Supermarket/Grocery

Oklahoma City - Homeland Stores, a 78-store regional supermarket chain headquartered in Oklahoma City, has successfully completed of a mobile payments pilot program with mobile payments technology provider DoubleBeam. Launched in June of this year, Homeland's SwiftScan mobile application allows customers to pay for purchases with a smartphone.

SwiftScan is currently accepted for payment at 20 Homeland locations, with plans to add 26 more locations by the end of October.

CHESTER, Pa. -- Fare & Square, the nation's first nonprofit grocery store of its kind, opened in Chester, Pa. It is the first full service grocery store to open in Chester, a “food desert” area, since 2001.

Fare & Square will sell a full array of food with a focus on fresh products in a 16,000 sq. ft. store with six departments including produce, deli, fresh meat, seafood, dairy, frozen and dry goods featuring brand name and private labels.   

Cincinnati -- The Kroger Co. today announced its inaugural listing on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index-North America.

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index-North America tracks the economic, environmental and social sustainability performance of the top 20% of the 600 largest North America-based companies in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index.

Single Touch Systems, a technology based mobile media solutions provider, has announced that its mobile messaging volume, which is a key business metric that drives revenues, has been growing at an increasingly accelerated pace.

Single Touch generates a portion of its operating business revenues by sending SMS text messages including reminder messages to customers of some of the largest retailers in the U.S. and U.K. Each message sent generates incremental revenues for Single Touch.

Cincinnati -- The Kroger Co. has promoted Steve McKinney to president of the Fry's Food Stores division. Fry's operates 119 food stores in Arizona.

McKinney, 57, has been VP of operations at the company's Ralphs division since 2007. He succeeds Jon Flora, who passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago.

City Of Commerce, Calif. — 99 Cents Only has announced the opening of two new stores. The retailer will open an 18,960o-sq.-ft. store in McAllen, Texas, and an 11,685-sq.-ft. store in Laveen, Ariz. The grand opening of each store will feature the sale of Westinghouse Flat Screen TVs for only 99 cents each to the first nine customers in line to visit the store.

Both stores will feature a perishable food department, including produce, dairy and frozen foods.
 

Whole Foods Market’s core values of local, natural and environmentally responsible commerce are showcased in its store in downtown Detroit. The 21,506-sq.-ft. store, the retailer’s first location in the Motor City, features lower pricing and combines its signature organic and locally-made/grown goods with a larger selection of private-label items and frozen and prepackaged foods.

Consumer packaged goods companies are poised to gain a more robust offering of shopper insights from an expanded relationship between TiVo Research and Analytics and DunnhumbyUSA.