It’s been another busy week on The Grocer.
The big story is the £34bn acquisition of Unilever’s food business by the US-based McCormick, the biggest deal since Mars-Kellanova. McCormick CEO Brendan Foley dubbed the combined business a “global flavour powerhouse”, arguing that with its spices and condiments it will “flavour calories, while others compete for them” in a post-GLP-1 world. Shareholders aren’t convinced, judging by the share price on both stocks. And for what the deal means here’s a link to last week’s explainer.
Of course, the US-Iran war continues to dominate the news agenda. This week came fresh updates to inflation forecasts, with the Food & Drink Federation predicting food price inflation will rise to 10% within months Inflation is also the subject of my leader this week, in which I argue that despite crazy deals on seasonal veg and cheaper Easter eggs the direction of travel is going only one way, with cost-price increase requests already starting to come in from Princes and, just this morning, McBride.
We’ve also teamed up with our sister publication Forecourt Trader. Senior reporter Hugo Griffiths has written an explainer on how the fuel forecourt market works and why claims of price gouging are wide of the mark
Our cover story this week examines the state of the (retail) co-operative movement in the UK.The huge losses reported by the Co-op Group last week, in the wake of the cyberattack, once again highlighted how vulnerable all the co-ops are to the fortunes of the Co-op Group, which dominates the movement not only in size but through their reliance on its Federal Retail Trading Services (FRTS) central buying group. And it’s interesting to see further consolidation, following the merger of Central, Midcounties and Chelmsford Star to form OurCoop. There’s a helpful league table to boot.
AI is threatening all manner of upheaval, but reports of the retail website’s death in the wake of ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout feature appear greatly exaggerated. Walmart has already pulled the plug on Instant Checkout after some massively underwhelming results. We’ve looked into what happened and what the news means for the online store of the future.
Another fascinating read is our report on the Alantra Food & Beverage Fast 50. This annual ranking of the fastest-growing challenger brands was topped by Dirtea, a functional fungi supplement.
On the people front, we looked into Stuart Machin’s controversial comments about work-life balance. As a self-professed workaholic he told delegates at a Business Leader summit in Westminster last week that he didn’t want leaders who switched off on holiday or talked too much about work-life balance. But his comments have been criticised on sex discrimination grounds and there are worries that there may be a backlash among shoppers.
Finally, if you need a bit of light relief, it’s worth catching up on the April Fools’ Day NPD japes dreamed up by marketing teams. One of them is so believable I want it to be real.
Of course there’s loads more brilliant stories in this week’s magazine. And even more on thegrocer.co.uk. But those are some of my faves. And we would love to know your thoughts on our coverage. Or is there anything we’ve missed? We’re all ears! Please get in touch via LinkedIn or adam.leyland@thegrocer.co.uk.
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