Center Store

WASHINGTON - Retail prices for food at the supermarket dropped 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2004, according to the latest American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) market basket survey. The informal survey on the total cost of 16 basic grocery items showed a decrease of 99 cents from the 2004 first-quarter survey.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - It has now become much simpler for food stamp recipients to buy groceries in California, since the last of California's 58 counties, Amador, Calaveras, Lake, Mendocino, Placer and Tuolumne, have implemented the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system.

EDINA, Minn. - Rainbow Foods said yesterday it would open its first two Leeann Chin Chinese restaurants at the Bloomington and Maple Grove Rainbow Foods grocery store sites this month.

The c-store segment continues to improve its portable fresh food lineup -- and reputation -- and supermarkets can ill afford to ignore their cross-channel competitors' bid to boost business from the inside out.

Sales and merchandising may center on the winter holidays, but the time is always right for an exciting hors d'oeuvres assortment.

Small retailers can reap big sales by paying more attention to their produce departments.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. - Sears, Roebuck and Co. here has agreed to acquire ownership or leasehold interest in up to 61 off-mall stores in key Sears markets from Kmart Holding Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. for approximately $620 million in cash.

WASHINGTON - After publishing a proposed rule mandating nutrition information on single-ingredient meat and poultry products in January 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture appears poised to release new regulations in a final rule this summer.