Corporate Responsibility

Atlanta – The Home Depot is taking steps to make amends for a racist tweet it sent from its official account on Nov. 7. The tweet, a promotion aligned with ESPN college football coverage, showed a photo of two African-Americans playing the drums along with a person wearing a gorilla mask and the caption: “Which drummer is not like the others?”

A new process for sustainable sourcing called Dockers Wellthread was unveiled by Levi Strauss & Co. which integrates product design, environmental practices and worker well-being.

Conshocken, Pa. – Ikea plans to nearly double the solar array completed in April atop its Perryville, Md., distribution center, the state’s largest such solar energy system. Installation of the new panels will begin in November with completion expected in 2014.

The newest tactic to disparage Walmart by an organization called the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) involves race, politics and a convoluted connection to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Eight-year Walmart employee and OUR Walmart member Charmaine Givens-Thomas has posted a petition on the organization’s website invoking the name of the slain civil rights leader. She is seeking 100,000 signatures and a meeting with president Barack Obama to address the injustices to which she contends Walmart subjects its workers.

Greenwood Village, Colo. — Red Robin Gourmet Burgers has announced that it will open two new restaurants, one in Secaucus, N.J., and another in the Cincinnati metro area. To help celebrate the grand opening of the new restaurants, the company will donate the proceeds of all sales of its signature Freckled Lemonade during the two restaurants’ first week of operation to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding cures for kids with cancer.

Seattle – Starbucks says it will develop a comprehensive hiring platform for veterans and active duty spouses in response to record growth and in anticipation of a 500,000-person future global workforce. This multi-year hiring and career development strategy will focus on establishing an internal infrastructure dedicated to matching the transferable skill sets of veterans and military spouses with the specific talent needed across the Starbucks enterprise.

New York – Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity was strong in the retail and consumer industry during the third quarter of 2013. Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that transaction values on M&A deals in the retail/consumer sector rose 112% compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

With plans to more than double its 200,000 global workforce in the foreseeable future, Starbucks is making a push to hire veterans and active duty spouses, much like other retailers like Walmart and Home Depot.

In addition, a store in Lakewood, Wash., and a store in San Antonio, Texas, will begin sharing a portion of each transaction with nonprofit programs Operation GoodJobs and Vested in Vets as part of a commitment to establish five such stores in joint base communities around the United States.

By Joseph Bona, [email protected]

In media interviews of late, Beth Newlands Campbell, the new CEO of Food Lion, has been offering reporters a frank assessment of the supermarket chain’s ho-hum, middle-of-the-road situation: “Staying the same,” she explains, “is not an option.”

Portland -- The Green Building Initiative (GBI) announced that Wegmans Food Markets has been awarded a “two Green Globes” certification for its store in Germantown, Md. Green Globes, which is administered in the United States by the GBI, awards buildings that qualify one through four Globes based on environmental achievements in management, site, energy, water, materials and resources, emissions, and indoor environment.