Supermarket/Grocery

Boston -- Walmart Canada and Target Canada are very competitively positioned from a basket price perspective, according to a recent report by Kantar Retail.  

Based on the study’s results, Kantar Retail believes that Target’s “Pay Less” consumables prices will stack up well against its Canadian competition and that the retailer will prove to be a formidable challenge to Walmart Canada’s price position in the market.  

Shrewsbury, Mass. -- Charter Realty and Development said that it has leased a 19,300-sq.-ft. space at White City Shopping Center, in Shrewsbury, Mass., to Planet Fitness.

Planet Fitness joins Shaw’s, Dress Barn and Austin Liquors, among others, at the 255,000-sq.-ft. center.

New York -- New York City-based supermarket chain Fairway Market is going public. The company said in a regulatory filing Thursday that it expects its stock to price in the range of $10 to $12 per share as it looked to raise as much as $164 million.

Fairway operates 12 locations in the greater New York City metro area and in on track to open a store this summer in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood and one in Nanuet, N.Y, in the fall.
 

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens reported Wednesday that sales for the month of March increased 2.3% to $6.2 billion.

Total front-end sales increased 5.4% compared with the same month in fiscal 2012, while same-store front-end sales increased 4.2%. Front-end sales will have benefited from a March 31 Easter — last year Easter sales fell in April. As a result Walgreens said it will report combined comps for March and April with its April sales results.
 

Hilton Head Island, S.C. -- Joint-venture partners Kroger Real Estate and Blanchard & Calhoun Commercial announced Wednesday the launch of construction on the Shelter Cove Towne Centre, a 42-acre mixed-use development on Hilton Head Island, featuring the debut of Kroger Marketplace on the Island.

By Greg Munves, [email protected]

If you’re like many mid-level or tier one retailers, online or brick-and-mortar, you’ve probably made a significant investment in Big Data, capturing and analyzing customer buying patterns across your business. You may not realize, however, that this huge IT investment can actually be a profit center, if you sell your data back upstream to your suppliers.
 

Minneapolis -- Supervalu president and CEO Sam Duncan announced Wednesday some major changes to his executive leadership team.

CFO Sherry Smith will leave the company, effective May 30, and no replacement has yet been named. Smith is a 26-year veteran of the company and has served as EVP and CFO since December 2010.

General counsel Todd Sheldon will also leave the company, effective May 30, to be replaced by Karla Robertson, who has been named EVP for legal, effective immediately.

New York -- Store development and facilities professionals from some of the nation’s biggest retail and restaurant chains gathered in Dallas, Texas, to attend Chain Store Age’s 49th annual SPECS Conference, March 17-20, at the Hilton Anatole Hotel.