Convenience Stores

Minneapolis -- A Friday report by Bloomberg said that coffee purveyor Caribou Coffee has lost interest in opening shops inside J.C. Penney Co. stores.

The revelation comes just six months after Penney CEO Ron Johnson announced Caribou Coffee as a potential partner.

Caribou CEO Mike Tattersfield said in a Friday emailed statement that the company “does not have plans to move forward with a partnership at this time.” Tattersfield has not elaborated on the reasons for the change of heart.

Don Kingsborough, VP retail services, PayPal, San Jose, Calif.

CHM has broken ground on University Commons, billed as the first urban, vertical retail complex in Knoxville, Tenn.

The multi-story urban shopping and dining development, located on the former Fulton Bellows site adjacent to the University of Tennessee, will cover 12+ acres, with 211,000 sq. ft. of retail space and parking.  Anchored by Walmart and Publix, University Commons will add another 40,000 sq. ft. of smaller shop space once the project is completed.

Jim Crowcroft, VP market development, TCP Inc., Aurora, Ohio, [email protected].

With 'intelligent design' emerging as yet another buzz phrase in an industry full of them, Chain Store Age talked with Jim Crowcroft about how TCP incorporates smart design into its lighting products and projects, as well as what hot lighting trends he is seeing for 2013.

What do you see as the main elements of intelligent lighting design?

Walmart CFO Charles Holley weighed in on the retailer’s growth priorities earlier this week during a presentation to investors at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Consumer & Retail Conference.

Many areas of the Affordable Care Act remain unsettled

Retail companies should expect this year and 2014 to be a wild roller coaster ride of health insurance changes for retailers. That assessment came from Neil Trautwein, VP, employee benefits, National Retail Federation, who said that retailers need to take prudent actions to comply with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Gap Inc., Ebay, Safeway, Wegmans, Whole Foods, Costco, Target, Best Buy and OfficeMax were all named to Ethisphere Institute’s World’s Most Ethical Companies list.

The companies were chosen based on an evaluation of a questionnaire provided by Ethisphere to determine each company’s Ethics Quotient (EQ).

Companies were evaluated for their own ethics policies and enforcement of such policies, ethical track record and reputation in the market place, corporate governance, corporate responsibilities and culture of ethics.

New York -- Retail spending in the United States rose a better-than-expected 1.1% in February, the highest increase since September, according to figures released Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

Sales, excluding gasoline, building materials and autos, rose 0.4%. Industry experts said that consumer spending is holding up even in the face of the higher payroll tax.