Thursday, September 1, 2016

Murray’s Cheese Opens 300th Store Inside Kroger

Murray’s Cheese opened its 300th store inside Kroger earlier this month.

The location that set the milestone is up for debate. The venerable New York cheese retailer opened three on the same day – Chesapeake, Va.; Auburn, Ala., and Collierville, Tenn., explains Nick Tranchina, executive vice president of Murray’s Cheese.

“We are opening new stores every week.” Currently, Murray has 314 locations across all of Kroger’s banners.

The past 26 months have been marked by rapid-fire growth. When Murray’s Cheese was profiled in theJune 2014 issue of The Gourmet Retailer, there were 114 stores inside Kroger.

“We have been very, very busy,” states Tranchina. Murray’s and Kroger has been able to roll out these new stores very quickly, thanks to its training program and Murray’s team of cheese educators.

A Team Effort
“When we started doing this in 2008, there was two of us, then for a couple of years there was three of us,” says Tranchina about Murray’s 16-person team of cheese educators. “As we get bigger and better at what we do, we can move faster,” says Tranchina.

These Murray’s employees live in or near the Kroger division hubs such as Denver, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Los Angeles, to name a few.

Having a knowledgeable team in-store is critical for the success of the Murray’s in-store locations. They are manned by Kroger employees who are trained by Murray’s cheese educators.

“Kroger has been willing to invest in its team of people,” says Tranchina. “This enable us to work with them and train their people at a very high level. This year, 47 Kroger employees sat for the rigorous American Cheese Society’s Certified Cheese Professional (ACS CCP) exam. Last year, 40 Kroger employees took the test.

Murray’s and Kroger employees take Murray’s six-month training program before taking the ACS CCP exam.
Next Steps
Murray’s is on track to open more locations inside Kroger division stores. “We are not slowing down. We have another 60 stores on calendar that will open this year,” says Tranchina.
There's room for growth; the Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. operates more than 2,778 retail food stores in 35 states.

City Gardens Are All the Rage

Urban agriculture is quickly replacing them

August 31, 2016, 11:25 am

City gardens add beauty, aromas, a sense of community and oxygen to a neighborhood. But the truth is, from an environmental standpoint, they are very wasteful. The EPA estimates that Americans use 9 billion gallons of water each and every day, simply to keep their personal outdoor landscapes looking green, and that does not include any municipal usage – a cost borne by taxpayers.

Which is why urban agriculture is quickly replacing those green lawns and flowers in our cities' common areas and transforming them into productive edible gardens that are open to the public or designed to benefit specific social service or nonprofit groups, according to earth911 and it’s happening around the world.

Andernach, Germany, is known as The Edible City, due to its commitment to planting fruits and vegetables on city land, rather than flowers. This initiative officially began in 2010, and has worked to transform over 86,000 square feet of city property into lush vegetable gardens filled with nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables. And they are creatively keeping their neighbors involved - planting hundreds of heirloom varieties of tomatoes one year for example, so the public could see and taste the differences between plant types.

In London, there is The Edible Bus Stop. This group works to change drab, dull and depressing urban spaces with bursts of color and fresh fruit and veggies. As the name would suggest, one of its first projects was to transform three bus stops along the number 322 bus route in London into edible gardens.

Victoria, British Columbia, has transformed part of a public square into a food-producing space, and, partnering with Our Place Society, plants, maintains and harvests vegetables and herbs to make meals for its lunch program. Seedlings will be provided by the city and will include oregano, kale, rainbow chard, broccoli, basil, dill, red cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes. Sunflowers will be planted to provide color and food in the garden. Existing plants in the edible garden include large artichokes, fig trees, goumi berries, chives and thyme, and all the produce will be harvested and donated to the Our Place Society, an organization that serves the poor, disadvantaged and homeless population of the city.

That's urban gardening with a purpose that goes well beyond beautification.

Restaurants of the future could be run almost entirely by robots

Chris Weller

Skye Gould/Business Insider

It must have seemed like a revolutionary idea to diners of the 1920s — people on roller skates delivering food straight to their driver's side window.

Suddenly, the food that families were used to eating around a dinner table now arrived on trays or in bags, ready to be eaten on the go. Little did they know fast food was on the brink of explosion.

Nearly 100 years later, restaurants are on the brink of another massive change: robot automation.

The best estimates find that up to 50% of jobs could be automated by the late 2030s, with restaurant workers among the most vulnerable to displacement.

Some locations have already started moving away from human labor in an effort to cut operating costs. In its place, they've started relying on machines that are getting more sophisticated every day. Within the next 20 years, experts say, nearly every restaurant job once held by humans could get passed on to robots.

"A lot of what's done in restaurants is already automated," Rebecca Chesney, research and partnerships manager at the Institute for the Future, tells Business Insider. "Today's robotics can actually mimic human gestures that you'd need for cooking, for instance, way more than they could years ago."

Is the best chef a robot?

Chesney points to Momentum Machines, the company perhaps most poised to shake up the way food is prepared.

In 2014, the company released a device that essentially worked like a printing press for hamburgers. The robot pressed patties, chopped toppings, and assembled the ingredients into a sumptuous-looking sandwich. Momentum Machines went quiet for the next two years, but earlier this June the company posted a Craigslist ad looking for employees in the San Francisco area for a restaurant opening this fall.

"This location will feature the world-premiere of our proprietary and remarkable new advances in technology that enable the automatic creation of impossibly delicious burgers at prices everyone can afford," according to the ad.

A schematic for the Momentum Machines prototype, which can crank out 400 burgers an hour. Momentum Machines

As Xconomy reported, Momentum Machines' prototype could replace two to three line cooks — a savings of roughly $90,000 a year counting salaries and overhead costs. In turn, customers get perfectly-made burgers every single time.

Momentum Machines may be the most restaurant-ready system for food preparation, but it's by no means the only one. Other robots can already prepare sushi, make pizza, mix cocktails,slice noodles, and griddle pancakes.

In the future, these minds of technologies could all live under one roof.

Robots everywhere, no servers in sight

Moving from the kitchen to the front of the house, Chesney says restaurants are also looking to automate how food reaches customers.

Take Eatsa, another San Francisco-based restaurant, which has automated the way people order and pick up their food, much like the automats of the early 20th century that essentially functioned as vending machines for entire meals.

Justin Sullivan/Getty

Instead of talking to a cashier to order their quinoa bowls, Eatsa diners build their meals on touch screens and pick them up from windows. There are no chefs or servers in sight.

Chesney says places like Eatsa and companies like Momentum Machines are strong signals for where fast food is heading because people crave speed and low cost — two qualities that human-run restaurants can't offer the way robot-powered restaurants can.

A future of personalized ambience

Not every restaurant will necessarily go full-robot, says Sarah Smith, a researcher at IFTF's Food Futures Lab, who works alongside Chesney. Fine-dining restaurants depend on people feeling comfortable, not rushed. And robots don't tend to inspire a warm, inviting feeling.

But fine-dining is still ripe for automation behind the scenes.

"Maybe they'll focus still on making the food by hand and focusing on quality ingredients," Smith says, "but there could be parts of the experience that could have some level of automation."

Reuters/Stringer

For instance, both she and Chesney suspect the psychological research into how people eat and enjoy food will get put to good use, as restaurants use automation to change lighting, temperatures, noise levels, and scents. Just as musicians can fit their fans with heart rate monitors to create the perfect concert, restaurant owners could use biometric data to make sure people eat in just the right conditions.

At the extreme might be restaurants that leverage the technology created by Project Nourished, a company that uses virtual reality to simulate just about every food experience imaginable.

Diners in Oculus Rift headsets can eat vegan gelatin that has been infused with the flavors of wasabi and ginger, while a machine pumps the room with a whiff of seafood, so that when you look through the goggles, you fully believe you're eating the sushi sitting in front of you.

Oculus VR / Facebook

Making good on their promise

Together, these changes add up to a set of dining experiences that embody what restaurants have always tried to be.

Restaurants give people a better alternative to preparing their own (often ordinary) food in their own (often limited) time. If they're automated, either in preparation, delivery, or ambience, they stand a better chance at guaranteeing a good experience for diners — even if that means huge swaths of employees risk losing their jobs.

The future is a far cry from carhops.

Slowed Peapod growth due to operational issues, not demand drop

Operational problems at Peapod’s Chicago warehouse have dragged on Ahold Delhaize’s U.S. online grocery business, executives told investors in its second-quarter earnings call Thursday.

Sales growth has fallen from double digits to high single digits, executives said.

Dick Boer, president and CEO, said “all our focus is now [on] the teams to resolve that” issue, with the expectation that Peapod growth will return to double digits once fixes have been made.

Peapod had trouble getting its warehouse up and running in the New York market last year, which dragged on sales, but executives said those issues are now resolved and New York sales growth is in the double digits.

Executives stressed customer interest was not a reason for slowed sales growth this quarter.

“There's a strong demand for the U.S. on online sales. It's clear,” said Boer.

Peapod’s growth is especially disappointing compared with the retailer’s online business in the Netherlands, executives said.

“If we're expressing some disappointment, it's because we see the potential. For example, at ah.nl where we're growing around 30%. So it's a frustration that we can't fully meet the demand, but I'm sure the team is working on it and will turn that around, and we'll be reporting a better number shortly,” said Jeff Carr, CFO and EVP.

Carr was quick to point out that Peapod’s sales will total over $700 million this year, adding it’s “probably the biggest grocery home delivery business in the U.S.”

Executives said Peapod’s recent operational issues would not prevent the company from bringing its digital expertise to other areas of the combined business.

“On digital, I think we both have a big opportunity,” said Frans Muller, deputy CEO and chief integration officer. “So all the learnings that we will share, teams are now openly very receptive to sharing and take the best out of this, and that can also be for the U.S. an opportunity to grow in digital and e-commerce, and Hannaford To Go is a good program, but we don't have a home delivery service.”

Peapod recently revamped its website to make ordering easier for customers.

Boer also noted Peapod’s prices are better than those at online retailer FreshDirect, which competes with the Ahold Delhaize service in New York and Philadelphia.

“It's clearly a main competitor in that area,” said Boer, however “don't underestimate all other retailers. They also have their online propositions, often not with home deliveries. So we are unique with our home delivery system, where in most cases here, the supermarkets are pickup points.”

In contrast, the retailer doesn’t see Instacart as a competitor, Boer said. Giant-Landover is testing a partnership with Instacart. Boer said Instacart basket sizes have been smaller than the typical Peapod basket, which is about $120, adding customers appear to use Instacart to quickly get items they may have forgotten.

“So, that's clearly a difference, and I wouldn't mix both as the same solution,” said Boer. “They're clearly two different solutions.”

Incentivizing the shopping cart with mobile-based coupons

Aug 31, 2016by Margie Kupfer in Viewpoints

Margie Kupfer is vice president, marketing at 3Cinteractive (3C). Through mobile marketing services, 3C deepens and extends the connection between customers and brands, driving increased loyalty, brand awareness and results.

Mobile technology has permeated virtually every aspect of our lives today. Information gathering, communication, social conversations and shopping are all touched by mobile technology. Supermarket chains and grocers in particular are now paying closer attention to leveraging mobile technology as a way to get closer to their customers, and increase sales.

Supermarket chains are already leveraging various mobile integrations, from cashless registers to mobile scan and payment technologies. Beyond these areas, supermarket chains are now beginning to leverage the power of mobile for their coupon programs, recognizing that mobile represents a brighter future than paper-based coupons.

Consumers are interested in the idea of mobile coupons as it makes shopping at a supermarket easier by removing the hassle of having to print coupons at home and remember to bring them with. Studies have shown that 40% of consumers don’t make a purchase because they left their coupon at home.

Many consumers say that these programs actually motivate them to make purchases more often.

In order for a mobile-based coupon program to be successful, it must increase engagement with customers that results in an increase of purchase behavior. Because mobile has permeated across every facet of our digital society, it offers the perfect channel for this type of engagement.

Emerging tactics include mobilizing clip-to-card coupons, and using mobile wallet as a marketing tool. Clip-to-card is effective because it enables customers to add existing offers and promotions to their coupon account or store card, drives coupon account acquisition, and enables immediate offer redemptions.

Grocers are also realizing great benefits with mobile wallet-based coupons, including driving foot traffic and increased sales as a result of location-based reminders; updateable offers ensuring customers have the latest offers; and a perpetual presence on the customer's mobile device.

With the immense popularity of Pokemon Go, interactive-based coupons are on the rise. By enabling interactive games, where offers are received through rich device gestures — such as scratch and shake-to-reveal — consumers can engage with a higher level of entertainment experiences. Interactive coupons also increase conversion rates with instant gratification from gamified experiences—resulting in incremental sales and customer lifetime value; and post-interaction linking enables a wide range of activity — including add to mobile wallet, redirect to ecommerce site, deep link to native app and share via social.

The statistics show promise for grocers. Based on recent research, 47% of consumers say relevant offers increase their grocery store loyalty and 70% of in-store coupons impact purchase behavior.

Coupons are a part of a broader mobile strategy being employed by supermarket chains. With mobile, supermarkets can alert customers when they are near a frequently shopped location and offer an incentive — driving traffic to physical store locations. Furthermore, mobile-enabled loyalty programs can be tied into the existing CRM/loyalty database to reflect current point balances, or to present updates on a user’s loyalty level.

Other benefits of mobile-enabled loyalty programs include increased shopping carts, reduction of cost in comparison with paper-based reward strategies, personalized engagement, and separation from competition. With the countless benefits, it is hard to fathom why more grocers do not have these mobile programs implemented in their systems.

In order to have the best mobile-enabled coupon and loyalty program possible, it is important to motivate, reward and make it fun for consumers. If these three things are accomplished, grocers will realize increased engagement levels, higher coupon redemption and amplified sales potential in addition to higher customer satisfaction rates — all key elements that will keep customers coming back for more.

Survey: Chicken will best ribs and steaks this Labor Day

What Americans Plan to Eat for Labor Day

More than 200 million Americans intend to fire up their barbecue grills over Labor Day, and more of them will eat chicken than ribs or steak, according to a new survey.

While hamburgers and hot dogs remain the most popular items on the grill, barbecued chicken is the third most-popular item, according to the Budweiser Labor Day USA Survey. The survey of 2,000 U.S. residents aged 21 and older was conducted online between Aug. 1 and Aug. 12 by Learndipity Data Insights.

According to the survey, around 150 million Americans — 70% of all barbecue-goers — said they expect to eat hamburgers, compared to 109 million hot dog eaters (or 51%). Barbecued chicken follows at 40%, edging out steak (37%), ribs (32%) and sausage or bratwurst (24%).

Top 10 Dishes Americans Plan to Eat for Labor Day

The survey revealed cheese (79%) is the most preferred burger topping, followed by lettuce (71%), tomato (66%), onion (58%) and pickles (54%). American (66%) and cheddar (65%) are the cheeses Americans most like to melt on their burgers, followed by Swiss (43%), pepper jack (40%) and provolone (31%).

Potatoes will be the most common side dish in one form or another, the survey revealed. Potato salad (62%) was identified as the most popular side dish, while potato chips ranked as the second most popular side dish at 58%, and grilled or cooked potatoes (33%) ranked eighth. Corn on the cob (56%), watermelon (52%), baked beans (49%); macaroni salad (37%) and coleslaw (34%) also ranked as popular side dishes.

Around 98 million Americans will drink domestic beer at barbecues over Labor Day, about twice as many who will drink imported beers.

Mondelēz Drops its Bid for the Hershey Company

AUG 30, 2016

A takeover would have created the world’s largest confectioner and expanded Mondelez’s U.S. footprint.

Mondelēz International Inc., has ended discussions with The Hershey Company regarding a possible combination of the two companies. Hershey rejected Mondelez’s $23 billion takeover bid, which was announced in June. A takeover would have created the world’s largest confectioner and expanded Mondelez’s U.S. footprint.

"As the world's leading snacking company, we remain focused on successfully executing our strategy to deliver both sustainable top-line growth and significant margin expansion and are well-positioned to continue to deliver value to our shareholders," said Irene Rosenfeld, Mondelēz chairman and CEO.

"Our proposal to acquire Hershey reflected our conviction that combining our two iconic American companies would create an industry leader with global scale in snacking and confectionery and a strong portfolio of complementary brands. Following additional discussions, and taking into account recent shareholder developments at Hershey, we determined that there is no actionable path forward toward an agreement. While we are disappointed in this outcome, we remain disciplined in our approach to creating value, including through acquisitions, and confident that our advantaged platform positions us well for top-tier performance over the long term."

Editor's Insight: Hershey continues to remain one of the largest private companies in the food industry, which doesn’t surprise most observers, given the company’s historic commitment to its independence. Hershey has in the past rebuffed bids by Wm. Wrigley Jr. and by Nestle in combination with Cadbury Schweppes.

An acquisition by Mondelez would have brought major changes to the confection supply chain and given Mondelez control of the production and distribution of Cadbury chocolates in the U.S., which Hershey holds the license to produce.

Whether or not Hershey remains independent long-term is uncertain, since the trust that holds majority ownership will reconstitute its board of directors in response to a Pennsylvania investigation of allegedly excessive compensation and conflicts of interest. 8-30-16 By Elliot Maras