Trading Partners

AUSTIN, Texas -- Whole Foods Market said Friday it plans to open a 75,000-square-foot flagship store on central London's Kensington High Street in early 2007. It'll be the super-natural chain's first store outside of North America.

WASHINGTON -- A group of doctors that has sued several dairy product manufacturers, claiming their weight loss claims are untrue, said this week that it has dropped Kraft Foods from the suit.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- As fall approaches and families get back to hectic school schedules, the frozen and refrigerated foods industry will offer convenient solutions to fuel busy school days. The National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association (NFRA) here and its partnering manufacturers will promote October "Fuel for School" Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Festival with a sweepstakes and retail merchandising contest to build excitement with consumers.

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- ShopKo Stores, Inc., a multi-department retailer with 363 stores in the Western and Pacific states, yesterday completed the rollout of a direct store delivery (DSD) solution across its 140-store ShopKo Stores Division.

NEWARK, Del. -- Citing growing member concerns regarding transportation challenges, the Produce Marketing Association has established a transportation task force that will examine, and when possible, propose solutions for critical produce industry transportation issues.

WESTPORT, Conn. -- After focusing for the last decade on cost-cutting, productivity enhancements, and mergers and acquisitions to help spur growth, retailers and marketers now agree they need to make top-line sales growth the top priority in order to build profits, according to a recent study from the GMDC Educational Foundation.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Earth Fare has committed to selling only fresh eggs from cageless hens, the chain said yesterday. The natural foods supermarket chain's decision will freeze out the only supplier of "caged-hen" eggs it had: a local Abbey.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- After being informally investigated in 2004 for certain accounting practices, Ingles Markets, Inc. here is now the subject of a formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the supermarket chain revealed in its latest 10-Q filing with the SEC.