Supermarket/Grocery

Seattle -- Starbucks has racked up 26 million mobile transactions since it launched its mobile payment program in January. Currently, the top five U.S cities for Starbucks mobile app adoption are New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and San Jose.

In the first nine weeks of the program, there were 3 million transactions and in comparison for the nine week period starting in October, there were 6 million transactions, demonstrating a significant jump in customer adoption and use, the company reported.

Chicago -- Retail rents fell 1.6% year over year, and inched down 0.5% since the last quarter to the current national average of $14.65, according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s North America Year-end Retail Outlook. National retail vacancy levels posted a 0.1% quarter-over-quarter drop from 7.1% to 7.0%, with open-air centers at the high end with 10.9% vacancy, and general retail at the low end with 4.7%  vacancy.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Caremark has confirmed that Jim Trappani, VP merchandising for health care and multicultural, has decided to leave the company.

Grant Pill has assumed the role of VP merchandising for over-the-counter healthcare and store brands.

In addition, Mike McEnany has been promoted to VP merchandising, consumables and multicultural. His most recent role was divisional merchandising manager for consumables.

St. Louis -- Mobile retail navigation service aisle411 announced that Hy-Vee Food Stores has deployed the aisle411 platform. Shoppers can access the in-store shopping platform for Hy-Vee Food Stores within aisle411's iPhone and Android applications, as well as within the Hy-Vee Foods iPhone application.

Target may have been up against a difficult prior-year comparison when it reported a 1.8% November same-store sales increase, but that hardly seems like a good excuse for an anemic number to begin the fourth quarter.

New York City -- Roundy's Supermarkets Inc., which operates 158 supermarkets under several banners in three states, expects to raise $230 million through an initial public stock offering.

The Milwaukee-based Roundy's is currently owned by Chicago private equity firm Willis Stein & Partners. The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been determined.

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens reported that for November same-store sales rose 1.8% while total sales climbed 4.2% to $6.09 billion, from $5.84 billion in the year-ago period.

Comparable pharmacy sales rose 1.2%, while total pharmacy sales rose 3.4%.

Total sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended Nov. 30, were $18.16 billion, up 4.7% from $17.34 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2011. Same-store sales increased 2.5%, while front-end comp-sales for the quarter also increased 2.5%.
 

All retailers are taking price increases where they can these days, especially in food, but the pace of increases at Walmart has slowed, and its price gap relative to most competitors has widened, according to the most recent pricing survey conducted by Credit Suisse.