Retail

Online grocery sales will reach an estimated $250 billion by 2025, which is more than a 60% increase over pre-pandemic projections, and more than a fifth (21.5%) of all grocery sales. These numbers are according to a June survey from Mercatus of 60,000 American shoppers across approximately 20 states.

During the pandemic, 43% of shoppers said they have shopped online in the last six months compared to just 24% two years ago. The top three reasons shoppers have shifted to online shopping are COVID-19 concerns (62%), convenience (62%) and time savings (42%).

Additionally, 66% of all respondents who shop online rate real-time inventory visibility as very important. Compared to brick and mortar, there is far less loyalty for pure-play online retailers, with only 8% of shoppers switching to an online-only operator such as Amazon.

Amazon's first-ever traditional grocery banner has officially opened to the general public after a few weeks of an invitation-only soft launch.

The new grocery format called Amazon Fresh is welcoming everyone in Woodland Hills, Calif., with 15 cent bananas, freshly baked pizza slices for $1.97, and rotisserie chickens for $4.97.

Loop, the worldwide circular-shopping platform rolled out last year by Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle, is now available in every ZIP code in the 48 contiguous states. Since its launch in the northeastern United States and Paris, with subsequent expansion to the United Kingdom this past July, Loop has experienced considerable growth of its brand partners and product assortment: It now offers more than 80 brands and 400 products globally, and more than 100,000 people enrolled to receive the service.

Loop allows consumers to shop for brands in sturdy packaging that’s reused until the end of its life, resulting in a circular system that aims to supplant disposable single-use packaging. The service features international companies such as Unilever and Nature’s Path and small independently owned businesses alike.

You can see them around more and more often: vending machines that offer eggs, grilled meat or fresh fruit and vegetables. These are often set up by farmers* who are looking for an additional outlet for their goods. In the Palatinate, in the Kandel area, there are now more and more Zalat-O-Maten: vending…

The catering industry is slowly getting back on its feet after the difficult first half of the year. This means a sigh of relief for the wholesalers who have specialised in this sector. However, normality has not yet returned; public festivals in particular are painfully absent from the annual turnover…

If you are not offering these items online, you’re losing sales.

With the limitations on large event gatherings and justified concerns over sharing food in public spaces, large catered events are restricted for the foreseeable future. This is changing the way prepared food orders at grocery stores are being prepared, packaged and offered for purchase.

These new challenges don’t change the fact that people want to celebrate as they did before, but do not have the time to spend cooking a special meal. New behaviors are driving change and justify adding family-focused meal offerings and custom cakes to personalize the experience. 

Store departments that prepared foods for larger organizational and office meetings are now shifting to handle smaller gatherings and family celebrations - adding convenience and choice to online shopping.

Whole Foods Market’s recently opened Manhattan West store is home to the latest mini-farm installation of Farm.One, which bills itself as Manhattan’s only vertical farm. Farm.One maintains the custom-designed on-site farm for the Manhattan West store to supply the location’s prepared foods and beverages with freshly grown and harvested Blue Spice Basil. The herb is used in an ingredient in such offerings as freshly made pizza and the Whole Foods Mule, a specialty cocktail.

Fruit maturity is an essential factor for fresh retailers to make economical distribution scheduling and scientific market strategies. In the context of farm-to-door mode, the fresh retailers could incorporate the postharvest maturity time, picking time and distribution time to deliver high-quality…

Seven experts weigh in on how retail experiences will change

More affordable, often off-the-shelf technology is on the way as the offering grows in importance

In Pune, start-ups like Farmpal have opened new collection centres to help growers deliver fresh produce easily by connecting growers to their markets and cutting off the middlemen.  Going back for one moment: India grew more grain in 2017 than ever before and the government’s agriculture budget rose 111 per…

A 19-minute video has been released on YouTube, showing the transport of local bananas throughout the region, selling the produce on certain hotspots. The shots of dozens of mopeds carrying the bananas is a sight to see!

Consumers are currently able to purchase one of the most famous peaches in the Spanish region of Aragon: the one under the PDO Melocotón de Calanda, which is known for ripening inside a paper bag. This protects it from pests, making it possible for it to receive practically no phytosanitary treatments.…

US: Albertsons embraces micro-fulfillment to power e-commerceTo support e-commerce growth, Albertsons Cos. has expanded its partnership with automation specialist Takeoff Technologies to deploy micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) to fill online grocery orders. Currently, Albertsons has two Takeoff-powered…

“People know us, but we like to show new products and packaging at this show.” So says Juan Pablo Lozano, whose company, Miami, Fl.-based Garland, LLC., has attended the annual PMA Fresh Summit show for the last four years. And with this year’s show being held virtually October 13-15, Garland is…

Consumers have been paying even more attention to food safety since the outbreak of Covid-19. At the same time, there is also a growing demand for sliced fruits and vegetables. The cutting up of fruits and vegetables is an important step in the processing of fruits and vegetables. This step is not just…

In India the lockdown came suddenly back in March and affected a lot of businesses especially those involved in the grape export as it was just 2/3 way through.AVI Global Plast produce packaging for, amongst others, the grape sector but the company seems to have coped very well in a difficult…

Amazon.com Inc’s drone service has received federal approval that will allow the company to begin testing commercial deliveries through its drone fleet, the e-commerce giant said. Amazon Prime Air, the company’s special service delivering packages in 30 minutes or less, has been approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to test delivering orders using autonomous drones.

Online grocery start-ups such as Jumbotail, BigBasket, ShopKirana, among others, are doubling down on farm-to-plate sourcing models with a significant spike in demand for fresh produce. Free movement of goods continues to be a challenge for medium and large farmers and fast moving consumer goods brands…

In India the lockdown came suddenly back in March and affected a lot of businesses especially those involved in the grape export as it was just 2/3 way through.AVI Global Plast produce packaging for, amongst others, the grape sector but the company seems to have coped very well in a difficult…

Church Bros. Farms is expanding its value-added offerings to the retail segment with the introduction of five new items under the Green Giant Fresh brand: sweet baby broccoli, sweet baby cauliflower, spaghetti squash, butternut squash and sweet potato.

The Sweet Baby vegetable line includes sweet baby broccoli in an eight-ounce bag and sweet baby cauliflower in a 10-ounce bag.  Both vegetables are washed and ready to use with a 16-day shelf life.  

Sweet baby broccoli is sweet and tender from floret to stem and 100 percent edible, reducing food waste and kitchen prep time. Sweet baby cauliflower is a new sweeter variety of cauliflower with tender green stems that become brighter when cooked.

“These new items give retailers the opportunity to build a Sweet Baby category. Their uniform stand up pouches look great side by side on the shelf,” said Rick Russo senior vice president of sales and marketing.

The Cubed and Crumbled veggie line includes a range of hearty vegetables that deliver nutrition as well as flavor and convenience.  The Cubed items include sweet potatoes, butternut squash and spaghetti squash in 16-ounce bags. Accompanying the original Cauliflower Crumbles and Cauliflower Crumbles Fried Rice, the Cubed offerings will further satisfy consumers’ needs for convenient cuts of gourmet, nutritious veggies.

Broccoli, 3D-printed into unusual shapes to tempt a picky toddler. Beef stew, produced in the same way to make it easy to swallow for an elderly relative. Pork and potatoes, also rendered by a machine for a patient with oral cancer who can’t chew. Advances in 3D-printing mean printed food is becoming…

Amazon aims to compete with the likes of Albertsons and Kroger with the launch of its first retail Fresh grocery story in Los Angeles. The Woodland Hills location, promising “a wide assortment of national brands and high-quality produce, meat and sea...

Microgreens are tender immature greens of wild species, herbs, grains, or vegetables, harvested upon the emergence of the first pair of true leaves. Microgreens are analogous in size to sprouts but are eaten without the roots and require additional days to thrive and acquire larger, colored, and…

Amazon executive Jeff Wilke, a 20-year veteran of the company, plans to retire next year, but not before completing one of his major projects — eliminating human cashiers at Whole Foods locations across the country.

The Dutch consumer program, Radar, recently took a closer look at the fresh pack concept. Are these packs really so tasty and convenient? Isn’t it much cheaper to buy all the products separately at the supermarket? To find out, Radar called on Dutch food blogger, Brenda Hoff. She compared pumpkin soup and…

PARAMUS, NJ — H-Mart, a Korean grocery chain that was founded in New York in 1982, has ambitious expansion plans and is looking to make deals directly with growers to supply the dozens of stores it operates nationwide.

Gi Moon, who works in the procurement department for Lyndhurst, NJ-based H-Mart, met with The Produce News Aug. 14 at the chain’s location, here, to discuss the shift in its buying practices, which heretofore have focused on the use of brokers and distributors.

“We have plans to open four to five new stores per year, and along with that we are interested in making deals directly with growers as a way to get the freshest, best quality product at the best price,” he said.

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For example, Moon said he has been recently working with ProComer, the export promotion agency for Costa Rica, to procure various products from that Central American nation. He hopes to connect with other similar organizations and directly with growers in the United States and abroad to help satisfy the demand by H-Mart shoppers for top-quality fruits and vegetables.

The burgeoning online delivery channel is leaving a considerable impact on packaging styles and materials, marketers say.

Safety is a priority, said Cindy Blish, brand and communications manager with Shelton, Conn.-based Inline Plastics Corp.

“Consumers demand that their online delivery of food is not tampered with, which is why tamper evident packaging has such a great fit for the delivery market,” she said. 

“Tamper-evident packaging” will continue to evolve to meet the burgeoning needs of the market, including developing new styles which not only provide safe and protected transportation of the products, but also provide enough style to be attractively served straight from the container, Blish said.

That’s a key point, said Jeff Brandenburg, president and primary consultant for the Greenfield, Mass.-based JSB Group LLC and QFresh Lab in Salinas, Calif.

“We get back to how do you protect it,” he said. 

There are a number of key questions that come to the fore, where packaging for online delivery models are concerned, Brandenburg said.

“Is that online delivery going to be refrigerated? How do you maintain temperatures? If you have fresh and stable side by side, how do you manage that from a shipping standpoint? Is it Amazon Fresh, USPS, FedEx?” he said. 

With global supply chains being threatened by a combination of extreme climate events and transport restrictions, it is increasingly important to tackle the global problem of wasted food. Most of this waste occurs in our homes. People buy food, presumably with the intention of eating it, but end up…

While the vast array of shelf life extension technology for fresh cut produce has grown exponentially over the last decade, strawberries had been absent from the list until recently. This highly popular and beloved berry had eluded efforts to extend its shelf life after cutting. Through focused research…