San Francisco has become the first US city to block sales of e-cigarettes that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration because of fears about young people who are lured by flavours such as “gummy bear” (Financial Times £). London Breed, the city’s mayor, has 10 days to sign off on the measure. Bloomberg says cigarettes and other tobacco products will remain legal along with recreational marijuana Bloomberg.

San Franciso is home to Juul, the US’s most popular e-cig brand. Juul said the ban would drive former adult smokers back to “deadly cigarettes”. Reuters says that other major cities could follow suit. The BBC says the law would begin to be enforced seven months from sign-off. There have been reports of a possible legal challenge.

Britain’s big four supermarkets all failed to grow sales in the 12 weeks to 16 June, Kantar’s latest figures show. Tesco sales were flat, Sainsbury’s sales fell 0.6%, they fell 0.1% at Asda and 0.5% at Morrisons (The Daily Mail). Aldi and Lidl continued to gobble up market share (The Daily Mail).

 Insects are tipped to rival sushi as fashionable food of the future, fuelled by falling prices and reduced “yuck factor”. The market could hit £6bn by 2030, a report by Barclays says (The Guardian).

The City People column in The Times (£) includes a farcical snippet about what happened when a customer tweeted about the 20140 best-before date on a sachet of burger relish. Apparently it used the “Julian” date code – used by the supplier for internal traceability, Tesco said after a bit of head-scratching and toing and froing. The Food Standards Agency said the outer pack should have a use-by date or best-before date. (BBC).

China’s unmanned convenience stores have hit a dead end, reports the Financial Times (£). The shops, once considered the future of retail have been closing for good. Some are learning the lessons that have caused others to fail, such as Alibaba’s Freshippo, also known as Hema Xiansheng where it higher-margin fresh groceries are sold. The newspaper says those who learn from the failures of the likes of JD.com’s unmanned model, i-Store and Buy-Fresh Go will become winners in the future.

The Confederation of British Industries’ (CBI) Distributive Trade survey shows a retail sales balance of minus 42%, which is the lowest since the financial crisis and worse than markets expected (Financial Times £) and (The Mail). Alpesh Paleja, CBI economist said the drop from minus 27 in May should be taken with a pinch of salt because of last June’s heatwave and the start of the World Cup (The Daily Telegraph).

Régis Schultz, who was mooted as the next chairman and chief executive of Casino, is leaving (Financial Times £). The chairman and chief executive of the group’s Monoprix brand is quitting to “pursue new professional projects internationally”. Jean-Paul Mochet, president of the group’s convenience store brand Franprix, will replace him next month.

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the country’s wealth fund, is free to begin shopping at Walmart again after the fund banned the stock in 2006 for allegedly employing child labour (The Times £). The fund said on Tuesday “the grounds for exclusion are no longer present”.

China has suspended some pork imports from Canada after authorities there found a banned feed additive in a batch of pork products exported from the country. It found that up to 188 health certificates had been forged (BBC).

Barclays has given a fillip to M&S shares, up 0.7%, or 1.5p, to 205.7p after its analysts said the stock was worth a look (The Mail). The broker trimmed its target price for retailer to 290p from 320p but repeated an ‘overweight’ stance on the stock.

 

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