Convenience Stores

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- Nicole Messer has joined the retail group of Stiles Realty as senior retail associate. In this role, Messer will focus primarily on developing third-party retail leasing and investment sales business in the Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami markets.  

Rockville, Md. -- Online grocery shopping sales will grow roughly fourfold from about $23 billion in 2014 (accounting for 3.5% of total online and offline grocery spending) to approach $100 billion by 2019 (capturing 12% of total grocery spending). Market research publisher Packaged Facts forecasts that online grocery service providers will develop models that solve logistics problems while being profitable for the operators.   

Pittsburgh –- GNC Holdings Inc. reported a decrease in profit for the third quarter of fiscal 2014 but still beat Wall Street expectations. Net income totaled $64.3 million, down 13% from $73 million the same quarter a year earlier.  

Lakeland, Fla. -- Retail Solutions Advisors (RSA) has been selected as the exclusive leasing representative for South Pasadena Shopping Center, a community shopping center situated in South Pinellas County, Fla. The 165,928-sq.-ft. center is anchored by Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, Bealls Outlet, Pet Supermarket, CVS and Dollar Tree, and serves as the primary grocery-anchored retail center for the surrounding residential community in the captive South Pasadena area.   

Wolverhampton, U.K. –- U.K.-based convenience chain One Stop has been using Galleria’s Customer Centric Merchandising solution for planogram automation and optimization for a number of years, and is now implementing the Galleria Behavioral Cluster Planning tool. The new solution will provide a better understanding of consumers, assisting One Stop to understand how their categories are being shopped.   

Seattle –- Starbucks Corp. topped off a generally successful fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 by swinging to net income of $587.9 million from net loss of $1.23 billion the fourth quarter of the prior fiscal year. The removal of a one-time arbitration charge of $2.8 billion helped bring Starbucks into the black.  

Camp Hill, Penn. –- Same-store sales increased 5.5% in Oct. 2014 at Rite Aid Corp. compared to the same month in the prior year. Total drugstore sales rose 5% to $2.06 billion compared to $1.96 billion.   October front-end same store-sales increased 2%. Pharmacy same-store sales, which included a negative impact from new generic introductions, increased 7.1%.

Walmart’s Japanese subsidiary Seiyu plans to close 30 stores and remodel 50 others next year in an effort to strengthen its every day low price strategy.