Food waste remains a problem, and what better day to highlight new solutions than Earth Day? A new app from Cornell University, FMI, and USDA aims to alleviate food waste by removing the uncertainty about whether or not food is still safe to eat. David Fikes of FMI reports that 20 pounds of food per…
Retailers are Going Green Today for a Greener Tomorrow
Earth Day acts as a reminder for each of us to consider ways we can help to green up the planet, but Stop & Shop and Wegmans are one step ahead of us. Stop & Shop has recently made public their work on an anaerobic digester. This machine will turn once wasted food scraps into usable…
Rockline Industries Wins an Award
Family owned since 1976, Rockline Industries based in Sheboygan, WI wins the Manufacturer of the Year Award for 2014. This was awarded by the Sheboygan County Chamber, who recognized Rockline Industries for their continued commitment to job creation, community investment and growth. In the past three years Rockline has added nearly 250 jobs that have benefited…
Distribution 3.0: The Physical Internet
The below is an excerpt from ES3’s “collaborate.grow.win. how smart devices create smart supply networks” whitepaper. Receive your copy today to understand the impacts of the convergence of the Internet of Things and the Physical Internet on retail’s future state. The Physical Internet provides a global framework for collaboration, enabling scale and cost-savings. Designed to…
Organic is Here to Stay
83% of families purchase organic products, says a new study from the Organic Trade Association (OTA). In the sixth year of the study, this number has climbed 10 percentage points, aligning with the overall increase in consumers’ awareness and trust in the organic seal. The majority of American households have purchased organic at least once;…
Food Industry M&A Picks Up
The Food Industry recorded 503 mergers and acquisitions in 2014, not including the recently announced Kraft and Heinz merger, a 61.7% increase from the previous year. The Heinz/Kraft deal is the biggest on record for the Food Industry, at about $49 billion. Speculation had been ripe for which food company 3G would acquire next, pushing…
Shipping from Store Adds Cost- Lessons from Apparel and Accessories
DSW, the footwear and accessories retailer, shared its experience with omni-channel retailing on a call with analysts yesterday. Discussing fourth-quarter earnings, Mike MacDonald, president and CEO, reported revenue of $640.2 million in the fourth-quarter, $100 million of which was from omni-channel. According to MacDonald, about half of those omni-channel sales are fulfilled from in-store stock….
Is Virtual Reality the Reality of the Future?
With online shopping becoming ubiquitous, US consumers are willing to take online shopping to the next level. An emerging technology poised to change the face of retail is that of Virtual Reality (VR). Originally developed for the gaming industry, retail is beginning to see the value of enabling the customer to virtually interact with their…
Walmart Launches Sustainability Leaders Shop
Walmart has unveiled its newest initiative to help consumers “live better,” a dedicated online storefront filled with more than 3,000 items produced by 100 leading sustainability companies. In order to sell via the storefront, a manufacturer must be a leader among its peers in the Walmart Sustainability Index. The store spans multiple categories, including grocery,…
Grocery Tops Mobile Shopping in PwC’s Total Retail Consumer Survey
PwC’s Annual Global Total Retail Consumer Survey is in, and the results are quite interesting. Grocery topped the charts as the category with the highest sales on mobile (tablet and smartphone), beating out apparel and electronics by a large margin. These results coincide with the explosion in grocery e-commerce this year, with startups like Instacart grabbing…