OPERATIONS / SUPPLY CHAIN

Seattle -- Starbucks said Monday that it is dividing responsibilities for its business into three global regions (instead of the current two, U.S. and international) in order to accelerate global growth.

The company has appointed three of its executives to lead the three regions: Asia; the Americas: and the combination of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Cliff Burrows will expand his current role as president, Starbucks U.S. to president, Americas, with responsibility for the United States, Canada, Mexico and Latin America.

Cincinnati -- Bartell Drugs has selected KSS Retail, a global supplier of price modeling, optimization, and customer insight solutions for the retail industry, as its provider for price modeling and optimization.

“We chose KSS Retail because we know Price Optimization will allow us to better understand what’s important to our shoppers, which will help us deliver the value they’ve come to expect.” said Ron Miller, senior VP merchandising at Bartell Drugs, which operates 58 stores in Washington State.

Duluth, Ga. -- NCR Corp. will acquire Radiant Systems, a leading provider of multichannel point-of-sale and managed hosted service solutions to the hospitality and specialty retail markets, through a cash tender offer of $28.00 per Radiant Systems share. The equity purchase price of $1.2 billion has been approved by the boards of directors of each company.

It is expected the transaction will close during third quarter 2011, subject to regulatory approval.

Toronto -- McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Limited and MasterCard Canada have introduced the MasterCard PayPass contactless payment technology at participating restaurant locations throughout the country.

PayPass point-of-sale payment terminals have been installed at more than 1,400 McDonald's restaurants in Canada, giving patrons the option to tap-and-go when making purchases.

Minneapolis -- Supervalu on Monday that it is not removing the self check-out lanes from the 460 Albertsons stores that it owns and operates in Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Nevada, Southern California, Utah, Washington state and Wyoming.

Cincinnati -- Macy’s announced that Steven Derwoed has been appointed VP merchandising for the Macy’s Store Planning and Design group (SPACE).

Prior to joining Macy’s, Derwoed served as principal in the New York office of Callison Architects and partner, VP design at RYA Design Consultancy.

Boise, Idaho -- Albertsons LLC said Friday it is eliminating the self-checkout lanes in all 217 stores, beginning this month.

According to the supermarket retailer, the self-checkout option precludes Albertsons from providing the desired level of customer service.

In place of self-checkout, which it introduced in its stores about 10 years ago, Albertsons said it is considering a modified express lane concept.
 

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens said Friday it has surpassed 1 million fans on Facebook, and has also integrated its network of more than 7,700 drug stores through mobile platforms on Facebook Places and Foursquare.

Walgreens said it has become the chain drugstore retailer with the largest following on Foursquare, while developing a growing presence on other social communities, including Twitter and YouTube.