5 Generic Products That Are Just as Good

(Yahoo) In today's tough economy, consumers are pinching pennies by choosing generic over big name brands in their supermarket aisles. From chips and dips to pain relievers and peanut butter, there's a cheaper generic version of almost every product (Click HERE for full story.)

Retailers Post Surprisingly Strong August Sales

(CNBC) Retailers turned in surprisingly strong monthly sales reports in August, as sales-tax-free holidays and discounting coaxed shoppers to open their wallets and stock up on back-to-school items. (Click HERE for full story.)

Grocery stores increase social networking

(Business Courier of Cincinnati) The U.S. grocery industry is increasing using social media practices as part of a plan to gain market share, according to new data released by Greensboro-based Pace Communications. (Click HERE for full story.)

A&P Mulls Selling Food Emporium Chain

(The Wall Street Journal) Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., operator of the struggling A&P supermarket chain, is considering selling its Food Emporium stores as part of a boarder effort to rid itself of some assets and boost its liquidity, according to people familiar with the matter.

The supermarket operator has publicly said it will consider the sale of "non-core assets" as it looks to improve its liquidity after absorbing some big losses in recent months. Food Emporium is the company's gourmet supermarket banner and one of the more attractive chains it owns.

Great Atlantic couldn't immediately be reached for comment. The company operates a little more than 400 stores under several brands including A&P, Waldbaum's, Pathmark, Food Emporium and Food Basics. It recently announced it would close 25 under-performing or non-core locations.

In recent weeks, investment bank Peter J. Solomon has made an effort to gauge potential buyer interest in the Food Emporium chain for A&P, according to one private equity investor, although it wasn't immediately clear which other banks may be involved.

Analysts estimate Food Emporium could fetch more than $200 million in a sale.

Some private equity firms that could be possible bidders are Angelo, Gordon & Co., which owns Kings Super Markets Inc., and Sterling Investment Partners, owners of the Fairway Market grocery chain, industry analysts say.

Representatives of Angelo, Gordon and Sterling Investment had no comment.

Great Atlantic's efforts to sell assets come as the firm has faced mounting losses. For its fiscal first quarter ended June 19, A&P reported a loss of $122.6 million, or $4.83 a share. In July, the company named its second chief executive in fewer than six months as the company posted the quarterly loss on weakening sales and profit margins. Sam Martin was named president and chief executive in July, replacing Ron Marshall, who had joined A&P in January.

Investor concerns have driven Great Atlantic's shares down sharply this year.

The stock is down about 74% for the year, trading recently at $3.03.

Food Emporium's footprint includes 16 stores in Manhattan, many with long-standing rents that are well-below the current going rates, giving it a lower cost base, said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group. Manhattan has a high cost of entry for competitors, leaving Food Emporium isolated from some of the competition pressuring suburban grocery stores. It's a well-known brand in New York and occupies some valuable real estate space.

"Food Emporium's been one of the crown-jewel properties in food retailing for decades, but has been under-managed by A&P," Mr. Flickinger said. "It's the company's most readily saleable asset."

San Clemente shop echoes gluten-free growth

(The Orange County Register) Two years after people told Josie Rietkerk she was crazy to open a gluten-free grocery store, her business has grown so much that she's had to move to a new shop twice the original size. (Click HERE for full story.)

Barrow boy grocer instincts give Tesco's Ken Towle an edge with Chinese shoppers
(Telegraph) In five years, he plans to open more new retail space in China (40m sq ft) than Tesco has built up in the UK in the nine decades since it was founded. (Click HERE for full story.)

Whole Foods CEO: Healthy food is affordable necessity

(USA Today) Time flies when you're running one of the world's most profitable grocery chains. Whole Foods, the organic and natural foods supermarket trendsetter, turns 30 on Sept. 20. (Click HERE for full story.)

Coming Soon: Theaters, Airplanes to Post Calories

(The Wall Street Journal) Regulators' appetite for calorie counts is about to extend beyond restaurants to thousands of other places that offer food, including airplanes, movie theaters and convenience stores.

The expansion stems from provisions in the health-care overhaul enacted in March. The government wants calorie listings posted to make it easier for consumers to select healthier options, and the restaurant industry backed the move so it could avoid a patchwork of local ordinances that are developing.

So far, the expansion of the calorie counts beyond restaurants has drawn praise from nutrition advocates but push-back from industries that say the original legislation was never intended to hit them.

"People don't go to movie theaters for the primary purpose of eating," said Gary Klein, a vice president for a group representing theater owners. "Why aren't ballparks covered? You think the food served at ballparks is healthy?"

The health-care law said chain restaurants with 20 locations or more are required to post the caloric information on their menus. That requirement took effect when President Barack Obama signed the law, but the places that serve food aren't expected to begin complying until penalties kick in next year.

In preliminary guidelines released last week, the Food and Drug Administration said the scope of the law stretches beyond restaurants to encompass airlines, trains, grocery-store food courts, movie theaters and convenience stores that qualify as chains. Within grocery stores, the agency said, it is considering including salad bars, store bakeries, pizza bars and delicatessens. Stadiums aren't listed since they aren't chains.

Journal Community

Vote: Should calorie counts be added to more menus?

The FDA plans to make official who is covered, and how, in December.

For consumers, the change marks the next installment of nutrition labeling requirements that swept across the packaged food industry in the 1990s. About 20 cities or states have enacted or passed local ordinances requiring calorie postings on menus since New York City pioneered the requirement in 2008.

Health advocates say the change could be a powerful tool in fighting the obesity epidemic, a top initiative in Washington since first lady Michelle Obama made childhood obesity her signature cause in February.

"Everybody's going to be a little bit better informed, and that's a good thing," said Lou Sheetz, executive vice president at Sheetz Inc., an Altoona, Pa., convenience store chain with 380 outlets in six states.

The chain is preparing to post calorie information at kiosks where customers order food. "In all likelihood, it's going to have a negative impact on those items that had a higher calorie count than people thought," said Mr. Sheetz. But that will be offset by higher sales of healthier items, he predicted.

Research has shown mixed results on whether New York City's requirement has prompted consumers to select healthier foods. A 2009 study published in the journal Health Affairs didn't find evidence that menu labeling influenced the total number of calories purchased by New York residents. A Stanford University study of Starbucks outlets in New York City found that average calories per transaction fell by 6% after menu listings took effect.

Some industries that have been largely untouched by the local ordinances are trying to chip away at the national requirement before it takes effect.

"We're not restaurants," said Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel for the Food Marketing Institute, the grocery store industry's main trade group. "The vast majority of supermarket consumers are not consuming the food they purchased at the store within the store."

The health law requires the calorie listing to be clear and conspicuous—and next to the name of the food—but details remain to be worked out by the FDA.

For industries that don't necessarily use menus, the requirements could pose a new dilemma. Americans Airlines Inc. says it doesn't offer printed menus in the main cabin for international flights, where traditional meal service often is still available, though it has them for first-class passengers.

Julie Fields, director of government relations at the National Association of Convenience Stores, says her members are puzzled about how to label offerings that don't have menus, such as hot dogs that rotate in counter-top cases.

The early guidelines suggest grocery chains could have to post caloric contents for bulk foods sold in supermarket aisles, sandwiches assembled at the deli and fish sold at the seafood counter. Stores say it's nearly impossible to give useful information on calorie contents at salad bars because consumers determine their own portions.

Schnucks, a 105-location grocery chain based in St. Louis, Mo., says it's particularly concerned about bakery items, which it says most people wait until they get home to eat.

"Grocery customers, in the main, have not asked for this additional effort, so you would have to wonder why they would have to pay for the effort," said Lori Willis, a spokeswoman for the chain.

Timesavers to manager your social media  marketing

(Bloomberg) When it comes to social media marketing, one of the biggest fears small business owners have is the time commitment. Yes, the majority of sites have no hard costs associated with them, but time is money. (Click HERE for full story.)

WaWa gas stations are coming to Central Florida, Tampa Bay

(St. Petersburg Times) WaWa, a Philadelphia area filling station chain that sets itself apart with better fresh food, is lining up sites for expanding into the Orlando and Tampa Bay areas. (Click HERE for full story.)

The Global Staying Power of Private Label

(nielsenwire) Shoppers around the world took many steps to stretch their budgets during the recession such as eating at home more frequently or cutting back on vacations.  While improving economies may prompt consumers to return to restaurants or take a vacation, one trend that looks likely to remain—and perhaps even grow—is the shift to private label goods. (Click HERE for full story.)

Grocery stores never close

(The Edmonton Journal) It’s two in the morning and your empty fridge can’t satisfy your hunger. What do you do? (Click HERE for full story.)

Electronic Mirrors Sell Lipstick and a Makeover
(The Wall Street Journal) Cosmetics aisles in supermarkets and drugstores are adding electronic makeover specialists with the help of an Israeli start-up.

Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., France's Carrefour SA and Superdrug Stores PLC in Britain are testing EZface Inc.'s "virtual mirrors" in their stores to simulate what makeup and hair dye would look like on shoppers. Faced with stiff competition from specialist cosmetics stores including Sephora, where shoppers get to try on products before buying them, retailers are looking for new ways to boost sales and reduce damaged inventory from opened packaging by consumers experimenting with products.

The virtual mirror kiosks are designed to be easy to use. A person stands in front of the screen and an internal camera takes a picture. Then the person scans the bar codes of various cosmetics—such as mascara, foundation, eye shadow, blush and lip gloss—and each automatically appears on the appropriate part of the face. A list on the right side of the screen reminds the person what products she is virtually testing. The user can print out the image, send it by email, or post it on Facebook.

The new technology could help consumers overcome their hesitation in splurging on another tube of lipstick or daring a new hair color. "Every lady has a drawer full of the wrong makeup products," said Ruth Gal, the co-founder of EZface.

EZface is one of several start-ups attempting to transform the beauty aisle. EZface—powered by IBM technology—debuted in two Wal-Mart stores last year. Now the Bentonville, Ark.,-based retail giant is testing 40 of the makeup machines in 10 stores across the U.S.

Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido Co. earlier this year unveiled its digital cosmetics mirror at a Tokyo department store. Meanwhile, San Diego start-up Photometria Inc. has developed an online virtual mirror called Taaz, which allows users to virtually sample colored contact lenses and new hairstyles in addition to makeup.

EZface's presence in the world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, has given it an early lead. Carrefour tested its first EZface this week as part of its revitalizing its French supercenters.

Alliance Boots PLC just completed a six-month trial of the kiosk in three of its British drugstores using Boots-branded cosmetics. Boots said it has no immediate plans for a roll-out.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said that cosmetics sales in the stores equipped with EZface technology are "good" but "it's too early to tell if activity can be tied directly to EZface." The company declined to provide further information.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer by sales, hopes virtual-mirror technology could help increase sales and reduce returns. Wal-Mart stores don't have samples in their cosmetics aisles, unlike department stores and cosmetics chains. Consumers frustrated by not being able to try on makeup often decide not to buy the product—or open a package, resulting in damaged inventory for the company.

Making in-store shopping more interactive is a goal for many retailers. Sunglass Hut, a division of Luxottica Group SpA, installed digital photo booths in some of its flagship stores in cities such as New York and London last year. Shoppers can snap a digital picture trying on a pair of shades and send the image to their friends or to a social-networking site.

Yet the technology of the cosmetics kiosks is more complicated than for other products. Sunglass brand Ray-Ban has a virtual mirror function on its website—the image of the eyewear is simply layered on a user's photo.

Unlike with sunglasses, virtual mirrors for makeup must take into account attributes such as skin tone, glossiness of the product and lighting to get a realistic image. Other more basic Internet applications require shoppers to identify where facial features such as the eyes and mouth are, or overlay an image of a wig to simulate a different hair color.

Cosmetics companies are pushing the virtual mirror initiatives. L'Oréal SA, the world's largest cosmetics company by sales, put EZface's Internet application on the websites of two of its brands, L'Oréal Paris and Maybelline, for consumers to play with the technology.

But L'Oréal believes EZface's impact is greater in-store. In June, the company set up kiosks at a consumer-goods and retail conference in London to try to get more retail clients—and increase sales of their mass-market brands. "That's where you have the strongest impulse to purchase—where you have to give the final impetus," said Hal Kimber, L'Oréal's head of customer relationship management and Internet.

EZface's Ms. Gal, who came up with the idea to virtually test makeup 10 years ago, said the in-store virtual mirrors allows EZface to control the environment needed for a better image, by using a high-quality camera and controlled lighting.

With the cosmetics virtual mirror now rolling out, Ms. Gal turned her attention to hair. EZface unveiled its first virtual mirror that samples hair color at the June retail and consumer-goods conference in London. The hair color kiosks could work in retail stores as well as salons, Ms. Gal said.

L'Oréal likes the idea. "Hair color searches on Google are massive," said Mr. Kimber.

Clean Sweep
(Supermarket News) A  side effect of last year's H1N1 flu pandemic and the hysteria and hypochondria that ensued was soaring sales of disinfecting cleaning wipes. (Click HERE for full story.)

13 Things in the New Orleans food culture changed by Hurricane Katrina
(The Times Picayune) Bruning's, Chateaubriand, René Bistrot, Bella Luna, Barrow's, Mandich, Christian's, Cobalt, Gabrielle, Michael's Mid-City Grill, United Bakery, Manuel's Hot Tamales, Crystal Preserves & Spicy Brown Mustard ... they're all gone. (Click HERE for full story.)

Nestlé Plans Ground Attack Over Coffee Beans
(The Wall Street Journal) From the lush Veracruz forests in Mexico all the way to Indonesia, Nestlé SA is cultivating a new investment: a $487 million global push to increase the quantity and quality of its coffee.

Nestlé—the Swiss company whose Nescafé instant coffee and upscale Nespresso brewing machines make it the world's largest coffee company—plans to train thousands of farmers over 10 years and provide them with new coffee trees. The company won't own the plantations or bind farmers into long-term contracts, but Chief Executive Paul Bulcke thinks the relationship it develops with the farmers will lead them to sell to Nestlé.

"We shouldn't just be the world's biggest coffee buyer, we should be involved upstream," says Mr. Bulcke, who was scheduled to present the company's plan in Mexico City on Friday. "We're doing it for better quality and securing our raw material."

The push comes as food companies such as Nestlé, Unilever and Kraft Foods Inc. struggle for better control of essential ingredients such as coffee, cocoa, wheat and milk. The effort has become more urgent in recent years, as volatile raw-material prices have wreaked havoc on margins, boosting profit one year, sinking it the next. Prices for coffee beans recently reached nearly 13-year highs because of bad weather.

Yet the coffee industry also faces long-term problems. Farmers persist with older trees that yield fewer and lower-quality beans. Nestlé, which makes pantry staples such as Kit-Kat chocolate bars, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and Nestea iced tea, this month predicted a "challenging" second half because of rising commodities prices.

Nestlé's coffee investment follows a similar move in cocoa last year. The company committed $106 million to replanting cocoa trees in Ivory Coast in West Africa with a more robust variety engineered by Nestlé's scientists. Nestlé in the past has had coffee-planting projects in countries such as Mexico, Thailand and the Philippines. But the new one will involve more than 10 times as many trees as the last.

Other companies also are wrestling for more control over their agricultural ingredients. France's LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton helps farmers for Champagne grapes with growing and harvesting to ensure supply for such brands as Veuve Clicquot and Dom Perignon.

Nestlé invented instant coffee in the 1930s to preserve a bumper Brazilian coffee harvest. Now, emerging markets are driving much of the growth in instant coffee. Consumers in countries such as China, Thailand and Mexico are becoming coffee drinkers via instant brew. Half of Nescafé sales now derive from emerging markets.

But Nestlé also is catering to high-quality coffee trends in more-affluent countries. Nespresso, a system of espresso machines using capsules of high-quality ground coffee, has propelled Nestlé into the lucrative and fast-growing premium coffee market.

Despite the high cost of this coffee—about 42 cents a shot—Nespresso survived cautious consumer spending during the economic downturn. That's because coffee drinkers saved money by brewing at home instead of going to a café. Nespresso sales rose 30% last year.

Nestlé's aim is for the new initiative to boost sales. To prepare for that, Nestlé is building its largest instant-coffee plant, outside Mexico City, which will produce jars of Nescafé for Mexico, Canada and the U.S. The coffee also will be used for Nestlé's high-end coffee.

Some of that coffee will start its journey in the coffee-growing region of Mexico's Veracruz state. Farmers are preparing for the harvest, which starts next month and runs until March.

In the Barrio de Guadalupe village in Veracruz, peasant farmers care for a special coffee crop. The 100,000 knee-high trees represent a new breed of plants that Nestlé developed by cross-breeding varieties in its research center in France. The plants have been developed for the region's climate to generate more beans, resist disease, and reach a midsize height that makes them easier to harvest by hand. The plantings in Veracruz essentially make up a pilot program that will spread globally.

"No other mainstream coffee roaster in the world is doing this, none," says Orlando García of Nestlé Commodities and Supply Development, based in Marysville, Ohio. His job is to look decades down the road and make sure the company has supplies in sufficient quantity and quality to continue making a variety of coffee products, including Nespresso pods.

Until recently, the outlook was poor for Mexican coffee farming and many farmers abandoned coffee when prices plummeted.

Now Nestlé is developing a new generation of robusta plants and arabica plants in Mexico. Of the 100,000 trees in the Veracruz plantation, 60% are robusta, or relatively inexpensive beans that make up the bulk of instant coffee, and 40% are arabica, which are used in higher-end coffee but can only be grown at high elevations, limiting their potential. They are just a tiny fraction of the 220 million plants that Nestlé will distribute to coffee growers world-wide over the next 10 years.

Some farmers worry that Nestlé's favoring of robusta beans is taking Mexico down the wrong path. Rather, they say, growers should seek higher-end markets, like those for organic arabica, which generate above-average prices.

"There has to be a balance," says Angelino Espinoza Mata, who heads a small coffee-growers' organization in the Huasteco region of Veracruz. "Each region has its own characteristics."

Despite the major investment in the new plants, Nestlé is not locking the recipients of the plantlets into contracts.

"It's not possible and it's not fair," says Mr. Bulcke, the Nestlé CEO. "We want to build a relationship where the farmer wants to sell to us."

To do that, part of the company's plan involves offering farming and harvesting advice to 10,000 farmers world-wide. Nestlé will also double the amount of coffee it buys directly, so that it buys directly from 170,000 growers.

Veracruz farmers seem ready to return the favor. Coffee-cooperative organizer Hildiberto Escobar says of the 1,000 producers he represents, 600 are working with Nestlé and intend to sell to the company.

"Price is important, but so is the attention and the commitment they have shown us," he says. "That certainty is very important."

A Family Brand With Big Dreams for Its Soy Milk
(The New York Times) The cola wars were so 20th century. Now, Madison Avenue is leading the charge in a series of battles involving food products that are meant to be perceived as healthier fare. (Click HERE for full story.)