Vendors

Articles on vendors in the retail and CPG industries.

  1. CPG: Food

The Restaurant Price War Is Becoming a Value War: Food, Labor, Shipping and Rent Are Colliding

  The restaurant industry is no stranger to pricing wars. But in 2026, the problem is more complicated than restaurants simply deciding whether to raise or lower menu prices according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. Restaurants are caught in a four-way squeeze: food costs, labor costs, shipping and supply-chain […]
10 min read
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  1. Channel: Delivery

Backed by Nuwa Capital and COTU Ventures, e-commerce startup Keep Converting emerges from stealth

Keep Converting, an AI powered e-commerce platform that personalises product pages for shoppers in real-time, has emerged from stealth with $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Nuwa Capital and COTU Ventures. Keep Converting is pre-integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Zid, Salla, and various other commerce platforms. It says that client […]
2 min read
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  1. Channel: Convenience

7-Eleven’s BiG Flavor Bar: When More Flavor Could Mean Less Convenience

  The Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson examines why 7-Eleven may have created a customer-experience idea that looks delicious on the marketing board—but could create a service bottleneck in the real world. There is an old foodservice lesson that convenience retailers sometimes forget: Customers don’t go to a convenience store because they want more things to […]
8 min read
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  1. CPG & FMCG

Walmart Just Changed the Food Game: It Understands Food Customers Better Than Fast-Food Retailers Do

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® says Walmart’s next big food opportunity isn’t simply selling more groceries—it is capturing more of the consumer’s eating occasions. There is a significant change underway in the American food marketplace, and Walmart deserves credit for recognizing it. Walmart is moving beyond traditional grocery delivery […]
7 min read
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  1. Channel: Mass

Reward appoints retail industry veteran Matthew Keylock as company’s new Chief Data & Analytics Officer

Reward, a customer engagement and commerce media specialist and a Rezolve Ai company, has appointed Matthew Keylock as Chief Data & Analytics Officer. Keylock will lead its global data, analytics and insight capabilities, building on its proprietary transaction and behavioural intelligence to drive customer insight, hyper-personalisation and targeting. He brings nearly three decades of experience […]
2 min read
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  1. CPG: Food

When Crap Hits the Fan: How Molly Bz Saved its Straight Fire Cookie from Disaster

When you are a brand owner, sometimes things just go wrong. It could be an ingredient shortage, a miscalculation on your part, a production error, or a simple act of God. These are the times that test the resiliency and ingenuity of an entrepreneur, and offer valuable lessons moving forward.  Molly Blakeley, Founder of Molly […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Mass

Lucy Cooper departs THG Ingenuity and takes on Group Customer Experience & Agentic Director role at Tesco

Lucy Cooper has joined Tesco as Group Customer Experience & Agentic Director. She was previously at THG Ingenuity where she served as Chief Commercial Officer. In a LinkedIn post, she said: “I’ve had a brilliant time at THG. Fast, ambitious, and occasionally bonkers (but never, ever boring).” “I’ve learned an enormous amount, always at speed […]
2 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

OpenAI Says New Model Meets Its ‘Critical’ Cybersecurity Threshold

OpenAI says its upcoming Astra model is the first to meet its “Critical” cybersecurity threshold. The artificial intelligence (AI) startup noted this development in a blog post Tuesday (Sept. 1) after spending the last few weeks testing Astra’s capabilities. “We now believe Astra meets the Critical cybersecurity capability threshold under our Preparedness Framework, meaning that […]
2 min read
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  1. Channel: Mass

Aptos report: retailers heavily underestimating financial value of modernising their PoS systems

Aptos has released a new study conducted by Coresight Research. A key takeaway: 85% of retailers that have recently modernised their Point of Sale systems say the investment either met or exceeded their return on investment expectations. The report is based on a survey of 150 global retail decision-makers involved in PoS strategy, selection and […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

The Buyer’s Mindset: What Happens Behind the Retail Desk

For a product brand, walking into a retail buyer meeting can feel like stepping onto a stage without a script. You know your product is innovative. You know your margins are solid. You know your branding is strong. Yet, you are sitting across from someone who could determine whether your product gets onto the shelf […]
8 min read
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  1. Channel: Club

The Frozen Food Court Meets the Fresh Food Revolution: PDQ Shows How Restaurants Can Own the Game-Day Meal

  The football season has always been about more than football. It is about gathering, grazing, sharing, snacking and—perhaps most importantly—feeding a crowd without spending the entire game day in the kitchen according to Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® That is why PDQ’s latest promotion caught my attention. PDQ, […]
7 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

Community Banks Could Get $500 Million Back From the FDIC

Proposed changes to federal deposit insurance assessments could translate to significant savings for community banks. A recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City looks at those changes, proposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). The Fed estimates established community banking organizations (CBOs) are now paying around $1.6 billion each year in FDIC assessments. The central bank defines CBOs as […]
2 min read
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  1. CPG & FMCG

Fresh Is No Longer a Department — It Is the Foodservice Battleground

  For years Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® has argued that Fresh Is First. Today, the data tells us something even more important: Fresh is no longer simply a department, a perimeter strategy, or a grocery-store differentiator. Fresh has become a competitive foodservice platform. And the retailers, restaurants, convenience stores […]
7 min read
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  1. CPG & FMCG

Competitive Food Marketing Is Dead — The Consumer Has Moved On

  The Grocerant Guru® says the food marketer’s biggest competitor is no longer the restaurant across the street. It is the consumer’s smartphone, search engine, AI assistant, grocery deli, convenience store, and every other channel competing for the next meal. For years, food marketers have operated as though consumers still followed a predictable path: breakfast, […]
9 min read
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  1. CPG & FMCG

The Three-Meal Day Is Dead: America Now Eats on Its Own Clock

  From breakfast at 7 a.m. to a protein snack at 10 p.m., consumers are turning “dayparts” into “day-anytime” — and food marketers need to catch up according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. Harken back to a time when families routinely sat down together for breakfast, lunch and dinner. […]
7 min read
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  1. Channel: Dollar/Value

RELEX Solutions Announces AI powered tie up with Dollar General for forecasting and replenishment 

RELEX Solutions is partnering with Dollar General to implement forecasting, replenishment, and allocation capabilities across its North American operations.  Dollar General operates more than 21,000 stores and 34 distribution centres, managing approximately 18,000 SKUs, and continues to expand its store footprint each year. The AI driven RELEX platform will manage store replenishment, ordering schedules, lead […]
2 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

Levanta raises $22 million Series B to support investment in its creator commerce technology

Levanta, whose technology helps brands find creators, send them products, set up affiliate commissions, track sales and handle payments, has announced a $22 million Series B investment led by Volition Capital, marking the firm’s second major investment in the company after leading its $20 million Series A in 2024. Levanta has now raised more than […]
3 min read
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  1. CPG: Adult Beverage

Top 25 Beer Category Vendors Post Mixed Off-Premise Performance, per Circana Monthly Report

Two of the beer category’s largest growth vendors reversed trends in the four-week period (L4W) ending August 9, according to the latest monthly report from market research firm Circana. Worsening grocery channel losses pushed No. 1 Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) into decline in the L4W, accelerating a pattern that began in July.
< 1 min read
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  1. Channel: Club

Walmart, This Is What Happens When You’re Stuck in the Middle

  The Grocerant Guru® on why Walmart, Kroger and Publix are discovering that the middle of grocery retail is becoming the most dangerous place to be. Walmart has a customer problem hiding inside what otherwise looks like a very large success story. It is not that Walmart is losing shoppers. It is that the shoppers […]
9 min read
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  1. Channel: Restaurants

Hotel Pricing AI Software Faces Test After Court Revives Atlantic City Case

Picture a hotel handing its private pricing data to a computer program, while the hotel across the street is feeding its own numbers into that same program. That is the scenario at the heart of a lawsuit against several Atlantic City casino hotels, and a federal appeals court just ruled it can move forward. The […]
2 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

Gatik Raises $200 Million to Expand Autonomous Trucking Model

Autonomous trucking company Gatik has raised $200 million in new funding. The new financing, announced in a news release Tuesday (Aug. 25), will help Gatik expand its model, designed to transport goods along what it calls the “high-frequency regional routes” linking distribution centers and stores. “These routes are time-sensitive, operationally complex and essential to keeping shelves stocked as customer […]
2 min read
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  1. CPG: Food

California Pizza Kitchen and the Two Problems of Legacy Brands: Identity and Efficiency

  California Pizza Kitchen is betting that the future of its legacy brand may be found in a place that looks remarkably different from the restaurant it built its reputation upon: a vending machine. The company says it plans to deploy 1,000 automated retail machines across 30 major U.S. markets over the next three years, […]
9 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

Banks Turn Real-Time Payment Rails Into Customer Products

Watch more: Need to Know With Jim Colassano of The Clearing House For banks, connecting to real-time payments was the entry point. Making those payments useful requires considerably more work inside the institution, from back-office processing and account posting to deciding when a payment should travel over an instant rail at all. That is the […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

Walmart Stalls, Target Stirs & Amazon Flies, Plus Bain Capital’s Scott Friend and VMG’s Indy Guha

Episode 310 opens with Steve Dennis reporting back from an invitation-only Amazon analyst day in Seattle, two days focused on Prime and grocery. Steve unpacks the breadth of the Prime flywheel, Amazon’s push into sub-one-day delivery, the drone facility he toured just before the company announced an expansion to roughly 500 markets, and why Amazon’s […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Stablecoin KYC Debate Moves to Exchanges and Wallets

A stablecoin may pass through several wallets and intermediaries before someone tries to turn it back into dollars. Federal regulators now have to decide which of those relationships requires someone to know who’s on the other side, and when. That issue runs through comments on the proposed customer identification program, or CIP, for permitted payment […]
4 min read
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Editor’s Choice

  1. Corporate Finance
  2. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital
  3. Channel: Grocery
  4. Channel: Home Improvement
  5. Channel: Mass
  6. Channel: Specialty & Other
  7. Data & Insights
  8. Shopper & Customer
  9. Trends & External Forces
  10. Stores & Formats

I got tired of guessing how U.S. retail is really doing, so I built a dataset

For the last week I’ve been pulling comparable sales and digital growth for every U.S. public retailer, straight from their own press releases, 10-Qs and 10-Ks. No aggregators, no estimates, no “industry sources.” 52 companies, about 3,300 data points, every one traced back to the filing it came from. It now lives on a page […]
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  1. Uncategorized
  2. Department: Nonfood
  3. Corporate Finance
  4. Media & Marketing
  5. Data & Insights
  6. Start Ups
  7. Technology & Innovation
  8. Trends & External Forces
  9. Operations & Supply Chain

Anthropic Readies Over $30 Trillion Revenue Forecast for Investors

Anthropic is preparing to tell investors that it anticipates potential revenues of more than $30 trillion, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Aug. 25), citing unnamed sources. The figure would exceed the $28.5 trillion revenue estimate from SpaceX. Anthropic did not reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment. Tech startups and other companies going public often […]
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