“Walmart Loses Share to Dollar General” by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  “Kantar found Dollar General had the least expensive total basket by far; driven by lower opening price points in its edible and non-edible baskets…Long said Dollar General is blanketing the country with rural stores, while Wal-Mart is still in the first inning of its Walmart Express format, which began in rural areas but more recently has been gravitating toward denser populated regions…“A trip to a Walmart Supercenter is a commitment, but a Dollar Store trip is quick and easy with a little bit of a treasure hunt mixed in,” Long said.”  Read more

 

“Walmart to Expand Campus Locations Throughout the US” by Zachary Stanton at Arkansas Traveler.  “There are three operational campus Walmarts in the U.S. Besides the store at the Univ of Ark., which opened in 2011, Arizona State University and Georgia Tech both have campus Walmarts that opened in 2013.  Walmart plans to open another location across the street from the University of Missouri.  The new locations will range between 2,500 and 5,000 square feet and offer pharmacy services, as well as financial services, including in-store check cashing and bill pay, Jones said.”  Read more

 

“Ace says Afghanistan is the place” by Steve Geary at DC Velocity.  “Press reports suggest that the Safis expect to invest $40 million to $50 million in the Ace Hardware expansion. A significant portion of that will go toward logistics…But getting it to the shelf won’t be easy. Ace’s closest distribution center is in Dubai, more than 1,000 miles from Mazar-e Sharif as the crow flies. And there’s no easy way to move freight between the two locations. In theory, you could ship from Dubai via Iran, but for a variety of obvious reasons, that option is not available.”  Read more 

 

“Publix Pharmacy Ranks No. 1 in Consumer Satisfaction with Target a Close 2nd” at Digital Journal.  “The top performers on the delight index – Publix and Target – rated head and shoulders above the other leading chains in the operational excellence attributes. Publix ranked first for friendly staff, atmosphere and cleanliness. Target led in checkout times, followed by Walgreens and Rite Aid, both of which performed consistently well across most of the categories. See Graph 3.”  Read more

 

“Dick’s Sporting Goods Shoots for 800 Stores by 2017”  “The Company anticipates growing its store base to over 800 DICK’S Sporting Goods stores by the end of fiscal 2017, an increase of approximately 300 stores from the 518 stores at the end of fiscal 2012. DICK’S Sporting Goods has developed a range of prototypes depending on market characteristics, including its traditional 50,000 sq. ft. single-level stores, 35,000 sq. ft. smaller market stores and 80,000 sq. ft. two-level stores.”  Read more

 

“Walmart’s Platform For Female-Owned Businesses Is Surprisingly Exciting” by Ariel Schwartz at Fast Company.  “For now, most products from the Empowering Women Together suppliers are only available online. That may change. ComfortCake, a company started by Chicago entrepreneur Amy Hilliard, has already made the transition to selling its Luscious Lemon Gourmet Pound Cake Mix in physical Walmart stores.  “We have the ability to understand current capacity and future capacity. Some [entrepreneurs] like Amy might start selling on Walmart.com–let’s say 500 to 1,000 pieces–and if she’s able to increase orders, we can figure out the right timing to get into stores,” explains Lemmon.”  Read more

 

“No more business cards for you! Inside the new Heinz” by Jennifer Reingold at Fortune.  “Later that day, about half of the executives were summoned, in 15-minute increments, to a conference room where the new CEO calmly informed them whether they had a place at the new company or whether their Heinz career was over. “You couldn’t dream it up, it was that weird,” says one attendee.  When the purge was over, 11 of the top 12 executives were gone, replaced, in many cases, by people they had managed.”  Read more

 

“Companies including Kroger and Walmart Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities” by Rebecca Smith & Cassandra Sweet at WSJ.  “At a big food-distribution center Kroger also owns in Compton, Calif., a tank system installed this year uses bacteria to convert 150 tons a day of damaged produce, bread and other organic waste into a biogas that is burned on site to produce 20% of the electricity the facility uses…Wal-Mart produces about 4% of the electricity it uses but intends to make 20% by 2020, taking advantage of idle acreage on thousands of store rooftops.”  Read more

 

“Whole Foods Teaches the Art of Butchery”  “To teach the art of butchery and continue to honor an age-old profession, Whole Foods is launching an in-store Meat Apprenticeship Program for its team members. The intensive 18-month training program is designed to transform aspiring butchers into skilled meat cutters.”  Read more

 

“Twitter posts inaccurately high metrics about its ads, changes them after questions” at San Fran Chronicle.  “Today the Twitter Ads blog posted numbers about how well Twitter ads performed at this week’s London Fashion Week, based on how many times people tweeted about an advertiser and how many times the event’s hashtag appeared in user timelines. SFGate looked into the numbers, which appeared to be inaccurately high. Twitter has since changed one to 1/25th of what it first reported. Another number, which was found to be wrong by 680 million impressions, has since disappeared from the blog.”  Read more

 

Follow on Twitter @retaileyeretail