Supermarket/Grocery

Steve McKinney was named president of Kroger’s Fry’s Food Stores division in Arizona to succeed Jon Flora who passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago.

McKinney, 57, had previously served as vp of operations at Kroger’s Ralph’s division in California since 2007. The Fry’s division operates 119 stores in Arizona.

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.   

Homeland Stores, a 78-store regional supermarket chain headquartered in Oklahoma City, has launched a mobile payments pilot program with mobile payments technology provider DoubleBeam. 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.

New York -- Tesco Plc’s Fresh & Easy chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a plan to sell most of the U.S. chain’s 167 stores to a private equity firm led by billionaire Ron Burkle.

Fresh & Easy cited debt between $500 million and $1 billion in a court filing on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. According to the documents, a unit of Tesco will end up with a 22.5% stake in the Yucaipa affiliate that acquires the supermarket chain.

San Diego  — Representing a real estate investment trust, The Mansour Group has sold a portfolio of five Applebee’s for $13.3 million.

To complete the transaction, The Mansour Group sourced a private high net worth California investor, who sold an apartment complex and acquired the portfolio through a 1031 exchange. The restaurants are located in North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota and Kentucky:

New York -- Fairway Group Holdings Corp., parent company of the Fairway Market grocery chain, has signed a long term lease to open a 52,242-sq.-ft .grocery in Manhattan's TriBeCa neighborhood with commercial realtor Jack Resnick & Sons.

This store is expected to open in fall 2014. It will be the first Fairway location in Lower Manhattan and the 16th Fairway food store in the tri-state New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.

Thibodaux, La. -- Southern grocery store operator Rouses Markets will take ownership of six former Belle Foods stores in Alabama from Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG), a retail-owner cooperative of which Rouses Markets is a member. AWG and its group of grocers and operators submitted the winning bid last week at the Belle Foods bankruptcy auction in Birmingham.

This is Rouses Markets' first expansion into Alabama. The company currently operates 38 stores in Louisiana and Mississippi. Three new stores in Louisiana were also recently announced.

Hamilton Township, N.J. — A 13,640-sq.-ft. Petco has opened at Hamilton Plaza in Hamilton Township, N.J., according to Levin Management, which manages and leases the 175,515-sq.-ft. property. Ripco served as the tenant’s broker in the transaction.