Convenience Stores

London, U.K. — Honest Cafe, an automated coffee house chain in London, is using IBM Watson Analytics to unearth client insights to help determine everything from coffee products and pricing, to marketing and promotions. Honest Cafe is a new venture from Revive Vending where three cafes currently in operation, and four more planned, are all unmanned.

Batavia, Ill. — Discount grocery powerhouse Aldi announced plans enter the nation’s most populous state, opening approximately 25 stores in Southern California by July 2016.      The chain’s expansion to California is an integral part of a five-year strategic plan to open 650 new stores across the nation. By the end of 2018, Aldi expects to operate nearly 2,000 stores.   

Chicago -- Retail was the most compromised industry in 2014, making up 43% of breach investigations, according to a study by Trustwave that gathered data from 574 breach investigations the company conducted in 2014 across 15 countries. Retail made up 43% of the investigations, followed by food and beverage, which made up 13% of the investigations.

The “2015 Trustwave Global Security Report” found that 64% of the breaches in the retail industry were of e-commerce assets and 27% were of POS assets.

Goodlettsville, Tenn. - Jeff Owen will rejoin Dollar General Corp. as executive VP of store operations effective June 15. Owen previously spent more than 20 years with Dollar General, where his most recent role was senior VP of store operations.

Dollar General also announced that Greg Sparks, executive VP of store operations, has departed effective June 9, 2015.

San Francisco -- Volta Industries is launching a network of more than 100 free electric car charging stations across five cities. Participating retailers include Macy’s and Whole Foods.

Volta first began in Honolulu by offering free electric car charging services underwritten by local brands. Since then, Volta has deployed initial charging infrastructure in high-volume, retail locations in five major cities, including the San Francisco Bay area, the Los Angeles metropolitan area, San Diego, Phoenix, and Honolulu.

Cincinnati -- Consumers take online reviews seriously — particularly when it comes to reviews about the cleanliness of a business, according to a new Harris Poll conducted by Cintas Corp. The survey revealed that 85% of respondents would not patronize businesses with negative online reviews about the cleanliness of its facilities. Restaurants (75%) ranked at the top of the list of businesses where cleanliness most greatly impacted buying habits.

Ankeny, Iowa – Casey’s General Store beat Wall Street expectations for profit and revenue during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. Net income roughly doubled to $41.34 million from $20.94 million, fueled by a drop in cost of goods sold.

Total revenue fell 14% to $1.65 billion from $1.92 billion, but still exceed analyst estimates.

During fiscal 2016, Casey’s plans to build or acquire 75 to 113 stores, replace 10 existing locations and complete 100 major remodels.

State College, Pa. - Consumers are spending 5% less time in supermarkets, compared to the previous year. Concurrently, the sixth annual C-Store MegaStudy from VideoMining Corp. found that shoppers' time in convenience stores increased 6% from the previous year.

VideoMining integrates behavioral data with a range of other data sources, including transaction data and exit interviews. In the C-Store MegaStudy, for example, this integration showed a correlation between time in store and average dollar basket size, which grew by 9%.