Research & Analysis

WASHINGTON - The world's largest association of food, beverage and consumer product companies has completed its merger with the Association of Sales & Marketing Companies, in the culmination of the organizations' two-year association.

NEW YORK - About 9,000 workers at Dominick's, a Chicago division of Safeway Inc., voted on Sunday to authorize a strike to back their demands for higher wages and healthcare benefits, Reuters reports.

SALISBURY, N.C. - Supermarket chain Food Lion, a subsidiary of Delhaize America, has developed a management training program aimed at new graduates of historically African-American colleges and universities. Food Lion announced the start of the program on Thursday on the campus of Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.

BOSTON - Robert Hawthorne unexpectedly resigned as chief executive of Ocean Spray on Wednesday after three years spent struggling to get better prices for the growers who own the cooperative and to compete with beverage giants Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and Cadbury Schweppes, the Associated Press reports.

NEW YORK - No. 2 supermarket chain Safeway Inc. may be on the verge of exiting Chicago, where its Dominick's chain has suffered about four years of falling profits and its unionized workers are demanding more pay, analysts told Reuters on Wednesday.

LONDON - UK supermarket chain Sainsbury is partnering with the Learning and Skills Council to offer IT training to its customers via in-store learning centers, CIES--The International Food Forum reports.

QUINCY, Mass. - Twenty years after opening its first Super Stop & Shop, the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company, a division of Ahold, has announced the opening of its first new prototype supermarkets in Walpole, Mass., and Rhinebeck, N.Y.

WASHINGTON - Safeway Inc. is in contract negotiations with the union representing its Dominick's Supermarkets Inc. employees in the Chicago area, according to a Form 8-K filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.