1.14 billion, from $1 billion in the prior-year quarter during the 12-week period ended March 28, 2009. Excluding the impact of the sales increase of $112 million attributable to the acquisition of three military distribution centers at the end of January, total company sales increased 2.4 percent relative to last year. The Minneapolis distributor said the first quarter of 2009 was negatively affected by the shift of Easter to the second quarter in 2009 from the first quarter in 2008, which created a sales variance in the first quarter of about $8.4 million, or 0.8 percent. Excluding the impact of the acquired distribution centers and the Easter shift, comparable sales increased 3.2 percent.

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