The supermarket idea that could save us money and stop waste

Casino will pull out of Vietnam. French distributor Casino wants to relieve 2 billion Euro from its debt thanks to real estate sales in Thailand and Colombia and the sale of its Vietnamese activities. During a general assembly in 2014, CEO Jean-Charles Naouri was able to boast about the company's stock value, which had doubled in 5 years' time, nearly reaching 97 Euro per share. Ever since April, the company has lost its spark and lost half of its value already. To turn the tide, Casino announced it will get rid of 2 billion Euro worth of debt. Alongside several other "non-strategic assets", CFO Antoine Giscard d'Estaing hopes to find 2 billion Euro in the "next 12 months. Vietnam is only the next one in a long list of countries Casino has now vacated. It already pulled out of Poland (2006), the Netherlands (2009) and Venezuela (2010). Most of Casino's turnover comes from 2 countries: its home nation of France (19.6 billion Euro) and Brazil (19.4 billion Euro). The South American combination of Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay brings in 5.1 billion Euro in turnover, Thailand about 1 billion Euro. Read More

Asda has invested 4m in customer service over the festive season, deploying 8,000 staff - called into its 601 stores to help customers and to keep queues moving at the tills. Two of the UK’s biggest retailers think they’ve found one. Asda has invested £4m in customer service over the festive season, deploying 8,000 staff – called ‘Go-Getters for Forgetters’ – into its 601 stores specifically to help customers in this predicament and to keep queues moving at the tills. Meanwhile, Tesco has introduced 4,000 ‘here to help’ staff at its 700 larger stores. Read More 

New c-store format offers more fresh, healthy food options, as well as rewards. Sobeys has unveiled its new convenience-store and gas-station format to customers in Atlantic Canada. In what the company is calling “a fresh take on the traditional convenience offer,” Sobeys Express features on-the-go meal solutions and easy fuel fillups for travelers. The Sobeys Express store, inspired by Sobeys Inc.'s IGA express banner in Quebec, offers customers fresh, healthy alternatives to traditional convenience-store snacks and meal ideas. With headquarters in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, Sobeys has been serving the food shopping needs of Canadians for 108 years. A wholly owned subsidiary of Empire Company Ltd., Sobeys owns or franchises approximately 1,500 stores in all 10 provinces under retail banners that include Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods and Lawton's Drug Stores, as well as more than 350 retail fuel locations. Read more

The Aeon Big outlet in Rahang, a suburb of Seremban, started out as a Carrefour store five years ago. Three years after Japan’s largest retailer Aeon Co Ltd took over French retail giant Carrefour’s Malaysian operations in a nearly RM1 billion deal, its Aeon Big outlet in Seremban is to pull the shutters down. The store, among the 28 outlets in the country, is in Rahang, a suburb of Seremban, where other major hypermarkets, including Giant, Tesco, Mydin and Econsave, are also based. A notice informed customers of the December 31 closure. In May, it was reported that Aeon’s net profit for the 2014 financial year dropped 7.9% to RM212.71 million from RM230.96 million in FY2013. This was after four consecutive years of steady growth. However, Aeon managing director Nur Qamarina Chew Abdullah said the company still planned to open new malls in Shah Alam, Selangor, and Klebang, Malacca, slated to open by year-end. The group will also open malls in Kota Baru, Kelantan, in 2016, and Kuching, Sarawak, in 2017. – December 18, 2015. Read More

Indianapolis' homegrown grocery chain is planning to make its most ambitious moves in years to push back against national retail giants that have been gobbling up market share. Marsh Supermarkets Inc. CEO Tom O'Boyle wants to open as many as 13 new stores by the end of 2018 while updating 52 of the chain's 73 existing stores. In addition, Marsh — long thought to be up for sale — is looking to acquire other grocery stores, O'Boyle said. O'Boyle declined to specify where Marsh might open new stores, but he said announcements for the first two could come within weeks. Although most of Marsh's stores are in the Indianapolis area, it has locations across Indiana and Ohio. O'Boyle wants to open three stores in fiscal 2016, five in 2017 and five in 2018, he said. Marsh has spent "tens of millions" of dollars on store improvements over the past 18 months, including seven full remodels and at least some work on an additional 16 stores, O'Boyle said. Marsh is planning to make improvements to 30 more stores during the next year, he said. Read more

How it looks now: The shell of the building has been completed, but construction halted earlier this year. Supermarket giant Morrisons has finally confirmed it will abandon plans to open in Pitsea, but a major home and garden retailer has been lined up to take its place. Morrisons had agreed to be the flagship retailer as part of a £30million regeneration scheme led by developer London and Cambridge Properties. Construction work halted earlier this year, casting the project into doubt, but Morrisons now wants to sub-let the 75,000 sq ft store to home living retailer The Range. At the time, senior councillors admitted Morrisons was the dealmaker, and used the supermarket to justify controversial decisions, including demolishing the Railway pub and downsizing the market. Read more

It wasn’t just carbon emissions being debated in Paris last week, French MPs unanimously voted to end food waste in supermarkets, granting the government the power to force supermarkets in the country to give away unsold food that has reached its sell-by date. The law was originally proposed in May but faced a challenge; it has now been passed. Supermarkets will also be banned from destroying food that is still edible – specifically, the practice of soaking food in bleach has been prohibited, the Guardian reports. The law will come into effect after it has been formally approved by the upper house of the French parliament, on 13 January, and the legislation was described in the house as a “crucial measure for the planet”. In France, an estimated 7.1m tonnes of food are wasted. Read more