Supermarket/Grocery

Hy-Vee shoppers will soon be able to buy new clothes while they grocery shop.    Two Hy-Vee locations in Nebraska will soon feature F&F clothing boutiques through the Iowa-based retailer’s franchise agreement with the British clothing line owned by supermarket company Tesco, reported The Anchorage Press.  

Whole Foods Market has opened its second largest location in Chicagoland.     The supermarket retailer has opened a 76,000-sq.-ft. store in the city’s Lakeview area. It replaces an older Whole Foods across the street. The older store, which opened in 1996, closed the day the new store opened.   

Chain Store Age honored five dynamic and growing retail and restaurant brands at its annual Breakout Retailer Awards presentation, which was held at CSA’s SPECS 2017 Conference, in Kissimmee, Florida.    The Breakout Retailer honorees for 2017 were Altar’d State, Bentley’s Pet Stuff, MOD Pizza, Sugarfina and Warby Parker. The awards were sponsored by Paint Folks, a division of Academy Service Group.    

Moody's Investors Service has some good news for the U.S. supermarket industry.    Grocery stores’ operating profits will grow at a fairly healthy rate again this year after a disappointing 2016, according to Moody’s new report, "Companies Will Perform Better in 2017 as Deflationary Pressure Wanes. Profitability last year was crimped by an unprecedented level of deflation for an economy not in recession, the report noted, but as downward pressure on prices wanes, things will pick up in the latter half of this year.

Sears Holdings Corp.’s acknowledgement in a filing on Tuesday that the retailer had “serious doubt” about its future came as no big surprise to the retail industry, including Joseph Coradino, chairman and CEO of PREIT, a publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns and manages 23 million square feet of retail and lifestyle space.   

The Food Marketing Institute and National Retail Federation will combine their existing risk and safety signature events into one cross-industry event starting in 2018.   The two groups will sponsor Protect in 2018, according to an announcement made Wednesday at the FMI’s Audit, Safety, Asset Protection Conference in Orlando.   

Target Corp. has unveiled its next-generation store format, which will make its debut in Richmond, Texas, a Houston suburb, in October.   In addition to the new 124,000-sq.-ft. Richmond store, 40 additional Target locations will receive elements of the redesign when they are updated, also in October.      

Costco Wholesale Corp. is making it easier for customers to shop for groceries.   Shipt, a membership-based delivery service for online groceries, has partnered with Costco to deliver groceries orders placed by Costco customers directly to their homes.      The service will launch initially in the Tampa area, with plans to expand to 50 markets and more than 30 million households by the end of the year.  It is limited to grocery, and does not include apparel, furniture or electronic

That was fast.   The Kroger Co. wasted no time in naming a replacement for Jeff Burt, president of Fred Meyer Stores, who resigned on Monday, March 20, to head up Target’s grocery business.    Kroger tapped company veteran Joe Grieshaber as president of Fred Meyer Stores, immediately.  

A 30-year veteran of The Kroger Co. has joined Target Corp. to head up the discounter’s struggling grocery business.    Target has appointed Jeff Burt as senior VP, grocery, fresh food and beverage, effective April 10.