September 16, 2020 — Kroger, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, and other major U.S. grocery chains are experiencing record e-commerce grocery sales. And while total grocery e-commerce sales declined in August, analysts expect stronger future growth.
U.S. grocery delivery and pickup sales for August totaled USD 5.7 billion (EUR 4.8 billion), down from their peak in June, according to the August 2020 Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey.
July 31, 2020 — Employers across the country are being sued by the families of workers who contend their loved ones contracted lethal cases of Covid-19 on the job, a new legal front that shows the risks of reopening workplaces.
Walmart Inc., Safeway Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and some health-care facilities have been sued for gross negligence or wrongful death since the coronavirus pandemic began unfolding in March. Employees’ loved ones contend the companies failed to protect workers from the deadly virus and should compensate their family members as a result. Workers who survived the virus also are suing to have medical bills, future earnings and other damages paid out.
In responding to the lawsuits, employers have said they took steps to combat the virus, including screening workers for signs of illness, requiring they wear masks, sanitizing workspaces and limiting the number of customers inside stores. Some point out that it is impossible to know where or how their workers contracted Covid-19, particularly as it spreads more widely across the country.
The new coronavirus has created a global health and economic crisis, responsible for the death of more than 150,000 people in the U.S. while straining resources and institutions.
May 7, 2020 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership:
The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and more than 50 retailers, brands, and seafood companies,* including Walmart, Publix, Nestle, Carrefour, and Tesco, today called on the United States, European Union, and approximately 45 governments to implement electronic monitoring in tuna fisheries to protect workers and ensure fishing continues to be sustainable.
“We are key stakeholders in these fisheries and strongly wish to see the environmental impact of these fisheries managed in a manner consistent with our procurement specifications for sustainable sourcing,” the companies wrote.
In a letter issued today, the companies urged the governments to move rapidly and urgently through the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) to make electronic monitoring an accepted alternative to human observer coverage in tuna fisheries. This technology already exists, but the governments and RFMOs have been slow to adopt its use.
In April, at-sea observer programs in tuna fisheries were suspended by the RFMOs, the international governmental bodies responsible for their management, due to COVID-19. Observers document activities and collect data essential to conservation.
The companies also called for greater transparency to advance the fully effective implementation of electronic monitoring on all fleets and regular review of the COVID-19 situation and risks of restoring human at-sea observers at the earliest safe and practical date.
*Afritex Ventures Limited, Aldi North, Aldi South, Asda, Beaver Street Fisheries, BirdLife International, Carrefour France, Congalsa, Culinary Collaborations LLC, D&E Import LLC, Direct Ocean, Earthworm, Euclid Fish Company, Fish Is Life, Fishwise, Fortune Fish Co., Frinsa, Giant Eagle, IncredibleFish, Inland Seafoods, Ipswich Shellfish Group, Jealsa/We Sea, Maguro Foods, Mercadona, Metro France, Morrisons, Nestle, New England Seafood International, North Atlantic Inc., Profand, Publix, Rema Foods, Sainsburys, Santa Monica Seafood, Sea Delight, Seacore Seafood Inc., Seafood Imports, Sea Pact, Seattle Fish Co., Stavis Seafoods, Sysco France, Tesco, The Fishin Co., True Worlds Food, True Worlds Group, TUPA, Walmart
May 7, 2020 — Now that states are beginning to reopen non-essential businesses, consumers are once again expressing feelings of excitement, fear, and uncertainty. Often, these feelings are informed by their view on how the health crisis compares to the economic one. According to a recent report by Datassential, restaurants can still find ways to address that tension through service and outreach that emphasizes community building.
The data shows that concern about the coronavirus has plateaued. With cases still growing in some locations and no major breakthroughs have been made on the testing front, almost 60% of Americans are “very worried” about their own personal health. However, this percentage has remained about steady for the past three weeks, with a decrease of 7% from the beginning of April.
March 26, 2020 — As Americans rush to stock their pantries due to shelter-in-place orders in numerous states and cities, U.S. grocers are realizing record seafood sales.
Grocery retailers and delivery companies are also on a major hiring spree, as demand for food and non-food items such as toilet paper outpace supply. Total U.S. sales of consumer packaged goods soared 44 percent for the week ending 14 March, compared to the same week last year, according to new Nielsen data.
February 6, 2020 — The Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A.-based nonprofit FishWise has received a substantial grant from The Walmart Foundation to increase its work to address modern-day slavery and labor abuse in seafood supply chains.
The USD 934,000 (EUR 848,800) grant will allow FishWise to increase seafood industry engagement through its RISE platform while increasing the impact of the platform by aligning it with other international initiatives. RISE (an acronym for “Roadmap for Improving Seafood Ethics”) is a publicly available, open platform initiative that supports seafood companies’ evaluation and monitoring of their product and supply chains.
April 28, 2019 — From the deck of his 106-year-old halibut schooner, undergoing a seasonal overhaul at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle, skipper Wade Bassi has better insight than most into what’s happening at Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market, at least as pertains to the product he knows best.
While he doesn’t buy halibut much — he’s got a freezer full of it — Bassi, 43 years a fisherman, keeps an eye on how it’s handled and presented in the grocery stores and fish markets.
“When you look at nice halibut, I mean it is pure white,” he said. “And it is flaky-looking, and it is beautiful. It’s translucent. If you’ve got that in the fish market, people are going to buy it.”
A few days earlier, Whole Foods touted a rarely seen promotional price for halibut as part of its ongoing campaign to revise the grocery chain’s high-cost reputation while maintaining its image for quality and sustainability.
“Whole Foods is one of the better ones, to be honest with you,” Bassi said. “But you know, Whole Foods, whole paycheck. … They usually do charge way more for everything than anywhere else. Which really surprises me that they’re selling this for $16-something a pound, because they’re not making anything on it.”
Whole Foods’ halibut deal opens a window into Amazon’s grocery strategy as it seeks to combine the defining characteristics of each brand, leverage its juggernaut Prime membership program and take a larger share of the grocery business from competitors such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco.
April 26, 2019 — Representatives from Walmart, Anova Food, Thai Union, and North Atlantic/Bali Seafood International will be featured speakers at the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which will have a major focus on social and human rights challenges in seafood supply chains.
The summit, taking place 10 to 14 June in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve many of the leading voices in the seafood sustainability movement in Asia and globally. Companies taking part in the event will discuss ways they’ve created stronger relationships with supply chain partners and workers, reduced their exposure to risk, and produced a better product to sell through the adoption of sustainability measures in their respective businesses.
The conference’s keynote speaker will be Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice, an advocate of “impact sourcing” as a core strategy for both poverty alleviation and sustainable business. Rice is the author of “The Human Face of Sustainability: Empowering Fishers, Farmers, and Workers.” Rice will also serve on a panel with Richard Welford, the founder and chairman of CSR Asia, Walmart Senior Buying Manager Trevyr Lester, and Sarah Hogan, the program officer for the Packard Foundation’s Global Seafood Markets strategy, to discuss successful examples from seafood and other industries of sustainable supply chains. The panelists will share their experiences in using market forces to drive positive impacts on workers, communities, resources, and corporate profits, according to Diversified Communications, which operates the summit. (Editor’s note: Diversified Communications also operates SeafoodSource).
Another featured panel at the summit will investigate the economics of sustainable seafood in Asia, sustainability trends in other Asian markets, and how sustainable practices might come to be better recognized in Asian markets in the future. The panel will include Janice Lao, director of group corporate responsibility and sustainability at The Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels Limited; Rabobank’s Umesh Madhavan; Nobukazu Furuya with AEON TopValu Thailand; Wakao Hanaoka from Seafood Legacy; and Julie Qiu, the marketing director for Australis Aquaculture.
A separate plenary session will look into illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Asia, and will include Environmental Justice Foundation Co-Founder Steve Trent and Adisorn Promthep, the Director-General of Thaland’s Department of Fisheries. Trent and Promthep will discuss transparency initiatives and how they can be applied in the real-world, studying examples from Thailand and Indonesia.
April 24, 2019 — Amazon and Walmart are participating in a United States government pilot program that allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to buy groceries online.
The two-year test, which recently launched in New York, allows online purchasing by SNAP households with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards issued in New York.
Amazon and Walmart will participate in the initial pilot launch on 23 April with ShopRite joining early next week. ShopRite and Amazon are providing service to the New York City area and Walmart is providing online service in upstate New York locations.
March 4, 2019 — Amazon’s new venture into opening full-scale grocery stores will force a change in the way fresh seafood and other items are sold, analysts say.
On 1 March, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon is planning to open dozens of grocery stores in several major United States cities, including Los Angeles, California.
The stores would not be the smaller, 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go concept stores that Amazon began testing last year, but rather, they will be 35,000-square-feet mainstream grocery stores. The larger size will allow Amazon to offer more variety of products – and likely lower-priced items – than Whole Foods Market stores, the Journal reported.
Existing grocery chains should be concerned by Amazon’s entrance into the market, analysts said in the article. Stock prices for Walmart, Kroger, Target, BJs, Costco, and others all sank on Friday, 1 March.
“Amazon has become one of the world’s largest retailers by driving cost out of the marketplace. Food retailers the ilk of HEB, Publix, Kroger, and Albertsons will have the most to lose as they continue to fight for dollars from the ‘middle,’” Steven Johnson, grocerant guru at consulting firm Foodservice Solutions, told SeafoodSource.
Meanwhile, value grocery chains such as Lidl, Aldi, and WinCo will likely have more growth as Amazon enters the market, according Johnson.