Convenience Stores

RETAIL NOTES: Kleinfeld Hudson’s Bay, a glamorous bridal shop on the top floor of the Hudson’s Bay’s flagship and headquarters building in Toronto, took the big prize — Store of the Year — in the Association for Retail Environments 2015 Design Awards. The annual awards recognize the best in retail design, store fixtures and visual presentation. Designed in house by HBC Store Planning, the 14,000-sq.-ft.

Wellesley, Mass. - Regional grocery chain has opened its flagship Downtown Crossing Boston supermarket in the newly restored Burnham Building. Roche Bros. is the first large-scale grocery store to be built in Boston's Downtown Crossing.

Smart & Final Stores Inc. credited strong merchandising and marketing initiatives with the retailer's impressive jump in same store sales for the first quarter.

Oakville, Canada - Tim Hortons has released its fifth annual Sustainability and Responsibility Report, highlighting the company's 2014 performance results. Key accomplishments in 2014 include:

• Introduced Calorie Aware menu boards across Canada to highlight breakfast products under 350 calories.

• Increased the number of farmers who participated in the Tim Hortons Coffee Partnership Projects to a total of 4,830 farmers.

Chicago -- Self-service kiosks got a nod from the Millennial generation, as a new survey released by location-based mobile platform Retale showed that 20% of Millennial shoppers don’t like interacting with cashiers at checkout.

The survey examined consumer self-service checkout (SSK) adoption and preferences among brick-and-mortar retailers, focusing on SSK experiences, and evaluating convenience, challenges and desired improvements.

Research highlights include:

San Diego - After a successful pilot in Boston and San Francisco, Petco is expanding its partnership with Instacart. Beginning April 28, customers in 14 metro areas served by Instacart can order from Petco stores and have everything delivered in as little as one hour.

Instacart currently serves 15 metro areas: Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The company plans to add several more cities before the end of 2015.

Hy-Vee is joining the legion of grocery chains with online ordering, delivery and store pickup.

According to KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, the regional supermarket is rolling out a service called Aisles Online in select stores.

The news site quotes Hy-Vee as saying that the average order has about 30 items and takes a worker about a half-hour to compile. The items are scanned, loaded up and delivered. Or customers can pick them up at the store. Delivery costs $4.95 per order, and pick-up costs $2.95 per order, with the charges dropped for orders of $100 or more.

Chain Store Age recently had the chance to speak with noted consumer trend expert Faith Popcorn, founder and CEO of marketing consulting firm Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, about steps McDonald’s can take to reverse its struggling fortunes. Popcorn’s insights come on the heels of McDonald’s reporting a 33% year-over-year drop in profits for first quarter 2015.

Bigger Isn’t Always Better
According to Popcorn, McDonald’s vast size is not necessarily an asset anymore.