Large Chains

Wisconsin-based, 21-store grocery retailer Festival Foods takes food safety so seriously that it no longer thinks about it.

That’s because Festival Foods has chosen the food safety platform from ReposiTrak to automatically manage regulatory and business documentation compliance within its supply chain.

Supervalu on Wednesday announced Eric Claus has been named the CEO of Save-A-Lot, the company’s hard-discount grocery segment. Claus, 59, joins the company after spending the past two-plus years as the chairman, president and CEO of Red Apple Stores, a chain of value retail stores in Canada. 

It’s official: Smart & Final Stores is acquiring 32 Haggen stores in Central and Southern California.

Smart & Final has been approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court to purchase 32 store leases – four of which are supplemental to the chain’s previously announced stalking-horse bid –from affiliates of Haggen Holdings for a total cash purchase price of approximately $68 million. Smart & Final plans to convert the 32 stores to its Extra! Store format.

Haggen has received approval from a federal bankruptcy court to sell 47 stores. Included in the sale are 33 supermarkets to Albertsons LLC, which formerly owned the stores. Albertsons sold the stores to Haggen just less than 12 months ago.

Click here to read more.

It’s official: Smart & Final Stores is acquiring 32 Haggen stores in Central and Southern California.

X Team International announced that Mountain West Retail and Investment and Newmark Grubb ACRES completed sales of two grocery-anchored properties same-day.

Canyon Center, a 51,914-sq.-ft. property in Sandy, Utah, is anchored by Smith’s and Shopko; the seller was Dee’s Inc., a third generation, family-owned real estate company, and the buyer was Pacific Castle, a Southern California-based institutional investor.

A familiar name factors heavily into the online holiday shopping plans of consumers.

According to a new poll from Reuters and Ipsos, 51% of consumers plan to do most or all of their online holiday shopping at Amazon.com. This dwarfs the next-most-popular specific retailer, Walmart, favored by 16%.

Other traditional and online retailers combined for the second-highest response of 18%. Other popular retailers with low responses include Target (3%) and Macys (2%).

Judging from the latest 2015 Temkin Loyalty Index, which measures consumer loyalty to large companies, shoppers are maniacal when it comes to their favorite grocery stores.

Based on a study of 10,000 U.S consumers, H-E-B, Publix and Trader Joe's were at the top of the list when it comes to consumer loyalty, bookended on either side by credit card and insurance company USAA.

Aldi and Hy-Vee also made the top 10 list of companies to which consumers are most loyal.

(The following is an excerpt from the new book, Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do, by Denise Lee Yohn.)

Scott McClelland seems an unlikely candidate for his picture to appear under a "Why Is This Man Smiling?" headline. As spokesperson and president of the Houston food/drug division of Texas-based grocery store chain H-E-B, McClelland has plenty of reasons to be worried.

Their merger isn’t expect to close until-mid 2016, but Ahold and Delhaize Group have named more senior executives to interesting new roles to lead the combined company.

Ahold and Delhaize Group announced more members of the proposed executive committee of the combined company to be known as Ahold Delhaize. As previously announced in June, the proposed Ahold Delhaize management board consists of CEO Dick Boer, Deputy CEO and Chief Integration Officer Frans Muller, CFO Jeff Carr, COO Europe Pierre Bouchut, COO USA Kevin Holt, and COO USA James McCann.