Large Chains

After 44 years of service, Donna Giordano, president of the Ralphs division of The Kroger Co., is retiring.   Giordano’s retirement from the company will be effective July 23. She joined the company's King Soopers banner as a courtesy clerk in 1972, while still in college, and was named store manager at King Soopers in 1982. Giordano later held various director-level positions in key areas, including advertising, bakery, general merchandise, grocery, and pharmacy.   

Meijer is on the move again.   The company on Tuesday opened a 192,000-sq-.ft. supercenters in Flossmoor and Round Lake Beach, Illinois.      The two new stores are part of an investment of more than $400 million in new and remodeled stores that Meijer is making this year, which is creating 3,000 new jobs across the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer's six-state foot print.    

Regency Centers announced the signing of nine new tenants for The Market at Springwoods Village, a Kroger-anchored center slated to open in 2017 in the outer northern beltway of Houston.   New neighbors of the 100,000 sq.-ft. Kroger Marketplace will be Chick-fil-A; Cold Stone Creamery; Lovett Dental; Nails of America; MOD Pizza; Supercuts; Tarka’s Indian Kitchen; Torchy’s Tacos; and Zoe’s Kitchen. Retail space in the first phase of The Market totals 170,000 sq. ft.  

The Kroger Co. topped Wall Street expectations with more than one result in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

A new, small-format grocery concept from McCaffrey's Food Markets — Simply Fresh by McCaffrey’s — has opened in a restored 1928 industrial deco building in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, that originally housed a Ford dealership.  

Brookshire Grocery Co. is expanding with a new neighborhood format.    The Tyler, Texas-based supermarket operator will open 26 locations this summer under its new Spring Market banner. The stores will be on the sites of former Walmart Express stores that Brookshire is in the process of acquiring. (The acquisition is scheduled to close in July.) The locations range from southern Louisiana to west Texas.  

Wal-Mart Stores is undertaking a series of executive changes at its international divisions, starting with a new head for its struggling United Kingdom business, Asda.
 
Andy Clarke, president and CEO of Asda, will step down on July 11, after having worked at the British company for more than 20 years. Asda has been under heavy competitive pressure and has reported seven straight quarterly sales declines.

Supervalu has moved closer to spinning off its discount grocery store division.
 
The supermarket operator filed Amendment No. 1 to its Form 10 Registration Statement with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the anticipated spin-off of its Save-A-Lot business into a separate, publicly traded company.

When it comes to customer experience, not all grocery chains are created equal.
 
According to the new Customer Quotient (CQ) survey from global customer intelligence agency C Space, Trader Joe’s is the most customer-centric grocer. Conversely, Shaw’s scored the lowest of 27 options.