Convenience Stores

Sam’s Club is taking its efforts to woo small business customers to social media.

The retailer is launching #SmallBizHelp, an interactive social media campaign that offers expert advice on starting and running a business.

Minneapolis – American Dairy Queen Corp. (ADQ) is doing its best to freeze out hackers and other security risks with a managed firewall solution from Netsurion. The remotely hosted platform helps ADQ provide security across a network of corporate and franchised stores.

On the heels of an impressive financial report from rival True Value, Ace Hardware is reporting even better sales in its second quarter.

For the quarter ended July 4, Ace Hardware Corp. had record revenue of $1.4 billion in the second quarter, an increase of 6.5% from last year. Ace’s retail same-store-sales reported by approximately 3,000 Ace retailers who share daily retail sales data increased 6.5% and Ace Retail Holdings LLC rose 4.7% due to an increase in customer count and average transaction size.

In today’s news cycle, it’s become somewhat standard fare to read reports of a significant breach in the retail world. From Target to Neiman Marcus, UPS to eBay and even restaurants like P.F. Chang's and Dairy Queen, 2014 resulted in major retail breaches totaling 100 million credit cards and 313 million personal records. But it’s not just the big names that have targets on their backs; as Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report details: “the attack methods are becoming more varied, even against small businesses.”

Grand Rapids, Mich. – A rival Midwestern grocery chain is reportedly accusing regional mass merchandiser Meijer Inc. of offering unfairly low prices on grocery products. According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee-based law firm Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan has filed five complaints against Meijer from an unnamed client who is grocer with stores in Wisconsin.

New York - RDG Capital Fund Management, a shareholder of TravelCenters of America, is recommending a major financial step. RDG has delivered a letter to the TravelCenters board of directors strongly recommending a $100 million share buyback that RDG estimates would increase stock price by more than 33% to $17 per share.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart saw respectable U.S. sales growth in the second quarter, but it wasn't enough to overcome expense pressures and a weak dollar. These negative factors caused the company to turn in one of its worst quarterly profit performances in recent memory.

Franklin, Tenn. – Although mobile POS software installations by North American retailers grew 41% year-to-year, this rate did not meet expectations of analysts and industry experts. According to a new study from IHL Group, “Mobile POS Software Market Share,” the enterprise market of retailers with more than 50 stores only delivered 59% year-over-year growth, well below the expected 100% increase.