Sobeys

The merger between Albertsons and Safeway is expected to close in a few months and when it does the combined company already has a new senior leadership and field operations structure in place.

The companies late Friday announced key leadership positions it said drew on strong talent within both organizations to build an innovative, customer-focused and growth-driven company.

Cincinnati -- Phillips Edison-ARC Grocery Center REIT II Inc. has acquired Kipling Marketplace, adding a property in Colorado to the company's portfolio. Kipling Marketplace is a 90,124-sq.-ft. grocery store-anchored shopping center located in Littleton, Colorado, part of the Denver metropolitan statistical area.

Kipling Marketplace is anchored by a Safeway grocery store, the number two grocer in the Denver area. Other national and regional tenants at the center include Sylvan Learning, Dairy Queen, Cost Cutters, and H&R Block.

Target Corp. is running a Q&A with its new chairman and CEO, Brian Cornell, on its in-house, behind-the-scenes blog, A Bullseye View. The interview was conducted by the Bullseye View team.

You are the first CEO who has been hired from outside of Target. What are the benefits of coming in from the outside? What will be some of the challenges?

Recent enhancements to Walmart’s website ensure that Andy Murray, the company’s SVP of creative, will have plenty to talk about later this year when he addresses the topic of “Evolving with the omnichannel shopper,” at the Shopper Marketing Conference & Expo.
 

Cambridge, Mass. – Target is the grocery brand with the highest positive consumer sentiment rating. In a survey of the grocery habits of 763 consumers exclusively released to Chain Store Age, analytics technology provider Luminoso Technology found that 60% of consumers had positive sentiment about Target as a grocery retailer.

Retail and consumer products veteran Brian Cornell was named chairman and CEO at Target to fill two of the three roles previously held by the company’s former top executive Gregg Steinhafel.

Brian Cornell’s tenure as Target’s chairman and CEO begins on August 12. Don’t expect it to last long if his track record at other recent employers is any indication.
 
Cornell brings to Target an impressive roster of C-level positions at big name companies — PepsiCo, Sam’s Club, Michael’s, Safeway — but the 55-year-old executive didn’t stick around for long at any of them.
 

Pleasanton, Calif. – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is investigating how Safeway Inc. reports and keeps records on the theft and loss of controlled substances. In a regulatory filing, Safeway said it received a subpoena from the DEA to look into its controlled substance practices.

New York – The 2014 Harris Poll EquiTrend (EQ) study, which measures brand equity for more than 1,500 brands across 170 categories, finds traditional grocery store brands rank highest overall in three of the four regions surveyed. The EQ index examines three key factors of brand equity: familiarity, quality and purchase consideration.