Retail

Drones have already shown that they can reliably deliver vital shipments of blood across Rwanda, drop off prescriptions to senior citizens in Florida, and help quarantining families stay safe with contactless deliveries. Now they’re going to be buzzi...

Raising money during a global pandemic when budgets are tight and the economy is unstable is a tall order. But Sarah Frimpong believes her efforts to do so will nonetheless pay off.

Frimpong, the CEO of Wellfound Foods, has raised $220,000 of a $450,000 fundraising round to bankroll the expansion of her company's vending "smart fridges." The fridges sell the same prepared foods she makes for her wholesale business — which has taken a major hit during the pandemic.

Wholesale distribution of the company's grab-and-go-foods and snacks accounted for a majority of Wellfound Foods' business prior to the onset of the coronavirus crisis, with the D.C. company making daily deliveries to more than 50 locations, including 27 Peet's Coffee stores and five Philz Coffee locations in the region. That revenue hasn't been eliminated entirely since the pandemic caused many hospitality businesses to close their doors, Frimpong said, but Wellfound did lose a "significant portion" of its revenue. She declined to provide specific sales or revenue figures.

What will the supermarket of the future look like? That's something many people are considering. But, there's not yet any single answer. This animation shows a creative store concept. Who knows? In a few years, you might be visiting a drive-through store like this.

A new direct-to-consumer app for produce will be hitting the market next month. Flavor Wave LLC., an initiative from produce veterans Michael Chavez and Patrick Kelly, brings an innovative concept into the produce industry space. The app will encompass customer produce box ordering, fulfillment, and…

COVID-19 has upended food retailers’ lives in dramatic ways. New social-distancing and sanitation requirements, along with supply-chain shortages, have counterbalanced some sales increases — putting pressures on grocers’ already narrow margins.

Against this backdrop, are there ways for food retailers to save money? The answer is a definite yes.

Amazon is working on a fix for a problem that challenged food retailers earlier in the pandemic — long virtual lines for grocery delivery spots for online shoppers.

According to an interview that Stephanie Landry, Amazon’s VP of grocery, gave to Recode, “Amazon has now come up with a solution if there are large spikes in demand this fall and winter, whether because of a jump in COVID-19 cases, a surge in other illnesses (like the flu), or bad weather.”

A North American fruit and vegetable trader uses dry-misting. Nate Montgomery shared a clip on social media recently. It shows an assortment of fruit and vegetables where this technique is employed. Nate says he was in an 'amusement park'. "It was raining but still beautiful. I sell large quantities of fruit and vegetables. But…

Edible Garden, an agriculture-technology company that operates advanced environmentally controlled greenhouses and indoor hydroponic farms under stringent food safety protocols, announces its commitment to a sustainable future of next generation farming with Zero-Waste Inspired innovation. The company's…

The 2-year-old Chicago-based company said it's now raised a total of more than $100 million.

Online grocery pickup isn’t going away.

As grocery e-commerce grows, food retailers need better ways to pick online orders

An empty London industrial unit has been transformed into a sophisticated indoor farming space dedicated to growing fresh herbs which can be delivered to the city’s restaurants within hours of harvesting all year round. The new Vertical Farm facility is being operated by Harvest London, a company…

The days of bioplastic (or bio-sourced) bags seem to be numbered at Carrefour stores' fruit and vegetable stalls. Even though they are largely made up of plant matter and can theoretically be composted in people's homes, the main defect of these bags is that they are not recyclable. Carrefour has…

X5 Retail Group, a leading Russian food retailer that operates the Pyaterochka, Perekrestok and Karusel retail chains, has begun to implement a robotic telephone platform. The system, which uses speech technology to carry out various business functions, is a proprietary development of the X5 Big Data department. The project also uses Yandex SpeechKit technology, part of the Yandex.Cloud online services platform.

The higher adoption of online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic has naturally led to retooled strategies for capturing consumers’ breakfast dollars.

“We’ve created new subcategories in our taxonomy to make these items intuitive to find,” notes Scott Crawford, chief merchandising officer at Bronx, New York-based FreshDirect, which as a pure-play e-grocer, is somewhat ahead of the game in this area. “Email and social have also been scheduled to assist with the outreach. 

“Additionally, we are leveraging our shoppable homepage to offer relevant content to our customers and highlight the breakfast solutions available on FreshDirect across all categories, from our in-house prepared foods, to frozen aisle breakfast items, to multiserve yogurts and traditional breakfast cereals,” he continues. “We are also creating themed content pieces to align with reopening of schools and offices via a unique ‘Back to Routine’ landing page, including a breakfast module.”

Del Monte Fresh Produce has launched its first e-commerce website with same-day delivery in the Dallas market — another signal that direct-to-consumer (DTC) commerce is picking up steam during the pandemic.

As of Tuesday, consumers can visit www.myfreshdelmonte.com to place orders for delivery. With more than 200 available SKUs from both Fresh Del Monte and Mann Packing Co. products, Dallas-based shoppers will be able to fill their virtual carts with fruits and veggies.

To promote the launch, Fresh Del Monte will add an order of lemons and send a lemonade recipe with each delivery placed through its new DTC website through the end of October. The promotion is limited one per customer while supplies last. 

Fraud with regard to fruit (and produce in general) is commonly related to labeling claims about production practices, production location or brand names. In some parts of the world, unapproved substances may be used to speed or enhance ripening or to make fruits look more visually appealing. Still,…

The last full week of August saw the smallest produce sales increases since the start of the pandemic across virtually all departments. Prior months had shown weak final week of the month sales and, in this case, the results were further influenced by a much earlier Labor Day in 2019 that fell on Sept. 2.

That means the sales results of the week ending Aug. 30, 2020 ,went up against the 2019 Labor Day sales. Labor Day has always been a massive holiday week for grocery — making it a much harder holiday to beat than ones that had more of a split retail versus foodservice nature in typical years, such as Mother’s Day. Additionally, sales were negatively affected by more extreme weather events, impacting large parts of Louisiana and east Texas.

The net effect for fresh produce was a much smaller gain than those seen since the last week of June. For the week of Aug. 30, fresh fruit and vegetable sales increased 4.7% over 2019. Frozen fruits and vegetables had a much higher percentage increase, at +17.7% but is the smallest of the three temperature zones. Year-to-date through Aug. 30, fresh produce department sales are up 10.9% over the same time period in 2019. Frozen fruit and vegetables increased the most, up 26.8% year-to-date.

500Foods shared this story from Progressive Grocer - RSS Feed.

The pandemic has made most consumers — 75% of them — change their meat-buying behavior, according to FMI — The Food Industry Association.

A group of the world’s largest food retailers and providers announced that nearly 200 of their major suppliers have committed to root out food loss and waste from the supply chain. The 10-plus food retailers and providers lead the groundbreaking “10x20x30” initiative, with each having engaged at least 20 suppliers to halve food loss and waste by 2030.  

“The environmental, business and moral case for tackling food waste is undeniable. We need more companies to target, measure and act on food waste and publish their data if the world is to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 12.3,” said Dave Lewis, chair of Champions 12.3 and group chief executive of Tesco. “The good news is action is replacing talk. 10x20x30 is a great example of how companies are working in partnership with food suppliers to tackle this issue from farm to fork and I now urge others to follow their example.”

The food retailers and providers behind 10x20x30 are AEON, Ahold Delhaize, Carrefour, IKEA Food, Kroger, METRO AG, Migros (Turkey), Pick n Pay, The Savola Group, Sodexo, Tesco, and Walmart. Among them are six of the largest food retailers in the world, the world’s second largest foodservice provider, and leading food retailers in regions such as southern Africa, the Middle East, and Japan. Combined, participants operate in more than 80 countries.

Flexible technology is key to keeping up with evolving customer expectations

Fruit and vegetables are lovely, healthy, colorful products. When they're beautifully displayed, they look fantastic. Enjoy these photos from Brian Dey of Four Seasons Produce in the US. Nicely done!

500Foods shared this story from Bizjournals.com Feed (2020-09-08 17:06:11). Kroger Co. has formed a partnership with an artificial intelligence company in an effort to make the self-checkout process smoother.

Aromatic herb sales are growing, not only because consumers are going out less and cooking more at home since the pandemic started, but also because they are increasingly experimenting with new recipes from different countries, reports Jesús Gómez, Director of Agromediterránea. "During the lockdown, the retail…

Industry has experienced a tremendous amount of change over the past decade, and then squeezed in another decade’s worth of change in the past seven months

Is what's likely to be an unprecedented wave of store closures in 2020 the retail apocalypse? Or an acceleration of a major shift in retail?

Constant innovation has led the agricultural sector to adapt to the new demands of consumers by developing innovative healthy, high-nutritional, great-tasting products. One of the latest trends is mini-sized fruits and vegetables, which are conquering the market with their differentiating format. An…

To provide clarity on the path forward with smart store technology, join Progressive Grocer and one of Europe's most innovative start ups for an eye-opening look at the evolution of retail operations and customer experience.

With the need to sell groceries online, we are continually asked what features will best benefit a store.

After a short period where you could only visit the store if you had an invite, Amazon's first Fresh grocery location is now open to the public. Starting today, anyone who wants to visit the Woodland Hills, Los Angeles store can do so from 7AM to 10PM PT daily.

The centerpiece of the store is Amazon's new Dash Cart. Each one features a scale and a variety of cameras and sensors, allowing it to calculate your total as you shop. Once you're done shopping, the amount you need to pay is automatically deducted from the credit card associated with your Amazon account. If you only plan to buy about two bags worth of groceries, the Amazon Dash Cart allows you to skip a visit to the cashier. Another nifty feature of the Dash Carts is that you can access any shopping lists you made with Alexa directly from the cart.