Supermarket/Grocery

Dayton, Ohio – Walmart is the most valuable retail brand in North America, with a brand value estimated at $131.8 billion, according to Interbrand's "Best Retail Brands" report. The retail powerhouse maintains its number one spot and, even with a 6% decline in brand value, it retains an enormous margin over its closest competitor Target, whose brand value is put at $27.1 billion, an 8% increase over 2013.

A kosher deli and Murray’s Cheese shop will be part of a new 72,000-sq.-ft. Ralph’s Fresh Fare supermarket set to open on Thursday, April 10 in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reportedly plans to open an additional 40 to 50 wholesale cash-and-carry stores in India during the next four years and also launch an Indian e-commerce operation. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart will begin e-commerce sales in India during summer 2014 with one wholesale store offering goods online and delivering them for pickup at other local retailers up to about 25 miles away.

New York -- Meijer is testing an automated system that speeds up the checkout process at its store in Jenison, Mich. The system, from NCR, automatically scans merchandise. It became available customers on April 3, according to MichiganLive.

As shoppers place merchandise on a conveyor belt, the items are scanned, and then sent to one of three collection areas, where customers bag them.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in March 2013 versus March 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. H.E.B. and Publix topped the charts in circular page change, with increases of 27.8% and 41.2%, respectively. The massive increase at Publix was attributable to the release of an additional circular this March (five versus four in 2013), while H.E.B. simply ran more pages in each of its five March circulars (eight to 12 pages each this year, as opposed to six to eight last year).

By Scott Klatsky, director of retail leasing, Time Equities, Inc.

New York City is the world’s retail hub — and within the city are major opportunities for retail expansion.

In fact, Time Equities, Inc., has availabilities all over Manhattan — from Greenwich Village/NYU to Midtown to Upper West Side to Tribeca to Financial District ... even Brooklyn Heights.

Salisbury, N.C. – Delhaize America has entered into a multi-year agreement for Revionics Life Cycle Price Optimization solutions, which include Revionics Price Optimization, Revionics Promotion Optimization and Revionics Markdown Optimization. The agreement also includes Revionics Advanced Analytics services: key value item (KVI) analysis, item clustering and market basket analysis.

AmazonFresh recently launched a new tool called the Amazon Dash that allows users to scan items or speak the items aloud as part of a new way to shop for groceries without having to go into the store or shop online. 

"Every member of the family can use Dash to easily add items to your AmazonFresh shopping list," AmazonFresh announced. "Keep it on your kitchen counter or hang it on the refrigerator. Did your kids just eat the last of the cereal? Conveniently refill and restock your home's everyday essentials, and have fun doing it."