The Verdict On The New Walmart Express Stores: Nice Enough But Non-Responsive To The Challenge Wal-Mart Faces From Aldi, Save-a-Lot, Dollar Stores And Others
We paid a visit to Wal-Mart’s new Walmart Express concept visiting the first two stores that just opened in Gentry and Prairie Grove, Arkansas, within driving range of Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters. About 15,000 square feet each, both with pharmacies and the Gentry store with a gas station, both are perfectly nice little stores. The design […]
SPECIAL REPORT:
As The European E. coli 0104:H4 Outbreak Causes Illness And Death, It Wreaks Havoc On The Produce Trade And Breaks Confidence In Public Health: Lessons From Europe
Our brethren in the produce trade in Europe have suffered enormous damages as a result of the food safety crisis related to E. coli 0104:H4. Russia has banned produce imports from the EU. Domestic markets have collapsed, with consumers hesitating to consume, and restaurants and retailers are hesitant to stock and sell fresh vegetables. We don’t know for […]
Chiquita/Fresh Express Announces Roll Out Of Fresh Rinse To Cover Entire Salad Production:
Peer-Reviewed Article To Be Published, Potential To License To Others, Marketing Campaign To Begin.
No Word On How It Compares To Alternatives. Would It Thrive As A Spin-Off?
Any fair assessment of the matter would have to acknowledge that Fresh Express has enjoyed a merited reputation for a long standing and deep concern for food safety. Working from the inside, Jim Lugg, now retired and a consultant to Fresh Express but its longtime head of food safety and quality, whose name now adorns […]
Focusing On What Is Easily Measured Is Not Likely To Achieve The Ultimate Goal In Health Care Or Business
There has been a bunch of press coverage over a study published in the Archives of Surgery under the title, Surgical Vampires and Rising Health Care Expenditures: Reducing the Cost of Daily Phlebotomy, that found that simply making physicians aware of how much blood-tests were costing their non-intensive care unit leads them to order fewer tests. […]
Wal-Mart Needs to Jump-Start A Virtuous Cycle And Stop Putting Onus On Shoppers To Find Lower Prices
When Wal-Mart first began rolling out supercenters, the supermarket industry was panicked. It wasn’t just that a new competitor was coming to town, or that Wal-Mart possessed operating efficiencies supermarkets would find tough to match that worried CEOs at supermarket chains. It was the recognition that general merchandise carried rich profit margins compared to food. […]
Pundit's Mailbag — Is Costco Repeating Wal-Mart’s Mistake? Of Engagement Rings, Wedding Dresses And Knowing One’s Customer
We recently received this note commenting on a piece we wrote about Wal-Mart’s efforts to go back to the basics: This excellent piece on Wal-Mart, titled “Wal-Mart’s Efforts To Go Back To Days Of Sam Walton May Only Position The Company In Between Deeper Discounters And More Upscale Venues — portraying Wal-Mart’s foray into high […]
The Case Of The Stolen Tomatoes: Doesn’t The FBI Know About PTI?
The police have been quiet since last month when William Neuman at The New York Times wrote the story of a heist of trailer loads of tomatoes with a piece titled Price of Tomatoes Has a Lot to Do With These Thefts. The gist of the story was simple: … a gang of thieves stole […]
Elephant In United’s Convention Halls: PMA-United Merger Possibilities
As the industry gathers for the United Fresh convention in New Orleans, many will be discussing whether it would be a positive or a negative for the Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh to merge. It is a long-running industry controversy that strikes to the heart of what the industry would like to have its […]
Kent A. Sepkowitz, M.D., Medical Experts And Patient Autonomy
We have written quite a bit lately about health care and medical issues. We told the story of my father’s battle with cancer with a piece titled Never Tell Me The Odds: One Man, One Disease, One Battle and a follow-up titled Pundit Poppa’s Medical Report: Drawing Strength From Infusions Of Love … We’ve chronicled our […]
Keynes vs. Hayek In Rap: Rounds One and Two
Our piece, Is Locally Grow Produce “Worth It”, argued that the push for promotion of “locally grown” as a public policy did not stand up to basic economic scrutiny, a point we emphasized by quoting extensively from Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman’s essay titled, Ricardo’s Difficult Idea. Of course, economic literacy is important for everybody […]
