E-commerce giant Amazon plans to open as many as six more cashierless stores this year. The company is considering locations in Los Angeles and hometown Seattle, where the first Amazon Go store opened last month, Recode reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation. Amazon Go is the company’s most ambitious effort to change the way people shop and a play for the struggling $550 billion US convenience store industry.
Tesco and Aldi have become the first grocery retailers in the UK to reveal details of their gender pay gap. This comes ahead of a government deadline in April, which requires all companies in the UK with over 250 employees to publish data on how much their male and female staff members earn. Aldi has reported a mean gender pay gap of 11.5%, with a median of 4.8%, placing it below the national UK mean of 17.4% and a median of 18.4%. Meanwhile, Tesco revealed last week that its median gender pay gap across more than 225,000 staff members for the 12 months to April 2017 stood at 8.7%, with a mean of 12%, also below the national figures, but above Aldi's.
The UK’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for the UK to join a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit in order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. Meanwhile, British foreign secretary Boris Johnson posited that travel between the Republic and the North would be like crossing the London boroughs of Camden and Westminster, dismissing concerns over leaving the European customs union.
Last week, the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) Roundtable Conference took place in Dublin. The event brought together manufacturers, retailers, trade press and industry consultants to examine and discuss the theme ‘Where is private label going?’ Some 88% of private label suppliers at the event were optimistic that private label penetration will continue to grow in the retail sector, with 15% saying they are ‘very optimistic’ about the future growth of the sector.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire who helped assemble food-and-beverage giant Kraft Heinz, will retire from its board as he cuts down on travel commitments. Buffett, 87, will step down at the end of his term, Kraft Heinz said Friday in a statement. The company will nominate Alexandre Van Damme to fill the vacancy. Buffett’s firm, Berkshire Hathaway, is still represented on the board by Tracy Britt Cool and Greg Abel.
Italy has become the world's leading producer of sparkling wine, snatching the throne from Germany, which has held the top for two decades. This is according to the Italian Sparkling Wine Observatory (OVSE), which says that sparkling wine production in Italy reached a record 660 million bottles last year. The increase in volumes (+1.4%) and values (+0.5%) compared to 2016 is primarily due to the establishment of Sistema Prosecco, a specific body created to coordinate the protection of various prosecco denominations in Italy and around the world. Prosecco makes up over 70% of the Italian consumption of sparkling wines.
© 2018 - Checkout Magazine by Kevin Duggan
