Challenges Emerge as Grocery Industry Restructures

NEW YORK — The same forces inspiring a new wave of supermarket consolidation are likely to spark a concurrent groundswell of retail bankruptcies and restructurings.

The latter phenomenon will present opportunities and challenges to lenders, lawyers, strategic investors and others who do business with distressed companies, according to speakers at a panel discussion here Thursday. And understanding the unique challenges facing distressed supermarkets is key to successful restructuring, they said.

“For traditional supermarkets … the market is competitive, it’s saturated, and its been tough for a number of years,” said panelist Richard Pedone, a partner with the law firm Nixon Peabody. “And it’s bringing us to a flashpoint where you’re going to see a lot more distress.

“It’s a mature industry where people are killing each other. And where that happens, there’s bound to be opportunity,” he added.

Much of the stress on traditional supermarkets has come as a result of non-traditional competitors including clubs, mass merchants and specialty stores that have absorbed nearly all of the sales growth in the industry since 2008, said another panelist, Craig Boucher, a director at Deloitte’s corporate restructuring group. Boucher briefly served as Winn-Dixie’s chief financial officer while that chain went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to Boucher, pressure from non-traditional competitors is forcing some smaller supermarket retailers to seek additional strength and buying power through strategic mergers. Although there has been more than $22 billion in supermarket mergers in 2013 — the hottest pace of consolidation since 1999 — there is still more capacity not likely to be part of a merger, he said.

“There are 38,000 grocers in the U.S. — not stores — grocers,” he said. This group accounts for more than 58% of the supermarket industry with no single player accounting from more than 1.2% of the total share.
Restructuring a grocery chain presents challenges that tend not to exist when dealing with non-supermarket retailers, particularly on the legal front, said Lee Harrington, a partner in Nixon Peabody’s financial restructuring and bankruptcy practice. These challenges include so-called PACA claims arising under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, which creates a trust for the benefit of suppliers to collect payment on perishable items.

Harrington, who worked on A&P’s bankruptcy, said that case helped to establish a mechanism to deal with such claims, which totaled $3.4 million.

Read More: http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/industry-faces-restructuring-challenges-panel#ixzz2f4fmgSYn

Written by Jon Springer on Spet. 13th, 2013

General Mills plans hundreds of 2014 product launches

NEW YORK--General Mills Inc. (GIS) expects food retail prices to be mostly stable over the next year, and will rely on higher sales volume for the bulk of its sales growth over the next year.

"The cost environment is that we're seeing general price stability across all of our categories," General Mills Chairman and Chief Executive Ken Powell said Tuesday in an interview at the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr. Powell spoke ahead of an annual meeting with shareholders and investors, where the company was highlighting some of the more than 200 new products its plans to launch in the first half of fiscal 2014, ranging from a new version of its Yoplait Greek yogurt to protein-rich varieties of Nature Valley cereal.

The onslaught of new products is more than they launched last year, when products like Fiber One protein bars and a 100-calorie version of Greek Yogurt helped make General Mills's sales in its U.S. retail division, by far its largest division with more than $10 billion in annual sales, grow last year. In that same time frame, new products contributed 5 percentage points to the unit's growth, which was up just 1% overall.

The performance of new products will be key to increasing sales volume, something investors still crave out of food makers who have thus far only shown a slow recovery. General Mills in recent quarters has begun to finally show sales volumes increasing, including a 2% rise in the U.S. retail segment in its fiscal fourth quarter.

General Mills sees low-single digit sales growth for its recently begun fiscal year, and most of that increase will come from selling more product. Costs are expected to rise 3%, a level General Mills executives say is manageable.

New products are also being counted on to help revive two of the company's lagging businesses: cereal and yogurt.

The maker of Cheerios cereal lost some market share over the past year, after what it says was lackluster number of new products and less advertising by all the players in the category. In addition to new products, General Mills is also stepping up advertising behind older brands like Lucky Charms and Cheerios.

Yoplait yogurt, which over the past year lost its leading market-share position to Danone SA's (BN.FR) Dannon brand, meanwhile has revamped its Greek-yogurt product to better compete in the fast-growing segment.

Mr. Powell also said the company doesn't see the need to cut prices of any of its products further this year. Last year, General Mills used "selective" price cuts, lowering prices on items like Yoplait's core yogurt cups.

"Our pricing for all of our core and major brands is in the zone that we want it to be," he said.

General Mills shares were recently up 0.5% at $49.52, and have rallied 22.5% year-to-date. Shares have been boosted by investors looking for stable, dividend-paying stocks, and as valuations for food-makers rose in the wake of H.J. Heinz's $23 billion buyout by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital.

Article written by Paul Ziobro for the Wall Street Journial. Original article can be found here. Write to Paul Ziobro at paul.ziobro@dowjones.com

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Pulls Out on Kraft, Mondelez Stakes

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) sharply reduced its holdings of Kraft Foods (KRFT) and Mondelez (MDLZ) during the second quarter.
The company's quarterly filing with the SEC shows Berkshire held just 192,666 shares of Kraft Foods as of June 30. That's a drop of 88 percent from its reported holdings as of March 31.
Mondelez was cut by 91.8 percent to 578,000 shares.
The two companies were created by a split up of Kraft Foods Inc. in October, 2012.
(Read more: Berkshire's Heinz squeezes out 600 employees )
Berkshire increased its General Motors holdings by 60 percent to 40 million shares. That stake is worth $1.4 billion now.
Berkshire is reporting a new stake in Dish Network (DISH) of 547,312 shares. That's worth about $24 million at the stock's Wednesday close.
The small size of that stake indicates it was bought by one of Berkshire's portfolio managers, not by Buffett himself.
Buffett has said that the portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, don't need or get his approval before buying or selling shares.
(Read more: Berkshire Hathaway's 15 Biggest Stock Holdings )
Contrary to other media reports, Berkshire made no changes in its holdings of Wells Fargo (WFC), American Express (AXP), and Coca-Cola (KO).
(Read more: Warren Buffett sees 'betrayal' as hospital drains big endowment )
In the first quarter of this year, Berkshire eliminated its holdings of two stocks: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and General Dynamics (GD),
Berkshire also added a 6.5 million share stake in Chicago Bridge & Iron.

Report: Specialized supermarkets take lead in industry - HEB, Wegman and more

There’s no denying that to many Americans, supermarkets are a bland and boring necessity. Sure, they’re convenient. But the way they’ve been bleeding market share for so long to other channels -- including drug, dollar, convenience, club, limited-assortment, discount and specialty stores, not to mention online retailers -- shows they just don’t generate loyalty.

A beefy new report from Hartman Strategy, a division of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Hartman Group, delves into how some supermarkets are becoming super again, while most are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

The best strategy, James F. Richardson, SVP of Hartman Strategy, which focuses solely on the food and beverage sector, tells Marketing Daily, is that supermarkets need to “focus on delivering great fresh food, which is driving the majority of shopping trips.”

Too many chains, he explains, act as if consumers are driven by the same pantry-stocking behaviors they were a decade ago. Hartman reports only 31% of dinners typically involve cooking from scratch. Instead, shoppers come to supermarkets to fuel their “what’s for dinner tonight?’ needs: Almost 31% of immediate-consumption eating occasions involved an item purchased at a grocery store.

And those so-called center-aisle products, the shelf-stable items that still account for 70% of sales, are less important. Sales are shrinking, not growing, and those slow-to-turn-over bottles of Worcester sauce, jars of pickles, and boxes of confectioners sugar cut into profits.

These consumer changes present plenty of risks for branded products as well. “The reality is that shifting volume out of grocery into discount channels presents a real long-term danger for established CPG suppliers,” the report says, “especially when discount channels are innovating in private-label emulations (and don’t require brand promotional spending to grab share).”

It’s also time for stores to abandon the pretense that they are all things for all people, he says. The fastest-growing leaders are those that are either offering specialization in a purely upmarket option, such as Whole Foods; one that is entirely downscale, like Winco; or an approach that varies its up-or-down strategy on a store-by-store play, a strategy used by HEB. 

Also critical: Making sure each store reflects local food culture. Tesco’s failure with Fresh & Easy provides a cautionary tale. 

“They ultimately designed an upmarket private label-heavy format that competes directly with Trader Joe’s,” the report notes, but then “placed 40% of its stores in zip codes skewing low income and/or low education, and 30% of its stores in Hispanic-heavy neighborhoods. The low-income, low-education consumer audience was not interested in their offering.”

By contrast, it points out how well Wegman localizes its stores, providing a high-end and differentiated experience to a broader audience.

Overall, the report says, it's time for stores to ditch the middle class. “The middle class consumer is more trained than ever to trade up or to trade down where appropriate in a multichannel food shopping context. They prefer to do this, however, at specialist retailers, whose commitment to editing the store against either of the market extremes is obvious, thorough, and well regarded in their social networks. Each supermarket ultimately needs to position itself at either extreme to outflank the local competition.”

Innovation becomes key as grocery competition intensifies

Supermarkets are undergoing some of their greatest changes since they came to the fore in the 1940s and 1950s, according to a new report from market researchers Packaged Facts. Indeed, while “The Future of Food Retailing: Shopper Insights and Market Opportunities,” report reiterates a great many of the same observations we make on a daily basis on both our website and print editions, it also provides additional color to enhance its findings.

“Economic, demographic, lifestyle and technological changes have created not only a fertile environment but the absolute necessity for new concepts to engage shoppers, capture share of stomach, and re-invent food and beverage retailing,” says David Sprinkle, research director for the Rockville, Md.-based market research firm. While the greatest competition to supermarkets and grocery stores comes from supersized, one-stop shopping venues like supercenters and warehouse clubs, the threat has spread out across myriad retail channels, including drugstores, dollar stores, limited assortment chains, and (the elephant in the room) online grocery shopping.

However, while supermarkets remain the majority force in food shopping, Sprinkle says, “They are no longer calling the shots” for the roles now shared with Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s on the natural/specialty side, Walmart, club stores and dollar stores on the value front, and farmers markets and food trucks in trend-setting.

At the same time, 2012 and 2013 have been big years for mergers and acquisitions in the retail food industry, as strategic buyers and private investors seek a way to expand their businesses to additional markets. Further, while the economy has shown positive signs of recovery in the past year, many consumers remain buffeted – if not traumatized – by higher gas prices, rising food prices, mounting healthcare costs and increased payroll taxes. Accordingly, most folks continue to feel economically squeezed and spending-shy, a fact that most grocery execs are acutely aware of – and how.

Other noteworthy insights from the report that caught my eye:

- Although many grocery shoppers are operating within a short time horizon, for most people grocery shopping is an activity that involves preparation. A substantial majority of grocery shoppers (85 percent) report that they do some kind of planning beforehand, according to Packaged Facts Food Shopper Insights survey data. Only 37 percent of grocery shoppers say they often stop by the grocery store on the spur of the moment.

- That’s in large part because saving money remains a key consideration. Two out of three grocery shoppers agree with the statement: “I buy a lot of groceries that are on sale or promotion.” Moreover, almost half (47 percent) used coupons or coupon codes during their most recent grocery shopping trip, 42 percent checked store circulars, 31 percent used store savings clubs/loyalty cards, and 11 percent used coupon matching services (such as double coupons).

- Even if the vast majority (83 percent) of shoppers say they are satisfied with the store(s) where they usually shop for groceries, only slightly more than half (56 percent) enjoy grocery shopping, and 18 percent actively dislike grocery shopping.

- The slippage suggests that retailers can do much more to make the task of grocery shopping easier, less burdensome, and maybe even pleasurable for a significant proportion of their customers.

For more information, visit www.MarketResearch.com.


Hosted by Progressive Grocer’s team of seasoned supermarket industry scribes, Aisle Chatter blends the latest industry information with insider viewpoints as a natural complement to PG’s reliable industry news platform. With three content sections - Trending Topics, On Our Minds and In The Aisles - Aisle Chatter is a new destination for visitors to learn, track and participate in the latest supermarket industry buzz.

Article written for Progressive Grocer's by:
Meg Major

Chief Content Editor

mmajor@stagnitomedia.com

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/trending-topics/id39675/a-remix-in-grocery-retailing/ 

Growlers Poured at New H-E-B Store: Craft Beer Goes Austin Weird

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas-brewed growlers are on the menu at H-E-B’s first in-store restaurant here.
Café Mueller offers six types of growlers-to-go, including 512 Pecan Porter, Live Oak Liberation Ale and Circle Envy Amber. Each is available in a 32- or 64-ounce growler. Prices range from $6 to $10.50, depending on the size and type of beer chosen, according to the menu posted on heb.com. Open for lunch and dinner, Café Mueller serves a variety of chef-inspired meals, rare wines and Texas craft brews on tap. It features indoor and outdoor patio seating.
The menu also includes Texas barbecue foods like brisket and spare ribs, as well as pasta bowls, Asian bowls and dessert.
As reported, the 75,000-square-foot store, known as H-E-B at Mueller, is registered for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification and Austin Energy Green Building certification, the San Antonio-based retailer said. Its sustainable design incudes low flow toilets and faucets; refrigerated cases with shaded doors; computer adjusted LED lighting; reflective roofing material and solar panels. The store also offers covered bicycle parking and a community room.
The store, known as H-E-B at Mueller, is registered for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification and Austin Energy Green Building certification, the San Antonio-based retailer said. Its sustainable design incudes low flow toilets and faucets; refrigerated cases with shaded doors; computer adjusted LED lighting; reflective roofing material and solar panels. The store also offers covered bicycle parking and a community room.
The 75,000-square-foot store includes HEB’s first in-store restaurant, known as Café Mueller, featuring chef-made meals, rare wines and a variety of tap beers with dining inside and outside. Store features include service meat, fish, deli, bakery, and cheese departments; an extensive wine department; pharmacy and Healthy Living departments with bulk goods and natural and organic food.
The unveiling of the new prototype drew hundreds of visitors Friday morning.
Read More: http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/h-e-b-debuts-new-austin-store#ixzz2aXkMsek5

Best Overall Brands: Crest, Gillette, and Dove; and Kellogg, Heinz, and Kraft



The best overall brands in health and beauty, and food and beverage categories are Crest, Gillette, and Dove; and Kellogg, Heinz, and Kraft, respectively, according to a pair of new Forrester rankings based on online surveys this year of 4,500 adults. The Boston-based market research firm argues that brand health comes from the extent to which it is trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential. If you turn that into an acronym, you get Forrester's TRUE formula for brand equity.


In the survey, from which the rankings are derived, consumers said Dove provides "a consistent experience every time I use the brand," and has "products/services that consistently deliver on their promises." Thanks in part to its campaign about authentic, versus manufactured, beauty the company has gone from a $200 million soap brand in the 1990s to a $4 billion mega-brand today, notes Forrester.

The research firm suggests brands shouldn't expect miracles based on spikes in consideration from a new product, or sudden interest from a new ad campaign. Dove's slow and steady pace is exhibit A: trust over buzz wins, says the consultancy. The firm says P&G's Crest and Gillette also lead in their categories because of this, with the latter leading among men between 25 and 34. The firm says that by contrast, younger, more niche brands like Axe haven't yet built trust, and haven't become "essential" to consumers. The brand, per Forrester, does resonate with consumers 18 to 34.

Dove, meanwhile, does best with women 40 to 49, with consumers overall preferring Dove over all other brands based on the levels of trust consumers have for it. The survey found, for example, that the brand provides "a consistent experience every time I use the brand," and scores well for "having products and services that consistently deliver on their promises."

Thanks to a refocus on athletes, Gatorade did well in the food and beverage survey in terms of consumers' sentiment that the brand helps athletes "to always perform at their peak." Forrester said the PepsiCo unit's marketing strategy around affiliating the brand with athletic performance, plus touting scientific research to back its claims, puts it above Coke on the brand ranking with its core target audience of 20-something men. The firm also says Gatorade's efforts have helped return it to a dominant -- 46% share -- position in the global sports drink sector.
Generally speaking, the study finds that familiar food brands have the highest TRUE ranking and "old-guard" brands are more trusted by upstarts. And -- not surprising -- as trust drops, so does preference. For example, Vitaminwater, whose preference level is under 20%, has the lowest trust score of any brand in the competitive set. Above Vitaminwater is Snapple, which is bested, in terms of preference, by Pepsi, Lipton, Gatorade, Kellogg, Nestle, Kraft, Coke and Heinz.

Article Written by Karl Greenberg, Yesterday, 2:34 PM for Marketing Daily - original post can be found here.http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/204498/forrester-healthy-brands-are-true.html#axzz2ZFVaGIQj

Kroger to Buy Harris Teeter for $2.4 Billion

A Kroger-operated market in Del Mar, Calif. Kroger will acquire 212 Harris Teeter stores.
The Kroger Company, seeking to expand in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic regions, said on Tuesday that it would acquire Harris Teeter Supermarkets for $2.4 billion.
Kroger agreed to pay $49.38 a share in cash, about 2 percent above Harris Teeter’s closing price on Monday and 34 percent above the price on Jan. 18, when media reports emerged that Harris Teeter was exploring strategic alternatives.
Harris Teeter has 212 stores in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Delaware, Florida, Georgia and the District of Columbia. The company also operates distribution centers for grocery, frozen and perishable foods in North Carolina. Harris Teeter posted $4.5 billion in revenue for the 2012 fiscal year.   Kroger said it would finance the transaction with debt and assume Harris Teeter’s outstanding debt of about $100 million. Harris Teeter will continue to operate its stores as a subsidiary of Kroger and will continue to be led by Harris Teeter’s senior management team. There are no plans to close stores.
Kroger expects the deal to result in savings of $40 million to $50 million over the next three to four years.
“This is a financially and strategically compelling transaction and a unique opportunity for our shareholders and associates,” David B. Dillon, Kroger’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “Harris Teeter is an exceptional company with a great brand, friendly and talented associates, and attractive store formats in vibrant markets run by a first-class management team.”

Thomas W. Dickson, the chairman and chief executive of Harris Teeter, said, “Harris Teeter has a long track record of creating shareholder value, and this merger is the culmination of those efforts over many years.”

Bank of America Merrill Lynch advised Kroger and Arnold & Porter served as legal adviser. J.P. Morgan Securities advised Harris Teeter, and McGuireWoods was its legal adviser.

Original Article authored by Dealbook for the NYTIMES and can be located here)http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/kroger-to-buy-harris-teeter-for-2-4-billion/?ref=business

Kroger, Macy's Among Nation's Top 20 Retailers - Check Out The List

The top 20 retailers ranked by 2012 U.S. sales were Wal-Mart, Kroger, Target, Walgreen, Costco, The Home Depot, CVS Caremark, Lowe's, Best Buy, Safeway, McDonald's, Sears Holdings, SUPERVALU, Publix, Amazon.com, Macy's, Rite Aid, Ahold USA/Royal Ahold, Delhaize America, and Kohl's.

Two Cincinnati-based companies – The Kroger Co. and Macy’s Inc. – remain entrenched on a list of the nation’s largest retailers for U.S. sales.

The National Retail Federation’s STORES magazine lists Kroger as the nation’s No. 2 retailer reporting more than $92 billion in sales last year and Macy’s was the No. 14 retailer with $26.3 billion in sales.

London-based Kantar Retail compiled the data.

Kroger remained No. 2 on the list from a year ago while Macy’s jumped two spots on the list.

Sales for Kroger rose 6.6 percent and its store count dipped 1 percent to 3,538 from 2011.

Sales for Macy’s rose 4.9 percent from 2011 while it gained one store to stand at 841.

Based on 2013 projections, Kroger is expected to maintain its position as the nation’s No. 2 retailer and Macy’s is expected to rise to No. 13 in the country.

Kroger could rise to be the world’s fifth largest retailer based on sales projections for the 2013 calendar year, based on data provided by Kantar Retail.

Walmart remains the nation’s and the world’s largest retailer as it generated $467.9 billion of sales worldwide. An estimated 70.3 percent of company’s sales were in the United States.

(Original article written by Bowdeya Tweh for cincinnati.com and can be located here)

Moms declare war on Kraft's nude Zesty man

Kraft's saucy ad campaign (via ad agency Being) for its Zesty Italian salad dressing launched in early April, but it's taken a rebuke from One Million Moms to give it a sudden enormous boost of visibility. The moms are super pissed off about the print ad above, featuring the campaign's hunky model, Anderson Davis, enjoying a naked picnic. The ad is far from subtle—the picnic blanket has pretty obviously been pulled over Davis's privates in such a way that it looks somewhat obscene. This infuriated the moms, which write on their website: "Last week's issue of People magazine had the most disgusting ad on the inside front cover that we have ever seen Kraft produce. A full 2-page ad features a n*ked man lying on a picnic blanket with only a small portion of the blanket barely covering his g*nitals. It is easy to see what the ad is really selling." Nope, they can't even say the words naked or genitals. The moms add: "Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising." Kraft responded with this statement: "Our Kraft dressing's 'Let's Get Zesty' campaign is a playful and flirtatious way to reach our consumers. People have overwhelmingly said they're enjoying the campaign and having fun with it."

(Original article By Tim Nudd of Adweek and can be found here.)



Kroger Suppliers Embark on Data-Sync Project in 9 Categories - PROJECT MERCURY



SAN ANTONIO — Kroger Co. announced Wednesday that it has begun rolling out its Project Mercury data synchronization and master data management project in nine product categories, or “classes.”

The Cincinnati-based retailer assembled a team of specialists at the GS1 US Connect 2013 conference here to prepare its suppliers for the project — a radical transformation in the way they will be delivering product information to Kroger, and the way Kroger will be managing the data.

“This is the largest project our corporation has ever taken on from a financial and HR standpoint,” said Dave Schmitt, director of Project Mercury. He expects it to positively impact customer service, speed-to-market, among other areas.

Kroger is unveiling the program in phases over the next three years. The pilot phase kicked off in April as suppliers of the first nine classes began testing the system. The classes include packaged cheese, salad dressing, breakfast sausage, baby HBC, coffee filters, bagged salad mix, air care, paper towels and packaged deli meat. Kroger plans to go live with those products in September.
In the spring of 2014, Kroger will continue with the next 120 classes, which are listed on Kroger’s customer page at www.1sync.org; ultimately the company plans to convert 670 classes to the program.

Kroger is asking suppliers to supply about 150 “attributes” — features ranging from size and weight to nutritional components – for each item; the attributes list is also is also available on Kroger’s customer page at www.1sync.org.

Under Project Mercury, suppliers will deliver data on new and existing items to Kroger via the preferred mechanism, the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), or via the retailer’s vendor item portal. Kroger will manage the data in a still-developing master data management repository.

Read More: http://supermarketnews.com/technology/kroger-suppliers-embark-data-sync-project#ixzz2WCDzH1a7

The Manufacturing Powerhouse States You Never Thought of

"In fact, the manufacturing of durable goods -- things that last longer than three years, such as cars, appliances or software -- grew by more than 9% nationwide in 2012, according the BEA. It was the leading contributor to growth in 22 states, the bureau said." ~ By Steve Hargreaves @hargreavesCNN

On the Left: Intel Microships out of Oregon.

On the Right: Ball Mason Jars from Jarden Home Brands in Indiana. 

Guess which state had a manufacturing boom last year? It's not in the Rust Belt, nor the South, and autos have nothing to do with it.

Oregon comes out on top. With Indiana following in 2nd place.
Manufacturing made up 39% of Oregon's GDP last year -- more than any other state:

Oregon's gross domestic product grew 3.9% last year, making it the third fastest-growing state economy after North Dakota and Texas, according to Commerce Department data released last week. Unlike those states, which benefited from an energy boom, Oregon drew about two-thirds of its growth from durable goods manufacturing.
Digging deeper into the data reveals a meteoric rise at a time when manufacturing activity was stagnant, or even declining, in more traditional manufacturing states.

About 15 years ago, manufacturing only accounted for about $9 billion, or 9%, of Oregon's economy. By 2012, it had risen to $74 billion, or a whopping 39% of Oregon's entire economic output -- the highest proportion of any state.

Oregon isn't large. By GDP, it ranks 25th in size among the 50 states. But its manufacturing sector has risen so rapidly that Oregon now ranks sixth in manufacturing output, surpassing even states like Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Original Article writter by By Annalyn Kurtz June 10, 2013 for CNN: Money and can be found HERE.


Pepsi vending machine accepts FB likes instead of quarters

Pepsi vending machine accepts FB likes instead of quarters 

Free samples are sometimes a one-way street. Companies traditionally give out gratis products with the hope that doing so will result in future business, but it's never a sure thing. Pepsi combats this problem with its new "Like Machine," which essentially trades free Pepsi samples for a consumer's Facebook information.

Here's how it works: The machine, which recently debuted at a Beyonce concert in Antwerp, Belgium, offers a free Pepsi to consumers who "like" Pepsi on Facebook via their smartphones or a touch screen on the machine's display.
It's certainly a novel way to boost Pepsi's reach on Facebook. A video featuring the machine shows throngs of people "liking" Pepsi and happily retrieving cans of soda. "Thanks to this new way of sampling, we know exactly who like, tried, and enjoyed an ice-cold Pepsi," says the video's narrator.
But to us the voiceover is almost ominous. If all companies operated this way, our Facebook feeds would suddenly be overrun with branded messages. There's also something unsettling about big companies having access to our personal information. Maybe we're being paranoid, but online tracking is already widespread. Time to update those privacy settings
What do you think of Pepsi's Like Machine?





Oscar Meyer crafts the fanciest velvet bacon box ever for Father's Day

Oscar Meyer crafts the fanciest bacon box ever for Father's Day 

The folks at Oscar Mayer are allowing consumers to ‘say it with bacon’ as they can purchase velvet boxes full of bacon. The gifts are apparently available for just four weeks beginning June 4, 2013.

According to the WSJ:
"Delicately bundled in a luxurious velvet jewelers box, the Oscar Mayer Original Collection includes 18-20 slices of delicious Oscar Mayer Original bacon, and is available in three personalized gift sets: The Commander, which comes with a stainless steel money-clip engraved with the words “Bringin’ it Home” and an image of a bacon strip; The Matador, which features two handsome bacon strip cufflinks; and The Woodsman, which includes a rugged 12 function multitool with a bacon strip image carved into the handle."

You can purchase the boxes for around $22-28 each, only at www.SayItWithBacon.com from June 4 to July 1, 2013. Also, the video is hilarious…

New hires: Who’s on the move in June 2013? PepsiCo, ConAgra, Hershey, Hillshire Brands, Pinnacle Foods, Coca-Cola, GOED

Checkout who is moving on up and onward in the US Food Industry in June 2013!

The people over at Food Navigator - USA have put together a little Food CPG Movers and Shakers Slideshow to showcase the new hires for the companies who are making moves this month; Check it out here at FoodNavigator.com

$4.2B gluten-free food market only expected to keep growing

$4.2B gluten-free

food market only expected to keep growing

(Article written by Roger Riddell for Fooddive.com, original article can be found here)

Dive Summary:

• Packaged Facts reports that gluten-free food sales reached $4.2 billion last year, with the market forecast to top $6.6 billion in 2017.
• Gluten-free foods have become popular due to some consumers' belief that they can't tolerate the protein, which is found in foods processed with grains, and parents who say gluten is harmful to children with autism, though NPD Group senior analyst Harry Balzer expects interest in the category to fade eventually.
• Food giants like Mondelez International, General Mills and Kellogg's all offer gluten-free foods, and restaurants like Domino's Pizza are also beginning to cash in on the latest health interest.

From the article:
... A recent survey released by NPD Group found that 29% of U.S. adults say they want to either cut back or eliminate gluten from their diets, an increase from 24% in 2009. However, NPD senior analyst Harry Balzer tells MSN Money he expects interest in the category to fade, though he isn't sure when.
"This is the health issue of the day," he said, adding that his research doesn't delve into why people want to buy gluten-free goods. ...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE FROM MSN.COM HERE

Meijer to Open 200th Store





GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Meijer will open its 200th store in Swartz Creek, Mich. on May 16, the retailer here said.

The Swartz Creek store is the first of six new stores Meijer will open this year in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. It also represents a portion of the more than $160 million planned investment in new and remodeled stores Meijer is making this year throughout the Midwest.

At approximately 190,000 square feet, the Swartz Creek Meijer was built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. It will include a drive-through pharmacy, a gas station, a wide selection of general merchandise, including apparel, electronics and pet items, as well as a full grocery department.

(Original article posted on SupermarketNews.com - Read More -
Read More: http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/meijer-open-200th-store#ixzz2StfJ3pAD