Tesco is planning apply AI to customer data from its Clubcard loyalty discount scheme to “nudge” shoppers into making healthier choices and reduce waste, reports the Financial Times. Chief executive Ken Murphy told the FT’s Future of Retail summit in London yesterday that AI “will completely revolutionise how customers interact with retailers”.
Pets at Home chief executive Lyssa McGowan, who was also speaking at the FT event, said: “We’re already using machine learning to figure out what vouchers we should give them — we know what their dog has for breakfast. AI will enable us to do that even better.”
The Telegraph said the move was “likely to delight health campaigners” but “will alarm privacy campaigners”. The paper notes the increasing pressure from regulators on supermarkets to help with the UK’s obesity crisis, and the “nanny state” claim of critics.
The supermarket in recent months has announced it is to use AI in supplier negotiations, in an Express store range review, and a trial of healthier food to go layouts across 30 convenience stores.
Red tape on British businesses created by the Brexit trade deal has led to a sharp fall in UK-EU goods trade, a new report covered across the major newspapers shows. Academics at Aston Business School have analysed the impact of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) on UK-EU trade relations – and found that trade is down by over a quarter.
The Financial Times notes that the findings “are likely to fuel calls for the government to be more ambitious in improving trade ties with Brussels”. The Standard reckoned the negative impacts of the deal were “only going to get worse”, while the BBC finds economists and business owners sharing the sentiment.
Coverage of the report has sent #BrexitDisaster trending on X (formerly Twitter).
Read The Grocer’s coverage of the report here.
Shoppers are set to face a “choccy horror show” this Halloween, reports The Guardian, after the price of chocolate shot up 11% in the past year. The paper picked out “some of the worst examples of chocflation” in a Which? report including: a near doubling of Sainsbury’s milk chocolate (100g) from an average of 95p in the three months to the end of August 2023 to £1.84 in the same period in 2024; a 210g assortment of Prestat chocolates and truffles on Ocado which increased by 88% to “a whopping” £32 in the period; and an 80g dairy-free chocolate bar sold by Asda which rose 60% to £2.40. The result? “Britons opening their doors to trick-or-treaters could decide to cut back on spending for 31 October”.
The UK’s workforce is shrinking “at the fastest rate in four decades”, reports The Times in its coverage of a Commission on the Future of Employment Support report, costing the economy £25 billion a year and adding £16 billion of fiscal pressure to the public finances.
Philip Morris International has offloaded Vectura for £150 million, three years after its “contentious” £1 billion acquisition of the respiratory drugs company which “triggered a backlash from the public health sector”, reports The Times. The Telegraph notes that the sale comes “at a steep loss after a growing backlash from health groups opposed to its ownership”.
Scrutinising yesterday’s announcement by THG that it was actively working on a spin-off of its Ingenuity ecommerce and fulfilment platform, The Guardian’s Nil’s Pratley argues that the plan “looks hellishly complicated”. He writes: “The bottom line, though, is that THG has reached the point where Moulding is trying to prove the thesis that his e-commerce creation would be worth more than the bombed-out share price if only outsiders could see the parts more clearly. He has gone early, without a timetable, with a proposal that, to put it mildly, requires hard detail.”
Pret a Manger notched up more than £1bn in global sales for the first time last year as the UK sandwich chain ramped up its expansion overseas, reports The Guardian. Despite a recent furore over axing its popular subscription service, customers flocked to the chain. The company said £1 in every £4 spent at its outlets now comes from outside the UK after it opened a record 81 new shops last year, more than half of those in overseas markets. The Times noted that “Pret’s road to success has not come without challenges” – chiefly the deaths of two customers from allergic reactions to ingredients in its products.
The EU risks opening a “Pandora’s box” by loosening its merger rules, Brussels’ outgoing competition chief Margrethe Vestager warns in an interview with the Financial Times, after her successor was appointed with a brief to be “more supportive of companies scaling up”. The “free market champion”, hit back at calls for an overhaul of the EU’s merger regulations, amid rising pressure from France and Germany to support the emergence of “European champions”.
Politico.eu reports on the European Commission’s appointment of its former Brexit chief Maroš Šefčovič to the role of trade commissioner putting the “point person for the UK relationship into the powerful economic post”. The well-regarded Šefčovič has a “reputation as an effective, low-key operator” but his “nomination came as a surprise”. The appointment was part of a series of new jobs, dished out by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. The Financial Times summarised von der Leyen’s picks as Brussels giving the “biggest industrial and economic jobs to more interventionist countries”. “Brussels is expected to shift focus from its drive to decarbonise over the past five years, which has generated cumbersome new bureaucratic requirements for companies. Instead, the new commission team is likely to prioritise economic growth and higher defence spending to guard against Russia and other geopolitical rivals,” the paper noted.
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