Supermarket/Grocery

Columbia, Md. – The Howard Hughes Corp. has signed several retail and restaurant leases for the public promenade at The Metropolitan Downtown Columbia, a new luxury apartment community located in Columbia, Maryland. As part of the transformation, The Howard Hughes Corp. recently completed the renovation of the historic Rouse Building into a flagship Whole Foods Market and a 27,000-sq.-ft.luxury spa and wellness center, as well as kicked off a multi-stage renovation of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

New York - Digital ad spending in the U.S. will total $58.61 billion this year, and retailers' ad outlays will comprise 22% of that figure, or $12.91 billion, by far outpacing all other U.S. industries. According to new figures from eMarketer.

Retailers will spend nearly twice as much as any other industry on mobile advertising in 2015, and the sector's $6.65 billion will represent 23.2% of the $28.72 billion that advertisers in the U.S. will spend to reach consumers on mobile devices this year.

San Francisco – Instacart is taking its talents to South Beach. Consumers in Miami can now use the online delivery service to order from Whole Foods Market, Costco, Winn-Dixie, BJ’S Wholesale Club and Petco stores and have everything delivered by Instacart in as little as one hour.

Instacart customers do not need a Costco or BJ’s membership to shop from those stores. Miami is the 16th city where Instacart is offering deliveries.

Lower gas prices led to improved traffic and a 1.1% same store sales increase at Walmart’s U.S. stores division, but total company performance suffered under the weight of a $3.3 billion foreign exchange impact and expense pressures which caused profits to decline 7%.

Bentonville, Ark. – Declining gas prices helped U.S. same-store sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., but the negative impact of foreign currency exchange and efforts to improve store experience and employee wages dampened total sales and operating profits.

San Francisco - Retailers in the U.S. including Dunkin’ Donuts, Fandango, Sundance Catalog and Williams-Sonoma will now offer Visa Checkout, the online checkout service from Visa Inc. In addition, Pizza Hut, Ticketek and Bonds will offer Visa Checkout in Australia; and Indigo, Roots, Running Room and Simons will offer the service in Canada.

Online grocery delivery service Instacart has had to add boats to its fleet of vehicles now that the growing company has decided to launch in Miami.

Customers in Miami can now order from Whole Foods Market, Costco, Winn-Dixie, BJ'S Wholesale Club and Petco stores and have everything delivered by Instacart in as little as one hour. Instacart customers do not need a Costco or BJ's membership to shop from those stores.

New York – U.S. consumers are continuing to show moderate signs of the optimism Americans are so famous for. According to the Nielsen consumer confidence index, U.S. consumer confidence increased one index point in the first quarter of 2015 to a score of 107, maintaining an above-the-baseline (100) optimism level for one year.