News

NAPERVILLE, Ill. — OfficeMax announced that it will offer customers support education by carrying an extensive selection of Boise brand paper products with the Box Tops for Education seal on the package. OfficeMax retail stores and OfficeMax retail partners are currently the only office super stores to carry Boise's Box Tops for Education products, the company reported.

PLANO, Texas — JCPenney announced that it is launching a new philanthropic initiative that invites customers in over 1,100 stores to turn small change into “pennies from heaven” by rounding up their purchases and donating the difference to afterschool programs. Serving as the company’s signature cause-related event, pennies from heaven will be held four times a year starting July 31 through Aug. 27 during the Back-to-School season.

Walmart is among a group of retailers who further aligned themselves with a key Obama administration initiative this week by committing to open more than 1,500 stores in urban and rural markets defined as food deserts. The initiative is part of the Obama administration’s Let’s Move! campaign designed to address the nation’s weight problem by improving access to fresh foods.

Here are the facts:

• Walmart will open between 275 and 300 stores in food deserts by 2016.

J.C. Penney marketing chief Mike Boylson is trading the retail game for another type of game entirely: baseball. The 32-year J.C. Penney veteran officially left the company on July 1, and is already hard at work on his next venture: Boylson and a pal are opening a D-Bat baseball and softball training franchise in Allen, Texas, not far from J.C. Penney’s headquarters.

SAN FRANCISCO — Gap Inc. announced that Bella Goren, CFO AMR Corp. and American Airlines Inc., has been appointed to the company’s board of directors, effective Aug. 15. She will become the 11th member of the board and will serve on the company’s audit and finance committee.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Coinstar announced that Mitch Lowe has resigned as president of the company's DVD rental kiosk business, redbox.  Lowe has resigned to pursue entrepreneurial and other interests, and will continue to serve as president until a successor is named. Coinstar has commenced an external search to identify a new president of redbox.  

It is logical that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. president and CEO Mike Duke would top Supermarket News’ Power 50 list of the food industry’s most influential executives. The company sells more food, by a large margin, than anyone else, therefore a case could be made that Duke, or whoever is CEO of Walmart, should top the publication’s list each year.

Birmingham, Ala. -- Books-A-Million confirmed it has submitted a bid to purchase, among other things, the inventory, fixtures, equipment, and leasehold interests for 30 Borders locations. Under the proposed bid, Books-A-Million will assume the leases for these locations and continue to operate these stores. The move comes as Borders Group, after winning court approval, begins to liquidate its business.