News Briefs

The community-owned Outpost Natural Foods Cooperative in Milwaukee has appointed Ray Simpkins as its new general manager. He succeeds the exiting Pam Mehnert, who is retiring after a 42-year career with the co-op.

Simpkins will leverage two decades of experience in his GM duties. He has served in leadership roles at several national retail chains, most recently as a district manager for Dollar General in Columbus, Ohio. His background also includes positions as a club manager for Sam’s Club, store director for Fresh Thyme Farmers Market and a store manager for The Home Depot. He earned an MBA from Strayer University and a bachelor’s degree from Wright State University.

[Read more: "PCC Reveals Progress on ESG Goals in 2022 ‘Co-op Purposes Report’"]

“After a nationwide search, we are thrilled to have found a general manager who brings such a rich background and extensive experience in grocery retail,” said Ashley Fisher, president of Outpost Natural Foods’ board of directors. “Ray’s an energetic team leader with a passion for customer service. We’re excited to watch him excel at Outpost.”  

Simpkins said he will hit the ground running when he joins the co-op on May 22. “I can’t wait to move to Milwaukee and meet Outpost employees, owners, shoppers and community partners,” he remarked. “Together, we’ll continue to create healthy, diverse, and sustainable communities by offering the area’s largest selection of regionally and locally sourced organic products, all within an engaging consumer experience.” 

With 23,000 owners, Outpost has four co-op locations, including one in the city of Milwaukee and others in the nearby suburbs of Mequon, Wauwatosa and Bay View. The retailer was founded in 1970 and currently employs nearly 360 people. Customers do not have to be an owner/member to shop at Outpost stores.

Publix Pharmacy has once more received the Retail Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award, bestowed by Livingston, N.J.-based Zitter Insights, a division of Managed Markets Insights & Technology (MMIT). This is the third time that Publix Pharmacy has won the award. 

“It’s an honor to once again be recognized by our customers and Zitter Insights,” said Publix VP of Pharmacy Dain Rusk. “This award is a testimony to our team’s incredible dedication to providing premier service to our specialty pharmacy customers.”

Publix Pharmacy offers both a dual-accredited specialty pharmacy and a traditional retail pharmacy. The specialty pharmacy dispenses and supports more complex medications, including those used to treat cancer and rare diseases, not usually available at standard pharmacies. 

The Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award recognizes specialty pharmacies’ commitment to patients. It goes to one winner and three finalists in four categories: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) & Payer Specialty Pharmacy, Hospital and Health System Specialty Pharmacy, Independent Specialty Pharmacy, and Retail Specialty Pharmacy. Winners and finalists are chosen based on scores racked up during quarterly surveys of 10,000-plus specialty pharmacy customers. To be eligible for this award, specialty pharmacies must meet criteria set by a committee comprising representatives from pharmaceutical manufacturers, health plans, PBMs, trade organizations, consultants and equity research firms.

Employee-owned and -operated Publix has close to 1,300 supermarkets in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Lakeland, Fla.-based Publix is No. 12 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.

Amazon, along with Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, state and local elected officials, and community partners, celebrated the official opening of its new state-of-the-art fulfillment center in Windsor, Conn., on May 2.

According to local reports, the online retail giant said that the five-story, 3.8 million-square-foot fulfillment center is its largest such facility in New England.

[Read more: “Amazon Not Giving Up on Grocery Business”]

More than 2,000 local Amazon employees will operate and work with the newest innovative robotics technology, delivering such items as books, electronics, small household goods and toys to customers in the area. Jobs are still available on a rolling basis. Interested candidates can sign up for alerts by visiting amazon.jobs.

This new facility expands Amazon’s operations and logistics network in Connecticut. Since 2010, Amazon has created more than 15,000 jobs and invested $6 billion-plus in the state including infrastructure and employee compensation. These investments have contributed an additional $5.5 billion to the Connecticut economy and have helped create an additional 19,000 jobs — in addition to the employees whom the company directly employs — including jobs in construction, logistics, health care and professional services.

Seattle-based Amazon is No. 2 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.

White-label e-commerce platform eGrowcery is helping retailers own their digital future with its latest option. BOLT (Build, Operate, Lease, Transfer) offers retailers the opportunity to purchase their entire e-commerce ecosystem in the future as they operate and grow their technology in the short term.

“We have heard from numerous retailers that they are making significant investments in their e-commerce technology over the next several years,” noted Patrick Hughes, CEO of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based eGrowcery. “While many retailers still prefer traditional SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] pricing models, others are interested in building or buying their own platform. We have listened to the market and created a faster path for those retailers seeking to save time and money buying versus building their technology in-house.”

[Read more: "eGrowcery, Card Isle Offer Customized Greeting Cards"]

With more growth to come in the e-commerce space, retailers have increasingly demanded ownership of their shopper data. For some, owning their own technology is also paramount.

“We work with retailers of all sizes and varying strategies,” said Mark Doiron, an industry consultant at Boston-based Supply Chain Ventures and onetime chief merchant with several major supermarket operators. “There is clear interest with many retailers to explore the possibility of owning their own e-commerce platform. Not all will be able to leverage this opportunity, but there is a growing trend of retailers wanting to fully control this growing part of the business.”

In the eGrowery BOLT model, a retailer enters into a classic SaaS agreement that enables personalization and scalability for a retailer for some mutually-agreed-to period. At the end of this mutually defined period, the retailer has the option of migrating its e-commerce platform over to its own servers, from which it can then control product development and other initiatives going forward.

The Kroger Co. is getting a new leader of retail operations strategy. The grocer reported the promotion of Jordan Poff to VP of retail and e-commerce operations from his most recent role as senior director of e-commerce operations and experience.

Poff – who won a GenNext Award from Progressive Grocer in 2018 – will spearhead retail operations strategies for the grocer at a time of expansion, change and a planned merger. He will also work to improve store experiences through a culture of consistency, service excellence and innovation.

He started at Kroger in 2005 as a courtesy clerk at Kroger’s Cincinnati/Dayton division, near the company headquarters. During his 15-year tenure in that division, Poff continually took on new responsibilities and moved up the ranks. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped launch Kroger’s first grocery pickup center.

Poff earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Northern Kentucky University and is a black belt in Lean Six Sigma.

Cincinnati-based Kroger has almost 2,800 retail food stores under a variety of banner names. The company is No. 4 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named Kroger one of the Retailers of the Century. 

Brookshire Grocery Co. has chosen NCR point-of-sale (POS) offerings as the foundation of its in-store technology, starting with NCR Emerald, a cloud-native POS solution. The NCR Commerce Platform (NCP) provides robust integrated capabilities across the grocer’s physical infrastructure, unifying technology to operate the store and merging existing and future retail applications quickly and efficiently.

“BGC places a priority on customer service, and we’re looking for ways to leverage technology to improve the experience for our customers,” noted Shawn Sedate, CIO of Brookshire Grocery. “Now that we’re live in our first store, we plan to start rolling out NCR’s solutions to our 206 locations. By simplifying and standardizing our store infrastructure, we’ll have more time to focus on customer needs and create offers that keep shoppers coming back.”

[Read more: "The Grocer’s Guide to Tech"]

“BGC has always had the right approach to upgrading and deploying next-generation applications with speed. It simply needed the right technology to support these efforts,” said David Wilkinson, president of NCR Commerce. “From POS to self-checkout, or loyalty to payments, changes that took long periods of time to build, test and roll out across large store estates can now be achieved much quicker with the NCP.” 

Atlanta-based  NCR Corp. has also recently extended and expanded a long-term agreement with drug store chain Walgreens, making NCR the provider of ATM services at nearly all of the retailer’s stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. 

A family business operating in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, Tyler, Texas-based Brookshire Grocery is No. 63 on the PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in the United States. Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens is No. 5 on PG’s list.