Convenience Stores

President Obama in his State of the Union address last night said he plans to sign an executive order increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour for workers on new government contracts and asked Congress to approve the same increase for all workers — and the National Retail Federation is not happy.

NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay issued a response ahead of the president’s address.

Kozy Shack, a 50-year-old pudding brand, is hiring a spokes-grandma to represent the brand nationally in online, broadcast and print advertisements.

The call for applications has been put out coast-to-coast: Pudding-loving grandmas can submit their applications at KozyShack.me/Grandma now through Jan. 31. More information can be found in job postings on Monster, Careerbuilder and LinkedIn.

Irvine, Calif. — Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors closed out 2013 with 10 retail property sales totaling nearly $61 million in December. For the year, Hanley logged sales of more than $315 million. Among the December sales were:

Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas — The Woodmont Company plans to break ground in February on a new building at its Streetsboro Commons development in Streetsboro, Ohio. The new building, located on a pad, is already about 80% pre-leased to three national tenants: Starbucks, Jimmy John’s and Midwest Mobility Services/AT&T dealer.

Hackensack, N.J. — Alfred Sanzari Enterprises has appointed The Greco Realty Group exclusive leasing agent for Summit Plaza in Hackensack, N.J.

A recently expanded 62,000-sq.-ft. Super Stop & Shop anchors the 100,000-sq.-ft. Summit Plaza. Service and retail tenants include Harmon Cosmetics, GNC, Payless ShoeSource, RadioShack, Dress Barn, the UPS Store, GameStop and Blimpie plus the typical neighborhood services such as a nail salon, dry cleaner and a pizzeria.

Philadelphia – Aramark has unveiled plans for Denali Park Village, a new lodging experience in Anchorage, Alaska, that will include an open market. The company is transforming and re-branding two adjacent properties it owns, McKinley Village Lodge and Denali River Cabins & Cedar Lodge, with a projected May 2014 opening.

Bentonville, Ark. – Major U.S. retailers including Wal-Mart Stores and Kroger reportedly already have hardware to read PIN-and-chip payment cards, which are more resilient against data breaches than the magnetic stripe payment cards commonly used by American consumers. However, according to the Dallas Morning News, the hardware is largely unusable because customers do not have PIN-and-chip cards.

By Stacy Adams, VP marketing, mBlox

Los Angeles -- The Coffee Bean & Tea Left said that Bill Robards has joined the company as VP of store development. He will be responsible for delivering upon the brand's extensive growth and expansion plans in the United States.

In recent years, customer engagement has become much more of a mission-critical function for retailers. While nobody would argue that retailers must engage their customers in a way that recognizes the disruptive effects of leading-edge technologies like social and mobile, there is a priority that looms even larger. Namely, data security.

Insecure Data Creates Insecure Customers