Supermarket/Grocery

Sandton, South Africa – Grant Pattison, CEO of Massmart Holdings Ltd., a South African retailer that operates as a subsidiary of Wal-Mart, is resigning. Pattison, 43, will be replaced by Massmart COO Guy Hayward, 48, on June 1, as part of what the company terms a smooth succession plan.

Pattison joined Massmart in 1998 and was appointed CEO in 2007. He was CEO when Massmart sold a majority stake to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Hayward has served with Massmart since 2000, receiving appointments as CFO in 2001 and COO in 2012.

Lakewood, Colo. – Natural Grocers Inc. has opened two new stores in Las Cruces, N.M. and Gresham, Ore. The locations are respectively Natural Grocers’ fifth store in New Mexico and seventh store in Oregon.

Natural Grocers stores offer features including a credentialed nutritional health coach, local products, free recyclable boxes and demos, speakers and seminars.

Pleasanton, Calif. -- Safeway Inc. has received a request for additional information and documents from the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") in connection with the FTC's review of the previously announced agreement and plan of merger among Safeway and Albertson’s.

London – Big Data technology provider ECommera has named Kevin Sterneckert as chief marketing officer. Sterneckert, who most recently served as the lead retail analyst for Gartner, brings with him more than 20 years of experience in retail leadership.

In recognition of its support of national defense and the uniformed service community Safeway received the Military Officers Association of America’s highest honor.

Safeway was presented with the organization’s Distinguished Service Award at an event in Washington, D.C., in recognition of its outstanding support as an employer of Guard and Reserve members and veterans. The Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) ’s highest honor. MOAA was founded in 1929 and has 380,000 members.

Guy Hayward was named CEO of Massmart to fill a position currently held by Grant Pattison, the executive who engineered the sale of a majority stake of the South African retailer to Walmart.

Pattison joined Massmart in 1998 and served as CEO since 2007, helping to engineer the sale of a majority stake in the company to Walmart several years ago. Assuming the CEO role on June 1 will be current COO Guy Hayward. He joined Massmart in 2000 as CFO and was later named COO and also played a key role in the Walmart and Massmart transaction.

Atlanta -- Dollar year-over-year volume growth during the month of March 2014 remained positive at 2.1%, but slipped from February’s growth of 2.4%, according to the First Data Corp. SpendTrend report. The report, which analyzes same-store point-of-sale data by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT, closed-loop prepaid cards and checks from nearly four million U.S.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart will carry Wild Oats organic food items later in April with a new, more affordable price point on products covering a broad variety of categories. Wal-Mart estimates customers will save 25% or more when comparing Wild Oats to national brand organic products.

The Wild Oats brand will begin appearing on Walmart shelves this month as the retailer plans to offer 100 low priced organic dry grocery items.

Dole is bolstering its chopped salad line with two new All Natural Chopped Salad Kits. Dole All Natural Chopped Sunflower Crunch Salad Kit and Dole All Natural Chopped Sesame Asian Salad Kit are available at supermarkets across the country.