Published on: April 28, 2011
• Ahold-owned Stop & Shop will announce tomorrow that it has established a relationship with Shell Oil that will allow consumers to get discounts on gasoline prices depending on how much money they have spent in the company’s supermarkets, using the chain’s frequent shopper card.
The move gives Stop & Shop the ability to extend its gas discount program - which it has had in place for some time at locations with gas stations on the premises - to areas such as Westchester County in New York and Fairfield County in Connecticut where real estate issues have prevented it from opening gas stations.
• PCC Natural Markets (PCC), the nation’s largest natural foods retail cooperative, announced that it will open its tenth location in late 2013, in a new mixed-use project currently referred to as Green Lake Village.
• The
Wall Street Journal reports that Coca-Cola “is raising prices on its beverages in North America, betting consumers won't gag as it tries to offset surging commodity costs and the hit its business is taking from the Japan disaster ... The globe-trotting maker of Coca-Cola, Sprite, Minute Maid orange juice and Dasani bottled water said Tuesday it is aims to boost prices by 3% to 4% this year in its single largest market, including increases of 1% to 2% enacted in the first quarter.
“Coke is banking on selling more drinks in convenience stores, where beverages typically cost more per ounce than in supermarkets, as more Americans take to the road despite rising gas prices. To soften sticker shock, it is also tweaking packaging sizes and adding price choices. The company recently began selling 1.25-liter bottles of cola at supermarkets for 99 cents apiece while raising the price on its two-liter bottles, which had been selling at 99 cents.”
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UPI writes about a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that “thirty-two states and the District of Columbia scored at or below the national average on an index that calculates the number of food retailers selling healthy foods.”
The story goes on: “Forty-nine percent of middle and high schools permitted less healthy foods such as candy, soft drinks and fast-food restaurants to be advertised to students on school grounds. In Ohio, nearly 70 percent of middle and high schools allowed such advertising versus 24 percent in New York.”
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Advertising Age reports that “Procter & Gamble Co. is preparing to launch what it describes as its biggest laundry innovation in more than a quarter century with Tide Pods: a line of highly concentrated liquid detergent tablets, backed by a massive $150 million marketing budget ... P&G has told retailers that, ultimately, liquid-filled tabs could take a 30% share of a U.S. laundry market that industry executives said totals $6.5 billion, making them a multibillion dollar product proposition. In the U.K., currently the most-advanced market for unit-dose laundry tablets, all forms of tablets including powder now exceed 30% of the market, according to an executive familiar with the matter.”
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Bloomberg reports that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says that the company “is developing a wider range of ready-made food and beverages after it sold more Via instant coffee than expected. “Via will be a portfolio of products,” he says.
• Target Corp. announced that it has joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) GreenChill program, which it says will further the company’s “efforts to reduce refrigeration emissions by adopting green refrigeration technologies in its stores.”
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Bloomberg reports that “Amazon.com Inc., responding to a trademark lawsuit by Apple Inc. over its use of the words ‘App Store,’ said the term is generic and denied that the iPhone maker has exclusive rights to the phrase. Amazon described the phrase as “unprotectable.”
Apple’s position is that its application to trademark ‘App Store” has been approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and therefore Amazon cannot use the term.
