News Briefs

La Brea Bakery closed its La Brea Bakery Café locations in Los Angeles and the Downtown Disney District in Anaheim, Calif., on Jan. 9, having made the strategic decision to exit the restaurant business and continue to focus on expanding the La Brea Bakery business through the retail grocery and foodservice channels. The Aspire Bakeries human resources team began working directly with affected employees at the two locations.

The franchised La Brea Bakery kiosks in the Reno International Airport in Nevada and New York’s JFK Airport will remain open.

[Read more: "FMI Report Showcases Power of In-Store Bakery"]

“We are so thankful and hold a tremendous amount of appreciation for our employees, and for our customers who have frequented La Brea Bakery Café over the years,” noted Tyson Yu, CEO of Los Angeles-based Aspire Bakeries, which owns La Brea Bakery. “Our flagship café location on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles is where the La Brea Bakery magic started 34 years ago. These humble beginnings are an integral part of the brand history, and we will forever be grateful to the local community for their support over the years. While we will no longer be operating the cafés in Los Angeles or at Disneyland Resort, you can still find our delicious La Brea Bakery artisan breads in your local grocery in-store bakery and at other locations that serve artisan breads.”

La Brea Bakery began at a restaurant on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles, growing into the No. 1 artisan bread brand nationally. Still made using its original custom sourdough starter, the La Brea Bakery recipe hasn’t changed in 34 years. The company bakes artisan bread daily at its bakeries in California and New Jersey.

eGrowcery, a white-label e-commerce platform developer, and AdAdapted, an advertising technology solution that gets CPG brands onto shopping lists and into carts, have partnered to help retailers grow their digital footprint and related sales. The move will also support efforts by CPG brands to personalize the shopping experience and drive engagement, purchase intent and increased spend on retailers’ digital advertising platforms.

“This partnership is all about eGrowcery and AdAdapted driving more platform eyeballs and enabling more sales for the retailers we serve,” said Patrick Hughes, CEO of Birmingham, Mich.-based eGrowcery. “It creates the optimal combination of shoppable promotional messages that are relevant to the shoppers’ needs and match those with our retail client’s objectives. If we are not continually helping our retailers grow, we are not doing our job."

[Read more: “eGrowcery Platform Now Includes Prepared Foods”]

The joint AdAdapted-eGrowcery offering helps retailers and brands extend their reach to where customers organically spend their time online, while also giving them a first-to-market path to conversion with just one click.

“AdAdapted and eGrowcery are creating a superior digital shopping experience that will drive measurable results for both suppliers and retailers,” said Molly McFarland, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based AdAdapted. “AdAdapted’s patented shoppable technology and experienced sales and execution team, combined with eGrowcery’s superior e-commerce experience, creates a win for the customer, advertiser and retailer.”

CVS and Walgreens have fulfilled their commitments to source 100% cage-free eggs nationally three years ahead of schedule. CVS, which has 9,900 stores, fulfilled its commitment in December 2022, and Walgreens, which has 8,886 stores, fulfilled its commitment this month. Both worked with The Humane League to accelerate the timeline of their fulfillments.

[Read more: "Scrambling to Meet Shoppers’ Preference for Specialty Eggs"]

“These accelerated cage-free fulfillments by Walgreens and CVS are precedent-setting for the retail industry and prove there’s no reason other companies can’t, at the very least, meet their 2025 commitments to go cage-free,” said Tim Sage, corporate relations specialist at The Humane League, which is based in New York. “By demonstrating a commitment to the ethical and humane treatment of animals in their supply chains, these retail leaders are acknowledging that confining hens in cages is inhumane and unacceptable.” 

The Humane League has worked with 2,300 companies to establish cage-free commitments. 

Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens, which operates retail locations across the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is No. 5 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. With its CVS Pharmacy subsidiary operating almost 10,000 locations nationwide, Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS Health is No. 7 on PG’s list.

Invafresh, which provides a cloud-based fresh retail platform for grocers, has named Sarah Sandberg as its first chief customer officer. She joins the company’s executive team to spearhead the scaling of its customer engagement strategy across the business at a time of ongoing expansion.

Most recently, Sandberg served as SVP of customer success at Lightspeed Commerce. Before that, she was an SVP of customer success at NuOrder, which was acquired by Lightspeed in 2021. Sandberg's background also includes senior roles with Etail Solutions and Fuel Cycle.

[Read more: "Weis Markets Opts for Invafresh to Streamline Fresh Food Ops"]

“Her passion and drive for customer success is evident in her leadership experience,” said Tim Spencer, CEO of the Mississauga, Ontario-based Invafresh. “We’re committed to delivering a best-in-class experience for our customers, and this newly created position is demonstration of our focus on being a trusted partner to our customers. With her customer-first approach, Sarah has proven experience to build upon the exceptional level of customer care we’ve created.”

Sandberg said she’ll hit the ground running to make a positive impact on how grocers use technology to provide shoppers with optimal fresh experiences. “My focus will be to ensure our customers get the most value out of their investment with Invafresh by understanding their business needs and providing data science backed actionable insights to their operations. I look forward to visiting our customers to learn more about their business goals when it comes to their Fresh operations,” she declared.

Earlier this month, Invafresh shared its outlook for the top five grocery industry trends in 2023. Among those trends: more investments in AI and machine learning for forecasting and automation; a greater focus on sustainability; the growth of commissary kitchens and centralized production planning; the rise of data-driven decision making with prescriptive analytics; and migration from on-premises software to the cloud.

Weis Markets Inc. and Instacart have formed a partnership to offer same-day grocery delivery from 133 Weis locations in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware. 

“We are committed to offering our customers more convenient grocery options, from in-store shopping to online ordering with pickup or delivery,” said Weis Markets VP of Marketing and Advertising Maria Rizzo, who was recently promoted from the role of director of marketing. “This partnership unlocks new ways for customers in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware to shop​ online​ with Weis Markets.” 

San Francisco-based Instacart​​​ offers same-day grocery delivery and pickup services in as fast as an hour. The company partners with more than 1,000 national, regional and local retail banners, including unique brand names, to deliver from more than 75,000 stores across more than 13,000 cities in the United States – including all 50 states – and Canada. 

Sunbury, Pa.-based Weis Markets operates stores in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and West Virginia. The company is No. 61 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named it one of the Top 10 Regional Operators to Watch in 2022.

Post-transaction ad platform AdsPostX has revealed a global retail media partnership with CitrusAd that empowers retailers to provide relevant ads through a customer’s complete shopping experience, to the confirmation page after they check out. 

AdsPostX delivers personalized offers through Nexos, a proprietary targeting technology. E-commerce businesses can enhance their retail media offering and generate incremental revenue by serving endemic and non-endemic ads on their purchase confirmation page.

Jon Nolz, the former head of Groupon’s retail media network and now CEO of Seattle-based AdsPostX said: “Our company offers retailers an easy-to-integrate ad platform that drives high-yielding revenue from advertisers they don’t currently get access to, on top of providing opportunities to existing advertisers. We are using machine learning to enhance a retailer’s shopping experience after checkout, increasing shopper retention and trip frequency to keep a retailer’s customers coming back.

“We are excited that a category leader such as CitrusAd has chosen our technology and our team to be their post transaction partner,” added Nolz. “We look forward to doing our part in helping their retailers maximize their potential and drive incrementality in the retail media space.”

CitrusAd launched in 2017 and was acquired by Publicis in 2021. With its on-site ad-serving platform, CitrusAd provides technology and retail media support with retail partners across the world, including GoPuff, Hy-Vee and Wakefern. Powered by Epsilon, CitrusAd offers identity-led, off-site advertising that drives traffic to retailers’ platforms.

“We are always looking for ways to innovate and offer something new to our clients, either building ourselves or bringing in partners with technology experts in their respective fields,” said David Haase, CEO of St. Petersburg, Fla.-based CitrusAd Americas. “We did our research, and AdsPostX is an exciting extension to our capabilities and our hundreds of global retail partners, providing a new monetization tool for retailers, and advertising opportunity for brands and advertisers.”