We had lots of news this week from the retail world, international trade, and food safety. But let’s start with today’s holiday.
Loved restaurants
It’s Valentine’s Day, which is the second busiest restaurant day of the year, behind Mother’s Day. DoorDash, which would prefer people not visit the restaurant but call them to deliver, released a list of the top 50 American restaurants with the most mentions of “love” in their reviews. Are any of these your favorites?
Aldi moves
Aldi bought Southeastern Grocers in March 2024, which was a bold move, but also one that had observers wondering what they’d do with such large square-foot stores compared to the typically smaller footprint Aldi stores. We found out.
Late last week Aldi said it would sell about 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores to a group of private investors, including C&S Wholesale Grocers.
Then Aldi said it plans to open more than 225 stores in 2025, including about 100 of the 220 Southeastern Grocers locations it kept from the transaction. Aldi is proving it’s a good time to be in the discount grocery business.
Online grocery
The U.S. online grocery market grew to $10 billion in monthly sales, a 16.6 percent increase over January 2024, according to Brick Meets Click. Within that, delivery’s year-over-year growth surged 37 percent.
“It’s important to call out that much of Delivery’s explosive growth is driven by Mass and specifically Walmart,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click.
Trump tariffs
We’re still in the one-month pause window of the proposed 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partners, including fresh produce.
Many questions remain, but we spoke with the International Fresh Produce Association’s?vice president of U.S. government relations, Rebeckah Adcock, to bring some clarity to how the produce industry should prepare.
She said the industry can work toward some exemptions, noting that once we have a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture confirmed, she can be an advocate. Later this week, Brooke Rollins was confirmed as Ag Secretary.
Aside from tariffs, Adcock also said deregulation would be a huge help in keeping American food producers competitive with imports, something Trump emphasized in his first administration.
FSMA 204
This week we also spoke with Gary Fleming, CEO of Inteligistics, a supply chain technology company, about challenges produce companies face when coming into compliance with FDA’s FSMA 204 mandate, which will be enforced in January 2026, but is already in effect.
He said many companies that Inteligistics has been working with are not as compliant as they think due to advanced CTEs [critical tracking events], which refer to when a product is transformed (such as by processing, comingling, or repacking) and/or transferred (such as from one distribution center to another), and the tracking and reporting gets more complex.?
Thankfully, Fleming said companies that have used principles from the Produce Traceability Initiative are ahead of the game.
If your company isn’t working on this yet, that deadline will come quicker than you think.
Super Bowl
Finally, there was a Super Bowl, and I didn’t have a good time with it, but at least Taylor Swift has some sad song material again.
We had lots of news this week from the retail world, international trade, and food safety. But let’s start with today’s holiday.
Loved restaurants
It’s Valentine’s Day, which is the second busiest restaurant day of the year, behind Mother’s Day. DoorDash, which would prefer people not visit the restaurant but call them to deliver, released a list of the top 50 American restaurants with the most mentions of “love” in their reviews. Are any of these your favorites?
Aldi moves
Aldi bought Southeastern Grocers in March 2024, which was a bold move, but also one that had observers wondering what they’d do with such large square-foot stores compared to the typically smaller footprint Aldi stores. We found out.
Late last week Aldi said it would sell about 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores to a group of private investors, including C&S Wholesale Grocers.
Then Aldi said it plans to open more than 225 stores in 2025, including about 100 of the 220 Southeastern Grocers locations it kept from the transaction. Aldi is proving it’s a good time to be in the discount grocery business.
Online grocery
The U.S. online grocery market grew to $10 billion in monthly sales, a 16.6 percent increase over January 2024, according to Brick Meets Click. Within that, delivery’s year-over-year growth surged 37 percent.
“It’s important to call out that much of Delivery’s explosive growth is driven by Mass and specifically Walmart,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click.
Trump tariffs
We’re still in the one-month pause window of the proposed 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partners, including fresh produce.
Many questions remain, but we spoke with the International Fresh Produce Association’s?vice president of U.S. government relations, Rebeckah Adcock, to bring some clarity to how the produce industry should prepare.
She said the industry can work toward some exemptions, noting that once we have a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture confirmed, she can be an advocate. Later this week, Brooke Rollins was confirmed as Ag Secretary.
Aside from tariffs, Adcock also said deregulation would be a huge help in keeping American food producers competitive with imports, something Trump emphasized in his first administration.
FSMA 204
This week we also spoke with Gary Fleming, CEO of Inteligistics, a supply chain technology company, about challenges produce companies face when coming into compliance with FDA’s FSMA 204 mandate, which will be enforced in January 2026, but is already in effect.
He said many companies that Inteligistics has been working with are not as compliant as they think due to advanced CTEs [critical tracking events], which refer to when a product is transformed (such as by processing, comingling, or repacking) and/or transferred (such as from one distribution center to another), and the tracking and reporting gets more complex.?
Thankfully, Fleming said companies that have used principles from the Produce Traceability Initiative are ahead of the game.
If your company isn’t working on this yet, that deadline will come quicker than you think.
Super Bowl
Finally, there was a Super Bowl, and I didn’t have a good time with it, but at least Taylor Swift has some sad song material again.
