News Briefs

The Alkaline Water Company has appointed a new CEO. Frank Lazaran, a 40-year veteran of the retail food industry, is stepping into the role held by the outgoing Richard Wright. 

This is familiar ground for Lazaran, who has served as a member of the company’s board since 2020 and has an extensive background in scaling organizations, optimizing operations and driving innovation in the retail sector. His grocery industry leadership includes tenures as chairman, CEO and president of Indianapolis, Ind.-based Marsh Supermarkets and as CEO, president and director of Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. In recent years, he has worked as a retail and real estate consultant through his practice, Galazarano Consulting & Investments, and as a senior industry partner for the private equity firm New State Capital Partners.

“We are excited to have Frank join The Alkaline Water Company as the chief executive officer and extremely confident Frank and the team can lead us into the next phase of our growth with Alkaline88. Frank brings over 40 years of strategic execution, operational management, and innovation in the retail sector, as well as capital markets experience that will help continue to accelerate the Company’s top line growth along with bringing a heightened attention towards profitability for the company,” said Aaron Keay, the company’s chairman.

He continued, “On behalf of the board, I want to thank Ricky for his tireless contributions to the growth and success of Alkaline88 over the last decade. Alkaline88 remains one of the fastest growing independent water brands worldwide, and Ricky was a key contributor to the growth of the brand.”

Chicago-based Foxtrot, which bills itself as an upscale, modern convenience retailer offering both in-store discovery and rapid delivery, is positioning itself for further growth by bringing on a seasoned executive as president and CFO. Liz Williams takes on those new roles, in which she will oversee the operations, finance, strategy, real estate, human resources, supply chain and growth functions.

Williams comes to Foxtrot from her most recent position as CEO of Drybar in Irvine, Calif., where she championed an e-commerce re-platform and improved operations while reducing new unit costs. Before that, she spent nine years at Taco Bell, where she served as CFO and president of its international business. Her background also includes a stint as senior director of corporate strategy at Yum! Brands in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

According to company information, Williams will leverage her brand and foodservice experience as Foxtrot continues to enhance and evolve its culinary offerings, including the rollout of a new PM Café program and pizza program. She also will implement new inventory and delivery operations to help Foxtrot meet its customers’ needs and its own goals.

The Foxtrot exec will hit the ground running, as the retailer plans to open 50 stores over the next two years, including potential sites in New York, Miami, Nashville and Austin, Texas. Foxtrot currently operates 20 stores, including several locations in its hometown of Chicago in addition to spots in Washington, D.C. area and in Dallas. Earlier this year, the company secured $100 million in Series C funding to help facilitate its nationwide expansion.

Cadia, a private label brand from Naperville, Ill.-based KeHE Distributors LLC, will unveil a major rebranding at its 2022 Holiday Show on June 15-16. Created exclusively for KeHE independent retailers to help them compete against larger chain stores, Cadia offers food and household products that are thoughtfully selected for consumers seeking higher-than-expected quality at a lower-than-expected price. The brand offers more than 250 SKUs in 40 categories, including an organic line of bulk goods.

The theme of the rebrand – The Corner Store – was inspired by Cadia’s belief that neighborhood grocers are a vital source of goodness in local communities. The packaging redesign makes that commitment plain to consumers, bringing indies to the forefront of the brand message.

Cadia’s new look and feel aims to show the brand as empowering, resolute, grounded, cool, quirky, and neighborly, with a grass-roots vibe. The redesign will evoke the era of mom-and-pop stores, taking inspiration from the past and giving it a modern twist. The brand refresh also includes the creation of Cadia Everyday, a lower-priced line of non-organic products free from artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.

Cadia’s new packaging will be on display in booth 5096 at the KeHE 2022 Holiday Show at The McCormick Center in Chicago. The Holiday Show affords KeHE’s retailer partners the opportunity to learn about and experience 800-plus products. 

KeHE is the largest pure-play distributor of natural and organic, specialty, and fresh products to more than 30,000 natural food stores, chain and independent grocery stores, e-commerce retailer, and other specialty products retailers throughout North America. The company has more than 6,800 employee-owners and is a Certified B Corporation.

Indicating that the time is ripe for technology that ensures the quality of fresh food, reduces waste and optimizes sales, Strella Biotechnology, Inc. has raised $8 million in Series A funding for its produce sensor technology.

Strella’s solution is based on novel biosensors and real-time data streaming that measure the ripeness of each piece of fresh produce. According to company information, the technology enables the monitoring of freshness from harvest to the store shelf.

“Suppliers, retailers and importers are doing their best to bring high-quality, healthy produce to consumers in the most efficient way possible. However, unlike manufactured foods, there is no accurate expiration date for produce, which makes optimizing inventory a challenge for the industry across the entire supply chain,” explained Katherine Sizov, CEO and co-founder of the Seattle, Wash.-based tech startup. “We’re proud to work with such incredible investors to tackle this increasingly urgent problem and support growers and retailers with an end-to-end solution.”

While the technology was first used to assess the maturity of apples, the latest funding will propel product development in other commodities. Strella Biotechnology will also use the fresh capital to expand its work with grocers nationwide, the company said. To date, Strella has monitored over 2.1 billion pieces of fruit.

Supporters in this latest round of fundraising include lead investor Millennium New Horizons, along with Google Ventures, Rich Products Ventures, Mark Cuban, Yamaha Motor Ventures, Catapult Ventures and Union Labs.

“More and more retailers are making waste reduction their top priority, with over a dozen of the world’s largest grocers looking to halve food waste by 2030,” remarked Ray Cheng, a partner at Millennium New Horizons. “By combining molecular biology with data science, Strella is uniquely positioned to solve food waste challenges at scale, as it has already demonstrated with its early customers.”

As the shakeout continues in the instant needs space, one Chicago-based company is going for more growth. This week, Go Grocer opened its latest location in the Logan Square neighborhood, a storefront that is also a fulfillment location for rapid local delivery.

This brick-and-mortar location at 2255 N. Milwaukee Ave. is similar to the 15 other Go Grocer stores scattered throughout Chicago. The small-format store offers a variety of products, including fresh produce, meat, dairy, prepared foods, pantry staples, wines and beers and common household goods.

Even as they welcome customers to the newest location, Go Grocer founders Paul and Greg Stellatos are looking squarely ahead, bringing their model to other parts of the country, including other Midwest cities and the East Coast. The company also recently launched its own app, designed to make orders and deliveries even more efficient.

According to Paul Stellatos, the business is well positioned to withstand market changes that have caused other platforms to fold or downscale in recent months.  “Go Grocer has found the perfect profitable hybrid approach to the ultrafast delivery space that none of our competitors have. We are the only ones that can prove the profitable model and still bootstrapped, while investors dumped billions without understanding the unit economics,” he told Progressive Grocer. “As our completion continue to close or slash operations, our goal is profit first, and we will continue to use that as our north star as we continue to grow in Chicago and outside markets.”

Price Rite Marketplace has extended its partnership with Feed the Children, a nonprofit organization focused on alleviating childhood hunger. Through its Feeding Minds & Bodies initiatives, which is designed to help bring attention to and fight the issue of childhood hunger, Price Rite and Feed the Children have provided nearly 40,000 families with fresh food, personal care essentials, and educational tools for children.

“Thanks to partners like Feed the Children, we are able to provide critical fresh food and essentials to families in eight cities this season, helping give back to and care for the communities in which our stores operate,” said Kevin McDonnell, SVP of Price Rite.

Feeding Minds & Bodies was developed by both organizations in 2015 to create a world where no child must suffer from food insecurity. With one in six U.S. children living in a food-insecure household, hunger remains a serious issue in many communities, especially during the summer.

This initiative has benefited an estimated 22,000 individuals through eight community events. In each event, 800 pre-identified families have received a 25-pound box of food; a 15-pound box of personal care essentials, such as shampoo, conditioner, lotion and other items; and additional shelf-stable items provided by Price Rite.

Since partnering with Feed the Children, Price Rite has contributed nearly 3 million pounds of food, totaling more than $10 million in gift-in-kind donations, helping more than 165,000 people in 49 cities.

Cities hosting Feeding Minds & Bodies events this year are Torrington and New Britain, Conn.; Chelsea, Mass.; Hyattsville, Md.; Utica and Rochester, N.Y.; Harrisburg, Pa.; and Providence, R.I.

Price Rite operates more than 60 locations across Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Keasbey, N.J.-based Wakefern Food Corp., which owns Price Rite, is No. 25 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.