News Briefs

A longtime Lucky location in Larkspur, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay area is closing its doors.  According to The Save Mart Cos., which owns the banner, the store at 570 Magnolia Avenue will serve its last shoppers on April 14.

The Larkspur site opened in 1982 and served the local community for decades, providing competitively-priced products. Upon news of its closing, many local residents took to social media to lament the loss of the store, especially during a time of high inflation.

[Read more: "Save Mart’s Micro-Warehouse Goes Robotic"]

Other business will fill the food retailing gap. Trader Joe’s operates a nearby store, as does Mollie Stone’s Markets, Safeway, and, a bit further north in the way of San Rafael, Grocer Outlet Bargain Market.  

In a statement to local media, Save Mart thanked the customer base for the support, declaring: “Lucky has been serving the community for decades and we will remain committed to serving the community at our full-service Novato Lucky store.”

Although this Lucky outpost is being shuttered, Save Mart is expanding services in other ways. Earlier in March, the company announced it is extending Save Mart operating hours at several locations until 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends. Last fall, the retailer opened a new Lucky store in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, an area that had been considered a food desert.  

Based in Modesto, Calif., The Save Mart Cos. operates more than 200 retail stores under the banners of Save Mart, Lucky California and FoodMaxx. The company also operates SMART Refrigerated Transport and is a partner in Super Store Industries. Save Mart is No. 55 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. 

Dayton, Ohio, nonprofit Homefull has started work on a $50 million project that will bring a grocery store, primary care practice and pharmacy to an area food desert. Homefull Grocery and Market Place will be a 48,000-square-foot, two-story building with a full-scale supermarket that will have dairy, produce, meats, a deli, household products and more.

[Read more: "BJ's Returns to Central Ohio After 20-Year Hiatus"]

"We're excited about the Homefull Grocery and Market Place and what it's going to bring to the neighborhood,” said Tina Patterson, CEO of Homefull, during a groundbreaking ceremony on March 30. “First off, this is a food desert. Families in this community have no real grocery store that they can call their home grocery store. They travel for many miles to get it so we're super excited about being a hometown grocery store.”

Homefull Grocery and Market Place will additionally focus on housing, education, advocacy and job opportunities for community members. The grocery store, doctor’s office and pharmacy are expected to be completed next summer.

GetGo Café + Market, which is owned and operated by Giant Eagle Inc., is launching Free Coffee Mondays at all of its locations. Starting Monday, April 3, for a limited time, guests will get a free GetGo self-serve coffee with their Advantage Card or myPerks card every Monday, with no purchase necessary. The promotion applies to any of GetGo’s fresh-brewed hot- and iced-coffee varieties, along with the chain’s new nitro and cold-brew products.

“At GetGo, our guests are our top priority, and they’re at the center of everything we do,” said Giant Eagle EVP and GetGo COO Tony Harris. “Whether it’s that morning pick-me-up or that afternoon indulgence, we know coffee goes a long way in making your day that much better. With Free Coffee Mondays, we want to give our guests a great start to the week with a great-tasting coffee for free.”

This past February, GetGo completed a chainwide upgrade of its self-serve beverage bar area. The technology and equipment upgrade included a rollout of new bean-to-cup coffee machines, which feature GetGo’s new “signature blend” coffee beans, and the addition of new nitrogen-infused and cold brew coffees.

Customers  are limited to one free coffee each Monday. The nitro and cold-brew latte products aren’t available at all locations.

With 260-plus locations, GetGo offers food and fuel in a variety of models, from open-concept stores to stand-alone kiosks. GetGo is owned by Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle, which operates more than 490 stores throughout western Pennsylvania, north central Ohio, northern West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. The company is No. 36 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.

Ahold Delhaize has successfully priced a €500 million (approximately USD $545.2 million) green bond, with a term of five years, maturing on April 4, 2028.

The transaction marks Ahold Delhaize’s inaugural green bond issuance and follows its Sustainability Bond issuance in 2019, a €1 billion (approximately USD $1.1 billion) sustainability-linked revolving credit facility launched in 2020 and refinanced to €1.5 billion (approximately USD $ $1.6 billion) in 2022, and a sustainability-linked bond issuance in 2021. All of these ESG (environmental, social and governance)-labeled financings align the company’s funding strategy to its sustainability strategy and overall ESG ambitions.

The bond proceeds will be used to finance and refinance Ahold Delhaize’s new or existing environmentally friendly assets with a positive measurable environmental impact in the following categories: green buildings, renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transportation, and pollution prevention and control 

Ahold Delhaize has published an updated Green Finance Framework to detail the quality of the eligible green projects and the governance process regarding green finance.

Jan Ernst de Groot, chief sustainability officer said: “We’re excited to announce the issuance of the first green bond and fourth ESG financing instrument for the company. This transaction confirms Ahold Delhaize’s aspiration to taking up its sustainability challenges and mobilizing its teams to strive to create sustainable value for all its stakeholders. This step supports our updated climate plans announced last year, and allows us to accelerate our contribution to the transition to sustainable food systems.”

Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of Zaandam, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize that operates more than 2,000 stores across 23 states under the Food Lion, Giant Food, The Giant Co., Hannaford, and Stop & Shop brands, as well as e-grocer FreshDirect, is No. 10 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in the United States.

Discount grocery chain Save A Lot is returning to Prestonsburg, Ky., with the opening of a store at 525 Village Drive on Wednesday, March 29. The location, which originally opened as a Save A Lot in 2008 but had been operating under the Just Save banner since 2019, closed on March 21 to convert back to a Save A Lot store.

The grand-reopening celebration will feature a 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Save A Lot CEO Leon Bergmann; Saver Group store owners Dale Combs, Wendell Combs and Larry Noe; COO Keith DeFisher; and the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce. Following the ceremony, there will be a cookout in the parking lot from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with free samples from such brands as Eckrich Sausage and Smithfield Sausage. Additionally, through April 4, the store will give a free item to the first 100 people in line.

[Read more: "How Save A Lot Operators Are Helping Solve Food Insecurity at High-Profile Chicago Location"]

“We are excited to bring the Save A Lot banner back to Prestonsburg,” said Noe. “[We] understand that residents deserve high-quality food at a value price point that works for them. We think the Save A Lot brand helps us deliver that to our neighbors in Floyd County, and we can’t wait to have people experience this new option in town.”

Bergmann added that “the Save A Lot brand brings unmatched value and quality to over 800 communities nationwide, and [we] can’t wait for the Prestonsburg community to experience that for themselves.” 

The Prestonsburg store is open daily 8 a.m.-9 p.m.

With more than 850 stores in 32 states. Earth City, Mo.-based Save A Lot is No. 60 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.

CitrusAd and sponsorcart.io have partnered to deliver on-site shoppable video ad technology to retail media networks in the United States and abroad. The CitrusAd and Sponsorcart partnership simplifies video campaign activation and retail monetization, making it easier for brand advertisers across the globe to activate shoppable video campaigns on retail media networks. Brands can implement, manage and scale video ad creative, alongside add-to-cart functionality for corresponding SKUs that enables closed-loop, transparent measurement of return on ad spend. The new video ad formats will reportedly drive high-impact engagement for brands and fetch greater CPM (cost per thousand impressions) in a retailer’s revenue stream.

“CitrusAd is excited to scale these dynamic and innovative video ad formats. Brands will be able to easily align commercial video assets with SKUs directly within the path to purchase in a shopper-relevant manner. These enhanced shopper experiences deliver tremendous storytelling power and an attractive way for retailers to expand their media offering,” said Adam Skinner, managing director of retail media networks for St. Petersburg, Fla.-based CitrusAd.

[Read more: “AdsPostX Partners With Retail Media Powerhouse CitrusAd”]

“Our goal was to make it easy for video to play a larger role in retail media. We are delighted to tie our video ad platform to CitrusAd to make shoppable video ad campaigns dynamically populate in a native and personalized manner with lightning-fast load times,” said Stephen Caffrey, CEO and co-founder of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Sponsorcart.

Sponsorcart.io is an on-site end-to-end shoppable video platform built for retail media networks. According to the company, the platform makes it simple to launch and manage high-impact, unique video ad formats, while add-to-cart functionality provides closed-loop analytics for transparent and measurable ROI. Sponsorcart’s video solution appears natively along the path to purchase, with SKU optimization led by privacy-protected first-party retailer data for personalized relevancy at scale.