September/October 2016

For food retailers to provide their customers with the bank of information today's shoppers seek, they must be in lockstep communication with those who raised it and produced it.

Businesspeople have plenty of complaints about Washington and the way it operates—lack of fiscal responsibility, inability to compromise, and governing by crisis to name a few—but at their core these concerns boil down to one simple issue: unpredictability.

Retailers who are interested in being paid by phone have a fundamental one: Wait for one or two systems to become dominant, or develop their own?

How's private label trending? Depends on what category you examine. The average food category has seen a 5 percent increase in private label feature ad share compared to 2015.

The idea of not having any choice in your phone carrier seems preposterous today. Those of us old enough all remember the days when Ma Bell dominated the telephone market, ending with the historical breakup of the legendary telephone monopoly.

The retail industry has never seen anything like Amazon.