Free Republic

One of the largest supermarkets in downtown San Francisco closed its doors this week due to deteriorating street conditions nearby. Increased drug use and crime near the Whole Foods on Eighth and Market, which opened just one year ago, contributed to the store’s closing, a city hall source told the San Francisco Standard. “We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being,” a Whole Foods spokesperson said in a statement. “If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location.” The news comes after...

“We are exhausted” with crime and “need results,” National Supermarket Association’s Nelson Eusebio fumes to The Post, explaining why 70 mostly Latino city grocers are donating $1,000 apiece to Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign for governor. SNIP The group — whose stores include Foodtown, Key Food, C-Town and other supermarkets — have generally voted for Democrats, Eusebio explained. Yet now they’re desperate to end the city’s shoplifting pandemic and other crimes that have plagued their businesses and city streets. They want crooks held “accountable,” not freed to rob again soon after their arrest, as now under New York’s lunatic cashless-bail laws....

The socialist government of Spain has introduced new laws allowing for the supermarkets to ration food and other items as a part of its “Response Plan” to the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine. Amid soaring inflation, which hit nearly 10 per cent in March, the Spanish government, controlled by the leftist Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has opened up a legal loophole for supermarkets to begin rationing to customers.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Middle East on Monday got its first completely automated cashier-less store, as retail giant Carrefour rolled out its vision for the future of the industry in a cavernous Dubai mall. Like Amazon’s breakthrough unmanned grocery stores that opened in 2018, the Carrefour mini-market looks like any ordinary convenience store, brimming with sodas and snacks, tucked between sprawling storefronts of this city-state. But hidden among the familiar fare lies a sophisticated system that tracks shoppers’ movements, eliminating the checkout line and allowing people to grab the products they’ll walk out with. Only those with...

Supermarket supply chains are "starting to fail" because the "pingdemic" is sending thousands of workers into self-isolation, food industry leaders warned on Wednesday night. Shop shelves in some areas were empty of basic supplies, while petrol stations ran out of fuel as the NHS Test and Trace app threatened to bring parts of the economy to a standstill. MPs and industry leaders urged the Government to ease the growing crisis by including supermarket staff, lorry drivers and other frontline workers on a list of those exempted from automatic self-isolation when 'pinged' by the app as a contact of someone with...

Draeger’s Market in Los Altos (California) was found to have violated safety protocols and failed to protect its employees against the spread of COVID-19, which may have led to a major outbreak last summer that included transmission among employees... In January, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) fined Draeger’s $13,500 after inspections between July 24 and Jan. 13 revealed “serious” violations of the state’s guidance regarding COVID-19. According to the Cal/OSHA report, Draeger’s “failed to prevent harmful exposures of its employees to COVID-19 airborne particles,” citing three instances that led to the write-up.Draeger’s didn’t make sure its...

The head of the UK’s oldest conservative think tank has condemned government orders for supermarkets to barricade aisles containing ‘non-essential’ items during England’s lockdown, saying Boris Johnson’s administration should “leave it to the public to decide what they want and need to buy”. The Conservative national government has quietly instructed supermarkets to close departments selling so-called “non-essential” items during England’s second lockdown, with media reporting in recent days citizens’ anger at not being to buy items including kettles, socks, and baby clothes.

The donation is going to be split among several organizations. $2 million will be donated to the social justice efforts of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Urban League, $1 million to the company’s African American Associate Resource Group to partner with local organizations to support communities, and $1 million in a reserve fund for social justice and diversity initiatives in the future. Another $1 million was donated to local initiatives in a specific area in the Albertsons division.

A new 162,000-square-foot meat processing plant opened Oct. 21 in Camp Hill, Pa. The factory, off Lisburn Road, is owned by Ahold USA, which operates grocery store chains Giant, Martin’s and Stop & Shop, and is managed by Vantage Foods. The plant will cut and package beef and pork products for distribution to Giant’s stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland and surrounding states, said Tracey Pawelski, Ahold’s vice president of external communications. No animals will be slaughtered at the factory. The carcasses will be brought in from the company’s current suppliers, including Pennsylvania-based brands such as Hatfield and Berks as well as...

New market data has somehow managed to make Whole Foods’ beleaguered lot look even worse. On top of reports last week that rival Albertsons was sniffing around Sprouts Farmers Market, an upstart organic grocer and wellness store whose prices are about 19 percent cheaper on average than Whole Foods, there are now some new numbers suggesting the high-end grocery chain is also still hemorrhaging shoppers. Foot traffic has dipped once again, Barclays analysts note, straight-up describing the magnitude this time as “staggering.” Technically, it’s 3 percent, which can make “staggering” seem a little far-fetched — until you consider it translates...

Years of crippling socialist policies have left Venezuela so bereft of food, average Venezuelans must spent up to six hours waiting in line to received their allotted rations of basic goods like vegetable oil, flour, or milk. Musician Jonathan Acosta has offered to help ease the frustration by visiting supermarkets and performing for those waiting in line.

Obama forces successful supermarket chains to sell supermarkets to a failing company that shuts them down The Obama administration recently forced successful supermarket chains Albertsons and Safeway to sell some of their supermarkets to the Haggen supermarket chain.Six months later, Haggen declared bankruptcy, and said it would close at least 100 of its supermarkets.Grocery strategist Burt P. Flickinger said:“This is the fastest (failure) in modern supermarket history… In all of retail, I haven’t seen anything like this.”This does not surprise me. Obama is a cronyist, and everything he touches turns into bantha pudu.

glaringly missing from the summary was mention of $15 million in fees paid by Burkle's Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund since 2002

The supermarket ‘talking’ shopping cart Michelle Obama will use to push her over-the-top approved food list is a power push over unsuspecting masses, but would serve as the perfect replacement for her husband’s omnipresent rising sun logo. Six years ago, Barack Hussein Obama arrogantly made himself the rising sun in a logo by putting the sun under his stylized ‘O’, but his wife may have inadvertently come up with a better logo symbol to represent the empty life Barack Obama is bequeathing Americans: Michelle’s government-controlled supermarket shopping cart.

...All ratings are based on 24,203 responses, and the four categories – service (includes employee courtesy and checkout speed), perishables (food quality), price and cleanliness – were scored from “very satisfied,” “fairly satisfied,” “neutral, “fairly unsatisfied” and “very unsatisfied.” All scores are out of 100. The highest-rated supermarket, Wegmans, received a score of 88. The following are ranked from bad to worst....

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Motion sensors and razor-wire coils ring the ammunition depot on this vast Marine Corps base. Sentries stand watch in the lobby of the headquarters complex. Military police officers patrol the barracks every few hours. But no building here boasts the defenses of the giant, government-run supermarket, whose bright, wide aisles are stocked with seemingly every brand of every food product available in America — Heinz ketchup, Oscar Mayer bacon, Lay’s chips — all sold at close to wholesale prices. The cost of ordering the goods, filling the shelves and checking out customers is all borne by...

ObamaCare’s benevolent promise to help control and curtail healthcare-related costs is already going magnificently bust; why not just extend the consequences of heightened compliance costs and pricey taxes to an entirely other but equally indispensable economic sector while they’re at it, right? As the Federal Drug Administration so munificently explains, part of ObamaCare’s overall purpose is to help provide Americans with all of the tools they need to lead healthier lives (with a universal healthcare system that requires society to absorb the costs of individuals’ daily health-related decisions, what choice do they have but to butt into those decisions?) —...

If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier. Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. (Snip) The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets

The parent company of the Albertsons supermarket chain is closing 26 stores nationwide, including 18 in Southern California, as it tries to overcome sharp operating losses and stiff price competition from big-box rivals. Supervalu Inc. said late Wednesday that the closings are part of a decision to eliminate about 60 stores nationwide, primarily in its Albertsons and Save-A-Lot chains. Albertsons will have 228 stores in California after the closures. Among the Albertsons locations in Southern California scheduled to be closed by December are stores in Long Beach, Glendale, Northridge and Van Nuys. A store in Culver City closed last month.

When the economy hit the skids a few years ago, we responded with tactics that have gotten us through previous recessions: We stopped eating out and traveling as much, curbed our discretionary spending and chose generic items for basics like groceries. But then something strange happened: We began to prefer many of those store brands. Increasingly, we’re willing to pay even more for them. What’s going on here? According to the Wall Street Journal, stores have raised the prices of private-label nonperishable food by 5.3%, compared to a 1.9% increase for goods made by national brands. Store-brand versions of perishable...