Convenience Stores

Boca Raton, Fla. -- Office Depot has reached an agreement to sell its 50% stake in Office Depot de Mexico S.A. de C.V. to its joint venture partner Grupo Gigante, S.A.B. de C.V. for roughly $690 million in cash.

Office Depot de Mexico, which was founded in 1994 as a joint partnership between Office Depot and Grupo Gigante, has more than 248 stores throughout Mexico and Central America and more than $1.1 billion in annual sales.

Fort Worth, Texas -- Dick’s Sporting Goods is now open at Alliance Town Center in North Fort Worth, Texas. During the May 31 through June 2 grand opening ceremonies for the 50,000-sq.-ft. Phase II anchor, co-developer Trademark Property Co., announced plans to add 237,000-sq.-ft. of retail and restaurant space to the center.

“With Dick’s opening, we are well positioned to complete the current phase and proceed with our main-street lifestyle expansion,” said Trademark CEO Terry Montesi.

FORT WORTH, Texas — RadioShack has promoted Marty Amschler to SVP of franchise. In his expanded role, Amschler will continue to lead RadioShack's dealer franchise operations while also now providing senior leadership to the company's commercial sales division and B2B sales team.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched the Food Waste Challenge to encourage people to reduce, recover and recycle food waste. 

The Food Waste Reduction Alliance, made up of leading food retail, food manufacturing and foodservice companies, issued the following statement:

Tokyo -- A Sunday report by Bloomberg said that 7-Eleven parent Seven & I Holdings Co. is planning more acquisitions here and may more than double the number of c-store stores it operates in North America.

The company “could increase our store number to 20,000 or even 30,000 [in North America],” chairman Toshifumi Suzuki told Bloomberg in an interview.  7-Eleven currently has more than 8,000 convenience stores in North America.

No time-frame for the planned expansion has been defined.

New York -- Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, announced plans to invest $100 million over the next three years in a national chain of marijuana stores. The stores would sell both medical-use and adult-use (recreational) cannabis. Shively is now CEO of San Diego-based Diego Pellicer, which describes itself as the first legal premium marijuana retailer in the United States.

Starbucks Coffee Company is extending its indoor no-smoking policy to the outdoors. The company will prohibit anyone up to 25 feet from a Starbucks store from smoking, effective June 1, where permitted by its leases. 

The new rule will apply to the 7,000 shops owned and operated by Starbucks Corp., regardless of whether they have outdoor seating areas. 

SEATTLE — Paladino and Company (Paladino), a sustainability and green building consulting firm, has been selected as a winner of Verizon’s 2013 Supplier Recognition Award in the green and sustainability category. The award was given in recognition of Paladino’s overall green strategic focus and longtime partnership in Verizon’s retail store volume program, which resulted in 71 Verizon Wireless stores becoming LEED certified in 2012 and more than 130 total LEED certifications through the end of 2012.

Chicago -- Ebay, Walmart and McDonalds are tops when it comes to in-store charity donations, according to a study by Cause Marketing Forum that ranked the largest consumer donations at the point-of-sale last year. More than $358 million was raised in 2012 through a total of 63 corporate-backed charity checkout campaigns identified by Cause Marketing.