Convenience Stores

By Richard P. Fennelly

It’s a well-known industry fact that refrigeration and freezer appliances, which are no longer exclusive to supermarkets, are major electricity “hogs” in retail stores.  

Seattle – Starbucks reportedly plans to soon include an automatic tipping feature on its Square mobile payment app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks, which currently only uses the payment features of the Square app, will deploy a feature that both automatically prompts a customer to leave a tip in appropriate situations and computes tip amounts for them.

Revionics, a leading provider of end-to-end merchandise optimization solutions, has named the company’s president and CEO Marc Hafner as chairman of the board.

Hafner has served as president and CEO since 2010 and with this newly added role he will lead the company’s strategic planning and accelerate its global growth.

Tampa, Fla. — BurgerMonger has taken a 2,700-sq.-ft. lease at Northwood Commons shopping center in Clearwater, Fla. This will be the restaurants fifth location, according to Florida Retail Partners www.floridaretailpartners, an X Team partner and co-broker representing BurgerMonger on the transaction. National Real Estate Ventures was the other co-broker.

When the new BurgerMonger opens in April, the fast casual restaurant will have four locations in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area and one in Willow Grove, Pa.

Seattle — Starbucks Coffee Company is opening its first store in Brunei, the company’s 64th global market, and its 100th store in Singapore, which will give people with autism the opportunity for employment and skills.

Stellarton, Canada — Sobey’s Inc. has entered binding purchase and sale agreements with Overwaitea Food Group and Federated Co-operatives Limited that will see Sobeys sell 22 of the 23 stores it is required to divest as part of its consent agreement with the Competition Bureau related to its purchase of Canada Safeway.

 In addition, Sobeys has signed a binding letter of intent with Federated for the sale of its Price Chopper location in Winnipeg, which the company is also required to divest as part of its October consent agreement.

Despite a challenging retail environment, GNC performed well during the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013, generating what chairman, president and CEO Joe Fortunato described as solid top and bottom line growth.

For the quarter, net income slightly rose to $47.7 million from $47.4 million in the same period the prior year.

Los Angeles, Calif. — Westwood Financial Corp., a national owner-operator of shopping centers, has completed remodeling work at North Park Plaza shopping center in Phoenix, Ariz. Safeway anchors the center. Regional and national tenants include Frazee Paint, Peter Piper Pizza, Subway and Great Clips.

Improvements to the 101,361-sq.-ft. center include a new façade, covering columns with stone, refreshed landscaping and a two-tone paint color scheme.