All Daily Bread articles – Page 132
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Comment & Opinion
Competitive instincts
New figures from the BRC today had food inflation falling – down from 4.5% in February to a still considerable 4% last month. With salaries rising at nothing like that rate, no wonder there’s been a squeeze on consumer spending – as reflected in recent results from the likes of ...
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Comment & Opinion
Was it Alworth the effort?
From the ashes it rose – a gleaming purple-fascia’d phoenix that soared briefly, yet gloriously, across the retail sky. And back to ashes it has returned, with a sickening thump, to be tilled into the earth as food for the worms.
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Comment & Opinion
Mars's barmy army
It’s the nature of rankings like Britain’s 100 Biggest Brands that there are winners and there are losers. Or, to put it more generously, those that won less than others.
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Comment & Opinion
Feeling co-operative?
Today The Co-op unveiled some pretty dismal like-for-like numbers for food sales, down 2.5% on last year. That wasn’t a huge surprise coming off the back of a disappointing Christmas.
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Comment & Opinion
Nice weather for ducks
After last week’s gloomy news from the high street and a Budget that gave little cause for optimism to voters in our current weekly poll, today brought a raft of further statistical evidence proving what we already knew.
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Comment & Opinion
Buried alive
'Sainsburied’ screams the headline in today’s edition of The Sun. It’s a nice line. Just as pleasingly, though less dramatically, the Financial Times notes that ‘Good shares cost less at Sainsbury’s’.
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Comment & Opinion
The Irish example
These days Ireland’s economy resembles not so much the Celtic tiger of yore as a rather mangy tabby that’s gone through the spin cycle one too many times. So it’s novel for a commentator to look in that direction for an example of sound economic management.
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Comment & Opinion
Kronen-four?
Today the government’s Responsibility Deal was made public, along with the names of 170 companies that have signed up to its various well-meaning pledges.
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Comment & Opinion
Looking after number one
A little later on this afternoon, BBC Radio 4 will broadcast an interview with Sir Terry Leahy. Filmed in the final few weeks of his reign, the former Tesco chief will trace his path from Toxteth tearaway to retailing legend.
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Comment & Opinion
Dalton's web of intrigue
Morrisons today unveiled its latest annual results, with profits up a healthy 13% and like-for-likes increasing by an altogether more modest 0.9%. More eye-catching than the underwhelming sales performance was the news that Morrisons is sensationally taking on both the US and the whole internet in one fell swoop.
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Comment & Opinion
Smoking guns, ticking timebombs
Andrew Lansley today confirmed that the controversial tobacco display ban is to go ahead, dashing the genuine hopes for a reprieve still harboured by many retailers.
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Comment & Opinion
Children of the revolution
Grocer Towers is often the scene of fearsome debate, as our newshounds compare leads, dissect the strategies of the companies we write about and, most commonly, row about whose turn it is to make the tea.
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Comment & Opinion
Time is of the Essenta
Yesterday PayPoint claimed victory in its long-running battle to stop Camelot muscling in on its turf by offering commercial services via its tills. And there was more good news for the payment provider today, having bagged a seven-year gig to replace the Post Office dishing out welfare payments.
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Comment & Opinion
Terry, we hardly knew ye
Elvis has left the building. Okay, so Sir Terry Leahy is probably few people’s idea of a rock star. But for UK grocery, his long-awaited exit represents as seismic a departure as when rock and roll died on a Las Vegas toilet in 1977.
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Comment & Opinion
Price wars... what are they good for?
Too much messing about with computers, it said. No one is going to want to go shopping, come home and start faffing about with the internet to see if what they have already bought might have been cheaper elsewhere, it cried.
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Comment & Opinion
Agenda benders
Last week it was meat. In the battle for hearts and minds, conflicting reports appeared in the space of a couple of days: first busting the “myths” about red meat increasing the risk of cancer, then suggesting those myths were all too real.
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Comment & Opinion
Satisfaction not guaranteed
Asda today published its full-year results – or rather, the collection of cherry-picked factoids that passes for a breakdown of its financial performance. Sales were up 1.6% on a like-for-like basis in the fourth quarter, representing something of a turnaround from the slow-motion car-crash of last year.
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Comment & Opinion
GSCOP, bad cop
Fittingly, the Adjudicator has had an air of mystery about it ever since the grocery ombudsman was given its rather Kafka-esque name last AugustClicks:4 (CTR 2.96%).
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Comment & Opinion
Nocton's technical knockout
They say letter-writing is a lost art (although subscribers to thegrocer.co.uk can receive their Daily Bread via snail-mail on the back of a postcard of Crawley if they really want to).
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Comment & Opinion
The Kiddi's alright
So the City rumour mill was right – sort of. Morrisons was looking to get its hands on an online retailer after all – just not Ocado, much to the disappointment of many speculative shareholders in the posh food retailer.