Category: E-Commerce & Online Grocery

Dive Brief:

• PCC Community Markets plans to open a small-format location in downtown Seattle at the same site where it had, until recently, been operating a full-service grocery store, the co-op announced on Friday.
• At approximately 6,500 square feet, the new store will be a fraction of the size of the 20,000-square-foot store it will replace, which was unprofitable and closed in January.
• PCC plans to use the remaining space at the site for its corporate office after its existing office lease runs out next year, the co-op said, adding that the shift will help it save money on rent.

Dive Insight:

PCC said the new store, which does not yet have a formal name, will be designed to serve people who work and live in the downtown area. 

The store will feature hot and cold bars, grab-and-go deli items, drinks and snacks intended to meet the needs of office workers, as well as a limited variety of grocery, produce and pantry products, PCC President and CEO Krish Srinivasan said in a message to the co-op’s membership. The store, at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Union Street, will also sell ice cream, beer and wine, he said.

“We continue to hear– from co-op members, our staff, and downtown residents — about a strong need in the city center for the kind of unique shopping and dining experience that only PCC offers. We are thrilled to be able to meet that need by returning with a new concept that promises significantly better economics than a full-service grocery store,” Srinivasan said in a statement.

The co-op noted that it came up with the idea to use the space for a smaller store because it is locked into a long-term lease for the location. Executives worked with the owner of the space, Wright Runstad, “on innovative ways to reactivate the space in a manner consistent with the co-op’s triple bottom line focus on people, planet and profit,” according to the announcement.

Srinivasan said the co-op drew lessons from the previous store as it crafted plans for the new one, indicating that the former location’s prepared foods and deli department performed well even as the store proved to be unprofitable. The former store opened in January 2022, but ran into trouble because the COVID-19 pandemic drove down the number of office workers and local shoppers, according to PCC. The pandemic also delayed the store’s opening.

PCC has struggled financially during the past several years and was unprofitable last year, prompting Srinivasan to appeal in May to the co-op’s members to spend more at its stores to help strengthen its finances. That strategy paid off, helping PCC turn in improved sales during the second quarter of 2024, Srinivasan said in an Aug. 30 letter to members.

Dive Brief:

• Online grocery sales hit $9.9 billion in August, an increase of 7% compared to the same time last year as all three fulfillment methods posted year-over-year sales growth, Brick Meets Click and Mercatus reported Monday. 
• Delivery sales increased 10% last month compared to the year prior, while ship-to-home rose 9% and pickup saw a nearly 4% uptick.   
• Promotional efforts for subscription and membership programs, specifically in the delivery segment, led to the third consecutive month of high-single-digit sales gains for online grocery in 2024, the report found.

Dive Insight:

Delivery had a strong growth spurt in August thanks in part to numerous promotional incentives, Brick Meets Click and Mercatus reported.

Compared to the 6% year-over-year gain in monthly active users (MAUs) for the overall e-commerce channel, delivery’s MAU base expanded by nearly 16% — almost three times faster than pickup’s and nearly double Walmart’s MAU base growth. 

Since May, special offers and promotions from grocers and other food retail players have increasingly focused on delivery and helped boost e-grocery sales.  For example, Instacart in May started offering 80% off its annual membership and Walmart promoted half off its membership program.

Between June and August, total online grocery sales gained 7.9% year-over-year compared to the 1.4% growth seen between March and May. Accounting for the effect of seasonality, the estimated incremental impact between the three-month periods is a 2.2% lift, Brick Meets Click and Mercatus noted. 

Delivery’s shift is “even more dramatic,” the report stated, with sales between June and August growing by 16% compared to the 0.6% growth recorded between March and May. This increase was primarily due to the expansion of delivery’s MAU base and “skyrocketing” order frequency.

Meanwhile, Walmart is continuing to pose a threat to supermarkets. The share of U.S. households that primarily shop for groceries at Walmart, either in-store or online, rose to approximately 30% between June and August, the report noted.

“Households that chose Walmart as their primary grocery retailer were already more likely to buy groceries online, and now the difference between Walmart and Supermarkets has widened even further on that metric,” according to the report. 

The findings reflect a survey of 1,829 shoppers Brick Meets Click fielded August 30-31

DoorDash announced Thursday it has added H Mart to its delivery roster.

The e-commerce provider will offer on-demand grocery delivery from more than 75 of the Asian supermarket chain’s stores.

The partnership expands the variety of groceries available to DoorDash users. The H Mart stores joining DoorDash include an “expansive selection of everyday essentials, high-end products and groceries — from Korean Banchan to high-quality meats, ramen noodles, and beloved Asian snacks,” according to an emailed announcement.

To encourage people to try H Mart, DoorDash is offering 50% off eligible orders of $50 or more (up to $35) at the participating H Mart locations through Oct. 15.

This marks the second recent e-commerce partnership for H Mart. In July, the grocer said that around 80 of its stores would kick off a delivery partnership with Uber. 

H Mart has about 100 stores across the U.S., according to its website. In June, H Mart made its debut in Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

DoorDash launched grocery delivery in 2020 and has grown its delivery roster to include national and local grocers. 

In late August, the company announced it was increasing its grocery selection across Canada with on-demand delivery from Healthy Planet, Sungiven Foods, Supermarché PA, Nature’s Emporium and Lina’s Italian Market.

Digital retail media has given retailers and advertisers the biggest stage imaginable for reaching consumers. But that giant platform doesn’t guarantee a giant impact when it comes to influencing customers’ purchasing decisions.

As the grocery industry has quickly accelerated retail media efforts over the past few years, digital advancements took center stage in 2023 and now in-store capabilities have stepped into the spotlight throughout this year.

Recently, retailers, advertisers and industry experts alike have noticed that, despite the numerous possibilities of digital, in-store retail media is proving more influential to consumers. 

Currently, 84% of retail sales continue to occur in-store, making the potential of in-store retail media more crucial than ever before, according to a July report from in-store advertising provider Vibenomics.

In-store retail media advancements are particularly beneficial to regional and mid-market retailers, Kevin Bridgewater, senior vice president of retail media company Quad, said in an interview, noting that these smaller retailers can better articulate their customer base to CPG partners and explain why they would benefit from messaging about a product. 

“The site traffic just isn’t enough for these smaller retailers to generate enough excitement from the brands, but the foot traffic is significant,” Bridgewater said. 

A grocer’s ability to follow a shopper’s journey throughout the store and link it to their baskets and purchases with in-store retail media capabilities is vital. Impressions, which signify if a customer saw the ad, and impact, which tracks if an ad led to a purchase, are both vital for grocers and CPGs to understand the success of an ad campaign.

Measuring impact

Every section of the grocery store can be decked out with in-store retail media, and the placement of these gadgets is strategic, aiming to garner the most impact and collect the most shopper data, experts said. 

Sampling kiosks

The first retail media technology a shopper may encounter is a sampling kiosk, giving customers the opportunity for discovery right as they walk through the door. 

Kiosks most commonly live at a store’s entrance and are often interactive, Gil Phipps, senior vice president of global customer solutions at Advantage Solutions and former chief marketing officer with Sprouts Farmers Market, said in an interview. That interaction is essential to measuring the impact of ad messaging. 

Wakefern Food Corp. was one of the first to widely implement interactive kiosks back in 2023, installing them at 95 ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer stores. Powered by Freeosk, the units dispensed product samples to shoppers after they scanned in with their phone, allowing the system to collect data and see if that trial led to a purchase.  

While kiosks provide a seemingly direct method to showcase an ad partner’s campaign and gather shopper intel, their main shortcoming is their distance from the register and primary product display, Phipps noted, especially when compared to retail media messaging that is more integrated into a store’s layout.

“Messaging in the store right when you walk in is important, but not as powerful as messaging cereal on the cereal aisle, and, certainly, closer to the product and closer to the point of purchase is more powerful,” Phipps said. 

Digital end caps & vertical banners

As shoppers make their way deeper into the store, they may encounter a digital end cap. Positioned at the end of an aisle, these end caps are mainly used to grab shoppers’ attention on stand-out products, like limited-time season offerings, or staple items. 

Once a consumer makes their way down the aisle, vertical banners — smaller screens attached to the aisle’s display to draw shoppers to particular goods — will grab their attention next.

These aisle-centered in-store retail media tools often use the same measurement tactics and technology. 

In April, The Save Mart Companies began rolling out in-store retail media technology as part of the launch of its In-Store Connect network, which is powered by Quad. 

To measure ad performance, Quad collects transaction logs from its retail partners, including The Save Mart Companies, to measure category SKU-level performance of participating brands, Bridgewater said in an interview. 

End caps, vertical banners and other aisle screens supplied by Quad determine impressions through “shopper trap encounter technology,” Bridgewater said, a capability that senses and measures a shopper’s in-store maneuvers. The company then analyzes this transaction and SKU-level data alongside impressions. 

From there, Quad carries out A/B testing, also known as split testing, to track awareness and compares the results for stores within its network against stores in the same chain that are not part of its network, Bridgewater said. 

Cooler screens

Grocers can also bring retail media to their refrigerated doors.  

Technology and retail media company CoolerX, formerly named Cooler Screens, is one such company that offers digital refrigerators and freezer doors. These screens showcase ads and product information as well as let shoppers interact with digital merchandising. 

Artem Lavrinovich, chief data and product officer for the company, compared the interaction to a consumer clicking on a digital ad. For its retail partners, CoolerX uses sensors on its screens to provide shopper behavior insights, including how close they were to the screen, how long they stayed in front of it and how many shoppers viewed it. This intel, as well as the store’s transaction logs, are time-stamped, allowing CoolerX to understand the correlation between a displayed ad and shoppers’ baskets. 

If a customer is standing close to the CoolerX door screen for an extended time, the company can serve them an ad aimed at influencing their purchase choices, such as highlighting a trending item behind the refrigerator door they are looking at or displaying a QR code that offers additional information or savings, Lavrinovich said. 

“The sensors are not just there to count how many ads were played and what the dwell time and the distance were. They’re actually there to recognize where the customer is in their journey,” he said. 

Smart carts

Smart carts are a way grocers can combine nearly all in-store retail media has to offer — push ads, personalization, in-store app features, loyalty program promotions and digital screens — into one machine. 

Though not yet as widely deployed as digital screens, smart carts are gaining popularity amongst grocers.

Instacart is an e-commerce provider that is heavily leaning into the power of smart carts, with “thousands” of its screen-equipped carts, Caper Carts, expected to be in supermarkets by the end of 2024, CEO Fidji Simo said in May. 

As in-store retail media has grown, so have Caper Cart’s capabilities. In January, Instacart debuted ads on the smart cart’s screens and began piloting the new capability at Good Food Holdings banner stores. The feature enables CPG brands to engage with customers through ads during their shopping trips and serve them more personalized content based on past purchases and in-store shopping behavior, Instacart said in an emailed announcement about the technology.  

With smart carts being one of the newest types of in-store retail media, measurement capabilities are not as standard as stationary in-store screens. In emailed comments, Instacart did not elaborate on Caper Cart’s measurement capabilities.

What’s limiting in-store retail media tech? 

While grocers can unlock deeper shopper behavior insights with their newfound retail media capabilities, experts note that advancements are often halted and the technology itself has limitations.

For example, while smart carts may be the next wave of in-store retail media technology, Phipps worries that they may end up restricting shopper spending. 

Because there is a limit to the number of items that can go into a cart, Phipps is concerned that specialty features, like being able to tally up a shopper’s total prior to checkout, might not work if a shopper exceeds the cart’s capacity. 

Even more pressing for consumers, however, is the potential that grocers might breach their privacy as they look to further personalize the shopping experience. 

CoolerX, Quad and Grocery TV don’t currently capture or record personally identifiable information like gender, age and race, they said. Instead, they lean on impressions to measure an ad’s impact.

Grocery TV CEO Marlow Nickell and Head of Data and Analytics Dallas Griffin noted that the company experimented with measuring demographics on their devices about five years ago, a practice they “abandoned very quickly” after getting inaccurate results. Now, the company relies on third-party audited impressions through a partnership with Placer.ai. 

Lavrinovich noted that CoolerX’s technology acts like a radar-based system, sensing a human’s presence without gathering demographic details while Quad bases ad impact on impressions, SKU level movement and retailers’ transaction logs. 

“We have no cameras on our device. We have no intention of putting cameras on our devices. Our belief, and my belief specifically, is that crosses the line of what the customer is looking for,” Bridgewater said, noting that collecting demographic information raises privacy concerns for consumers. 

Going forward, tapping into retailers’ apps may be the key to unlocking in-store retail media. 

A retailer’s app is “the most powerful in-store media surface” combining first-party data with in-store traffic insights, said Jordan Berke, founder and CEO of Tomorrow Retail Consulting and a former Walmart e-commerce executive.  

“As consumers engage with the app while they’re in store, the potential to personalize and monetize and to give brands very targeted engagement opportunities is remarkable,” he added. 

According to Berke, the next step for in-store retail media advancement is to combine the power of apps with in-store digital screens, giving customers the most personalized shopping experience possible. This development would involve enabling in-store screens to recognize when a customer’s app is nearby and display product ads and store messages on the aisle screen that fit their specific needs. 

Getting to this point, though, would take retailers convincing their customers to trade privacy for this personalization, but it’s a trade-off Berke believes customers will be willing to accept.

“It’s not a gimme, it’s not a low-hanging fruit opportunity,” Berke said. However, the industry has seen “time and time again that if retailers can prove and continuously deliver that value, customers are comfortable with that exchange [of personal information],” he added. 

Connecting in-store screens with apps would also improve metrics — specifically incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) — for grocers’ brand and advertiser partners, Berke said.

Measuring iROAS requires precise attribution and control group creation. Currently, though, grocers’ in-store screen metrics are “lighter and looser,” leaving them unable to provide the highly detailed data advertisers seek, according to Berke. 

Quad, for example, is getting ready to roll out a capability where people can opt-in to link their retailer loyalty app to then receive personalized offers such as coupons, according to Bridgewater. 

“The fact that we are targeting people who are just in the store is so significant … [Previously] you haven’t been able to target them in an excellent environment when they’re ready to make that purchase decision — until now,” Bridgewater said.

Dive Brief:

• Publix announced Tuesday it has executed a lease for a new store in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, according to an emailed press release.
• The store marks the grocer’s 12th announced location in the state.
• Publix’s expansion in Kentucky comes at a time when the grocery chain is pushing further north and expanding its store fleet outside its home state of Florida.

Dive Insight:

Publix’s new lease in Elizabethtown will house a 55,325-square-foot supermarket and an adjacent 3,300-square-foot Publix Liquors at The Shops at Pear Orchard.

Publix made its debut in Kentucky in January with the opening of its store in the Terra Crossing Shopping Center in Louisville. The nearly 56,000-square-foot store includes a drive-thru Publix Pharmacy and an adjacent 3,200-square-foot Publix Liquors. That opening also marked the company’s first Publix Liquors outside of Florida.

Kentucky is Publix’s eighth state of operation. The Terra Crossing store also marked the second location to feature Publix’s larger, more experience-focused store prototype. 

Publix said it has not yet determined when it will arrive in Elizabethtown, which is about an hour south of Louisville. 

Publix recently signed a lease for a new store in Owensboro, Kentucky, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. Other planned Publix locations slated for cities in the state include Louisville, Lexington and Walton. 

As Kroger and Albertsons’ high-stakes battle with the Federal Trade Commission to preserve their planned merger plays out in court, the time they’ve spent trying to combine has emerged as another key challenge for the supermarket companies, according to industry analysts.

In particular, the time Kroger has invested in the merger has distracted its executives during a critical period when the grocery market is shifting rapidly, raising the stakes for the company even as it faces the distinct possibility that it will not be able to complete the nearly $25 billion transaction, said David Halliday, associate teaching professor of strategic management and public policy at the George Washington University School of Business.

“The opportunity cost of pursuing the merger over the past two years has been enormous for Kroger,” which could have instead been devoting more of their attention on priorities like competing with rivals like Walmart and Amazon, said Halliday. “So if the FTC succeeds in blocking the merger, then Kroger has a strategy problem.”

Halliday said that whether or not the merger ultimately goes through, Kroger’s high-profile effort to take over Albertsons calls into question whether the grocer will be able to continue to deploy its time-tested strategy of growing by acquiring other grocery chains. Halliday said Kroger is exposed because it has depended on an “undifferentiated shopping experience” while specialty grocers like Sprouts Farmers Market and Trader Joe’s have made significant inroads with consumers.

Kroger went into the merger review process with a heavy dose of hubris when it would have been better off making more concessions from the start than it did, which could have helped tamp down opposition instead of stoking criticism, said Scott Mushkin, CEO of R5 Capital. For example, Kroger should have offered to bolster its plan to divest stores and other assets to C&S Wholesale Grocers sooner than it did, which could have helped the company deflect criticism of the deal more effectively, he said.

“I think they’ve really approached this merger incorrectly. I think they [could have come] out of the gates being more accommodative to the unions, maybe the FTC and the state attorneys general” that have opposed the merger, Mushkin said. “There was a window where they could have maybe brought people more into their camp that would be naturally opposed to it.”

A Kroger spokesperson defended its approach to handling the divestiture proposal. “Kroger conducted a thoughtful and robust process through an arms-length divestiture plan that would maintain competition and ensure that divested stores and their associates will continue serving their communities in the ways they do today. The comprehensive divestiture plan achieves these objectives,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson added that the company has not allowed its effort to merge with Albertsons to get in the way of its broader corporate objectives: “Since announcing the proposed merger with Albertsons, Kroger has continued to execute on our key pillars to advance our go-to-market strategy and drive long-term, sustainable value for stakeholders.”

Kroger and Albertsons have spent the past two weeks facing off against the FTC in a Portland, Oregon, courtroom, looking to swat aside the agency’s drive to obtain a preliminary injunction to stop them from merging. Regulators have laid out evidence for why they believe the merger would be anticompetitive and should be stopped, and the trial has focused heavily on the FTC’s contention that Kroger and Albertsons’ proposal to divest nearly 600 stores to C&S is insufficient, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

“The FTC is comfortable showing the harms of the potential merger and also demonstrating that even the parties’ proposed ‘best’ outcome of a merger will prove flawed and ultimately bad for both workers and consumers,” David Schwartz, an antitrust partner in Washington with law firm BCLP and former lead investigative attorney at the FTC, said in comments sent by email.

Arun Sundaram, senior vice president of equity research for CFRA Research, said in an email that he believes there is now only a 20% chance that Kroger will be able to consummate its merger with Albertsons, in part because the FTC has been successful in advancing its case that the combination would eliminate competition in the supermarket industry.

The FTC’s claim that the merger would hurt workers “is a weaker argument, in our view, but showcases the different angles the FTC is taking to prevail,” Sundaram said.

The FTC is also investigating the merger plan through an administrative law tribunal that is taking place concurrent with the trial. In August, Kroger filed a lawsuit claiming that process is unconstitutional. Kroger and Albertsons are also facing state lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of Washington and Colorado aimed at stopping the merger.

The myriad competitive and legal pressures Kroger and Albertsons are facing underscores the importance for the companies of convincing the Oregon judge, Adrienne Nelson, not to issue an order to halt the merger, said Arindam Kar, an antitrust attorney at law firm Polsinelli.

“They probably carry much more of a burden here [than the FTC], not only in the preliminary injunction hearing, but just [in] all the other things that they have to succeed on to truly clear the slate, to say, ‘Yes, we can move forward with our acquisition,’” Kar said about the challenges Kroger faces.

Another issue for Kroger is that even if the Judge Nelson rejects the FTC’s bid for an injunction and clears the way for the merger to proceed, the agency could later challenge the combination if it finds evidence that it is anticompetitive, said Jeffery Cross, an antitrust specialist who is of counsel to the law firm of Smith, Gambrell & Russell. Regulators could challenge the merger in the future even if they agree to let it go through, he added.

Mushkin said the time Kroger has lost trying to push the merger through has exacerbated the pressure it faces from Walmart, which has steamed ahead in the grocery sector in recent years. He noted that Walmart has made substantial progress in automating its operations since the merger was announced in October 2022, compounding the competitive pressure the retail giant poses.

In addition, the competition Kroger and Albertsons face from specialty grocers like Trader Joe’s and Sprouts as well as discounters like Aldi and Lidl has grown as the merger review has played out, Halliday said. Since Kroger and Albertsons announced their merger plans, Aldi has acquired a major supermarket chain and announced plans to add 800 stores by 2028.

Kroger has argued that a successful effort by regulators to stop the merger would benefit rivals like Walmart and Amazon at the expense of shoppers and workers. “If the merger is blocked, the non-union retailers like Walmart and Amazon will become even more powerful and unaccountable,” a Kroger spokesperson said in a statement on Aug. 26, the day the federal trial over the transaction began.

The looming possibility that Kroger and Albertsons will ultimately need to walk away from their deal after spending so long trying to win approval for it highlights the conundrum the companies face in a rapidly evolving grocery market, said Mushkin.

“You’re getting really stuck in the middle if you’re a traditional supermarket,” he said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week signed a retail worker safety act into law requiring retailers to take certain actions to promote safety at stores, including precautionary measures like better lighting, adequate staffing, employee training and more.

Under the new law, companies with 50 or more retail employees must install panic buttons, which the legislation defines as “a physical button that when pressed immediately dispatches local law enforcement to the workplace.”

Panic buttons installed only about a week ago were instrumental in limiting the number of casualties during a school shooting in Georgia this week where four people, including two high schoolers, died, law enforcement told reporters Wednesday.

Retailers have made violent crime at stores a centerpiece of their lobbying efforts at the state and federal levels. Last year, David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation, told members of a U.S. House Homeland Security Committee panel that retail “employees are fearful” about what he said was a rising problem of often violent crime at stores.

That’s backed up by other research. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union found that over 80% of respondents to a survey of its members said they’re worried about an active shooter coming into their workplace and that nearly two-thirds were harassed or felt intimidated by a customer, co-worker or manager in the last year. Similarly, a survey by Theatro, a mobile communication platform for frontline workers, found that 80% of store workers don’t feel protected by their employers, and that 72% were ill-equipped to respond to threats because their store was understaffed. 

However, several retail organizations, including the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the Retail Council of New York State, opposed New York’s legislation, according to an August letter from the groups to the governor. In that letter, they called for a “genuine, holistic approach to store and community safety,” but said they urged a veto on the bill due to its “specific provisions,” including panic buttons.

“The costly mandates proposed in the bill — including the installation of panic buttons — will do little, if anything, to address recidivists entering stores with the intent to engage in illegal activity such as shoplifting and assault,” the letter reads, citing an earlier statement from the New York Police Department’s community affairs bureau that said panic buttons are “not advisable.”

Walmart reportedly opposed the legislation, including the panic-button requirement, according to statements made to Reuters by Dan Bartlett, the retail giant’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, in which he also downplayed the scale of threats at stores. Walmart declined to comment to Retail Dive.

As public spaces, stores and malls are vulnerable to gun violence including mass shootings, with the number of incidents escalating in recent decades. Along with the tragic nature of these events, retailers as a practical matter face liabilities when they occur, and laws like New York’s new retail safety act and similar legislation recently passed in California are likely to increase that risk, experts say.

Most importantly, the new law will make both workers and shoppers safer, according to RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum.

“The preventative measures this law provides will help stop violence and harassment before it starts, but even more importantly, will more safely assist workers in getting help quickly in the event of an emergency,” he said in a statement. “From West Hempstead to Buffalo, union workers have suffered grave losses to senseless store shootings. The provisions in this bill can help to save lives, and with Governor Hochul’s support and swift implementation we know we will all be safer.”

Dive Brief:

• Chicago-area investment group Yellow Banana has started reopening six Save A Lot stores it owns in the city following a multimillion-dollar renovation effort partially funded in part by a municipal grant, the company announced Thursday.
• The first of the upgraded locations, in the city’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, reopened on Thursday, with the remaining five stores in other parts of the city slated to reopen at unspecified points this fall.
• The project reflects a joint effort by Yellow Banana, the government of Chicago and community organizations to improve access to groceries for people in underserved parts of the city.

Dive Insight:

Yellow Banana covered the cost of the remodeling campaign in part with a $13.5 million community development grant the company received from the city of Chicago in 2022.

The company, which owns and operates 38 Save A Lot locations in major metropolitan areas in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida and Texas, said last year that it would also use money it raised from third-party backers, New Markets Tax Credit and its own funds for the renovation effort.

The retooled stores are gaining a variety of interior and exterior improvements, including new floors, lighting, heating and air-conditioning units, refrigerated cases and signage.

In addition to the Save A Lot store that reopened Thursday, Yellow Banana is preparing to begin serving customers during the coming weeks at locations in Chicago’s Morgan Park, South Chicago, South Shore, Auburn Gresham and West Lawn areas. The company noted in 2022 that the Auburn Gresham location had closed in 2020.

Yellow Banana said in April 2023 that it expected to complete the work within a year, but the company indicated on Thursday that the project fell behind schedule due to an array of problems. Those issues included trouble obtaining equipment, “unavoidable” construction delays and utility issues stemming from vandalism that left two stores without electricity for almost three months, Yellow Banana said, adding that it continued to pay workers during the renovation process.

“I’m confident that the investment made to remodel and upgrade these stores will pay off for shoppers, providing a significantly improved customer experience,” Yellow Banana CEO Joe Canfield said in a statement. “We’re grateful to the City of Chicago, to the communities around these stores and to Save A Lot for their patience and support throughout this process.”

Dive Brief:

• Hy-Vee has partnered with food tech company Deliverect to simplify grab-and-go, curbside pickup and delivery ordering at the grocer’s Fast & Fresh convenience stores, the companies announced on Tuesday.
• Deliverect’s solution automates the ordering process by taking customer input from kiosks and digital platforms and sending it directly to that store’s point of sale system. Deliverect has also built a customer curbside notification solution for Fast & Fresh, according to the announcement.
• West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee joins a growing list of retailers streamlining their food ordering technology stack as labor challenges persist and fresh options become a priority.

Dive Insight:

With automated ordering, workers at Fast & Fresh can focus their time and attention on creating food rather than taking orders. Deliverect’s solution also provides automated order status updates and lets menus update from a central location, further saving work hours. 

“Convenience stores are at an exciting juncture as they begin to play alongside restaurants in the food delivery arena, and technology is necessary to make this shift successful,” said Noah Hayes, Americas vice president at Deliverect. 

Hy-Vee and Deliverect began their partnership with a three-month pilot program in January. Deliverect’s software ties directly into Fast & Fresh’s Market Grille Express foodservice stations, which are found at around 70 of Hy-Vee’s 190 convenience stores, as well as its mobile app. 

Fast & Fresh also uses Deliverect’s analytics to make data-driven decisions about its menu.

The retailer is already seeing an impact. Jennifer Lambert, senior VP of IT strategy and planning for Hy-Vee, said these integrations “have dramatically increased the speed of our curbside pickup service while providing us with key insights to keep our operations running smoothly and our customers happy.”

Belgian tech company Deliverect works with more than 50,000 establishments in 52 countries and has partnered with brands like Burger King and Little Caesars.

Dive Brief:

• Food waste technology company Flashfood announced Tuesday the hiring of Chris Taylor as chief financial officer.
• Taylor’s main goal is to bring financial maturity to the company using his decade’s worth of experience assisting food and e-commerce companies with their financials, according to the announcement. 
• Taylor’s onboarding marks the completion of the company’s “leadership team refresh,” according to Flashfood CEO Nicholas Bertram, who stepped into the top role in January.

Dive Insight:

Taylor is the latest in a string of executive changes for Flashfood as well as a “strategic hire for the company’s next phase of growth,” the press release noted. 

Prior to joining Flashfood, Taylor was vice president of finance and operations for ShopThing, an online marketplace that specializes in luxury goods, according to the announcement. His career also includes serving as head of operations for GoBolt, a technology-driven warehousing, fulfillment and last-mile delivery provider; leading logistics for meal kit company GoodFood; and working on the pre-launch team at Aryeh Capital Management, a global credit and equity hedge fund. 

“He’s the right hire for us, bringing a unique mix of deep financial experience and leadership in food operations and technology. Most importantly, he has already led companies in the growth stage Flashfood is now entering,” Bertram said in a statement. 

Flashfood has undergone significant changes since the start of 2024. Along with naming Bertram, former president of The Giant Company, as CEO, the company also announced two c-suite executive promotions: Jordan Schenck as its first chief customer officer and Josh Domingues, Flashfood’s founder and former CEO, as executive chairman. 

In July, the company launched Flashfood for Independents, which offers smaller retailers customizable features that enable them to integrate Flashfood’s network. 

Flashfood currently partners with more than 2,000 stores across 20 store banners, including SpartanNash, Save Mart and Meijer.