Data & Analytics

By Jason Fredrickson, Guidance Software

Kansas City, Mo. - Healthy options are becoming increasingly important to customers of quick-service restaurants (QSRs). These latest trends are detailed in a new white paper, "QSRs and America's Changing Tastes," by Sullivan Higdon & Sink (SHS) FoodThink.

Key takeaways from this white paper by SHS FoodThink that hint at a desire for more from QSRs:

• Forty-eight percent of consumers want more opportunities to customize orders.

• Fifty-one percent want QSRs to give them more options for sides.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. cut the compensation of former CEO Gregg Steinhafel to $13 million in fiscal 2013 from $20.6 million in fiscal 2012. According to a regulatory filing, Target decided to reduce Steinhafel’s total compensation after holding meetings and calls with shareholders owning 40% of total company shares and two proxy advisory firms.

Gainesville, Fla. — Bass Pro Shops has announced plans for a new store in Gainesville, Florida. Slated to open in 2016, the planned 80,000-sq.-ft. store will anchor Celebration Pointe, a one-million-sq.-ft. mixed-use development that will include retail, restaurants, entertainment, a hotel and residential units. The property lies in the northwest quadrant of Interstate 75 and Archer Road.

Austin, Texas - Whole Foods Market earned the top spot in Greenpeace’s annual seafood sustainability ranking of U.S. supermarkets, claiming both the highest overall score and the strongest sustainable seafood policy. Whole Foods Market has been ranked first for the last two years in a row.

Bloomfield Hills, Mich. – Mall operator Taubman, through its preferred vendor, Single Digits, will offer free basic Internet access to all tenants in 20 of the regional and super regional malls it manages across the U.S. Beginning in the summer, a business-class T1 equivalent service will be offered free of charge to tenants leasing space in Taubman-owned and managed properties.

Palo Alto, Calif. - HP has expanded its retail solutions portfolio with POS systems designed to maximize space and increase efficiency. The new HP RP2 All-In-One (AIO) features a small footprint, combined with flexible mounting options to help boost employee productivity, while the updated high-performance HP RP5, Model 5810, provides seamless control of operations from the store floor to the back office.

San Jose, Calif. – Brick-and-mortar retail sales fell 8.8% from January to April 2014 compared to the same period a year earlier. RetailNext analysis of almost 59 million specialty and larger format retail stores within the continental U.S. also shows that store traffic fell 8.2%.

Other findings include that brick-and-mortar transactions fell 9.2%, and, sales per store slipped 0.8%. However, two positive developments were an average transaction value increase of 0.5% and a 0.81% decrease in returns.