Progressive grocers would be wise to keep their game faces intact and heavy-weather gear at the ready as they seek to navigate the most advantageous route toward earning the greatest lift from a modestly revitalized consumer.

If there's no easy money to be made in the retail food business, a more upbeat and acquisitive outlook for the year ahead is a decidedly better footing on which to start the year off than what we've witnessed in recent years.

Tentatively eyeing clearer skies in the offing, with a mix of recovery and retrenchment in the mix, progressive grocers would be wise to keep their game faces intact and heavy-weather gear at the ready as they seek to navigate the most advantageous route toward earning the greatest lift from a modestly revitalized consumer.

For some, that may mean closing or selling weaker stores to shore up capital for reinvestment in a more focused store base (think Safeway), while others – some of which are predicted to look nothing like they do today (not that it's a bad thing) – will seek to push the needle forward with the firm guidance of external investor partners and new management talent poised to engender more realistic prognoses of the palpable challenges before them (think A&P).

Indeed, while retail food dealmaking has been largely blunted for the better part of the past 24 months, courtesy of a relentless economic downturn and skittish lending climate, the mode is riper than ever for mergers, acquisitions and initial stock offerings among regional players seeking greater size and clout to compete against a mounting onslaught of aggressive alternate and traditional non-union retail food rivals – some of which we also foresee generating continued rightful attention for their efforts to stand out, step up and bring it.

However, as the high-pressure trends continue to surge, Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of New York-based Strategic Resource Group, believes "2012 will present unprecedented challenges for the food industry and many of its suppliers. Major supermarket chains are struggling with falling sales volumes as all but the most affluent shoppers remain very cautious about spending," says Flickinger, whose sage expertise appears in our "Retail Food Forecast" report beginning on page 31.

"The over-stored retail landscape, which has triggered double-digit shopping center vacancy rates in some pockets," finds many supermarket operators facing "crisis levels of competition and lower customer counts in retail corridors that have a number of closed ‘in-line' stores," explains Flickinger. Recalling the Dickensian "best-of-times/worst-of-times" scenario now in play for both food retailers and distributors, I firmly second Flickinger's viewpoint that "the most innovative, entrepreneurial, well-managed and well-capitalized companies will continue to win with consumers in 2012, and the rest of the decade as well."

What do you think? Reach out to us via Facebook, or take our online PG Poll (www.progressivegrocer.com/online-network), to tell us what the most likely forecast for your company's performance will be in 2012.

Meg Major
Editor-in-Chief
mmajor@stagnitomedia.com

We're pleased to kick off PG's 90th anniversary festivities in this issue, with the first of a year-long editorial series focusing on the 1920s as part of a decade-by-decade retrospective illustrating how America's supermarkets – and the suppliers that serve them – have kept pace with the times.

The celebration of our 90 years of continuous publishing will unfold throughout the year, including via a dedicated website that will launch in the coming weeks, and a special print issue to be published later this year, which will chronicle the dynamic and evolving U.S. grocery industry, as well as the significant roles your companies have played throughout. We'd love to have you join the party, so we invite our readers and fellow food industry buffs to share vintage photos, ads, sales flyers and floor plans – anything that displays pieces of your companies' most important people, places and events.

Please e-mail your materials to us at pg90@stagnitomedia.com. All photos, ads and related historical memorabilia should be sent in 300-dpi high-resolution .tif or .jpg format.