Supermarket & Grocery Industry News

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Associated Grocers, Inc. of Baton Rouge, La., is on the trail to data synchronization, planning to connect its existing systems to the 1SYNC data pool.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- In celebration of National Frozen Food Month in March, Wal-Mart supercenters across the country shared the National Frozen Food Association's "Warm Up to Frozen" message on Saturday by offering a calendar, tied to the upcoming 20th Century Fox release "Ice Age: The Meltdown," that features frozen food tips and vendor information.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- National Beef Packing Co., LLC (National Beef) and its majority owner, U.S. Premium Beef, LLC (USPB), based here, have entered into a non-binding agreement to acquire Brawley Beef, LLC.

SAN ANTONIO -- HEB here said it has issued a recall of its entire HEB Baby Food line, including Mom's Choice Organic Baby Food, in response to three consumer reports of glass shards found inside jars of peas, carrots, and applesauce. The reports originated in Houston and Corpus Christi, but the grocer made the decision to remove the products from all of its Texas stores on Wednesday.

CARLISLE, Pa. -- Deborah Vereen, director of organizational effectiveness and diversity for Giant Food Stores here, will lecture on corporate diversity at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa.

CARTERET, N.J. -- Pathmark Stores, Inc. here has awarded Waitsfield, Vt.-based Northern Power, a subsidiary of Distributed Energy Systems Corp., a contract to provide three turnkey photovoltaic (PV) systems to the Northeast regional grocer's Garwood, Elizabeth, and Lawnside, N.J. locations. The turnkey systems, which will have a total capacity of 750 kilowatts, will be designed, built, and commissioned by Northern Power in association with New Jersey-based BGA LLC Engineering.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Wegmans Food Markets here and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Bon Appétit Management Co., a foodservice company noted for its sustainable sourcing practices, said yesterday at the Boston Seafood Show that they have adopted new purchasing policies for farmed king salmon that meets strict health and environmental criteria. The policies were developed with New York-based Environmental Defense, an environmental advocacy organization.

ST. LOUIS -- Family-run regional chain Schnuck Markets, Inc., based here, has signed on to use Vertical InstantOffice, an integrated communications platform from Cambridge, Mass.-based Vertical Communications, to aggregate, track, and manage its voice communications.