Tag: shop
Aldi takes tenth of UK’s food shop spend as Brits try to cut soaring bills with discount supermarket
ONE pound in every ten of grocery shopping is now spent at Aldi, as the discount supermarket wins over those trying to cut their soaring food bills.
The chain, which sells its own versions of well-known brands and fresh food, hit a record-high market share of ten per cent in March, industry analysts Kantar found.
Aldi hit a record-high market share of ten per cent in March[/caption]
Aldi has been a growing threat to the traditional supermarkets and overtook Morrisons to become the UK’s fourth-largest grocer last year.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s have both recently felt the need to launch “Aldi Price Match” promotions.
Aldi CEO Giles Hurley said: “Shoppers are voting with their feet by switching from more expensive supermarkets to Aldi. As we hit this new market-share milestone, our commitment to offering the lowest grocery prices in Britain is stronger than ever.”
The German discount chain has quadrupled its market share over the past 14 years and doubled its store numbers to 990 shops.
It aims to expand to more than 1,000 stores and is creating 6,000 jobs this year at a time when rivals cut jobs.
Shoppers are being more savvy in the face of 45-year-high inflation.
Food bills are 17.3 per cent higher than they were a year ago but the rate of price increases is down slightly from 17.5 per cent in March, Kantar data showed.
Fraser McKevitt at Kantar said it was “too early to call” whether food inflation would continue to fall, adding: “It’s important to remember, of course, that falling grocery inflation doesn’t mean lower prices, it just means they aren’t increasing as quickly.”
Trouble at TRG
AN activist investor is urging shareholders to vote against the “disproportionate” pay of the Frankie & Benny’s restaurant chain’s boss.
Hong Kong-based Oasis Management, which owns a 12.3 per cent stake in The Restaurant Group (TRG), said the firm’s pay policy “fails to deliver value”.
TRG is run by Andy Hornby, CEO at HBOS before its failure in the 2008 banking crisis.
Oasis says Hornby’s salary of £658,000 is higher than can be justified for a company valued at £225million — particularly as it lost 75 per cent of its value in the past year.
Sing when you’re skimming
BIG food firms yesterday admitted they have been heaping pressure on hard-pressed shoppers by hiking prices to protect profit margins.
Kit-Kat maker Nestle revealed it had increased its profit margins to 17 per cent by raising prices 9 per cent over the past three months — higher than its 15 per cent margin pre-pandemic.
Nestle have put up the price of Felix cat food, advertised by Robbie Williams, by 12.2%[/caption]
The Swiss food giant, which also makes Felix cat food, recent ads for which have featured Robbie Williams, said its pet food prices jumped 12.2 per cent.
Pepsico said its sale growth of 14 per cent also came from price hikes, having sold 3 per cent fewer drinks.
McDonald’s said menu price rises in February — such as its Mayo Chicken going from 90p to £1.19 — fuelled a 12.6 per cent sales increase.
Ocado job axe
ONLINE grocer and tech firm Ocado is putting 2,300 jobs at risk by closing its oldest robotic warehouse, as newer alternatives are more efficient.
A site will open in Luton, Beds, to replace the outdated hub in Hatfield, Herts.
Ocado is also slowing down plans for further warehouses after a fall in online grocery sales since lockdown ended.
Ocado, which owns half its retail arm in partnership with Marks & Spencer, is licensing its robot-picking and logistics software to overseas retailers to boost its reserves.
Its shares have halved in value over the past year.
Natwest chief to depart
NATWEST chairman Sir Howard Davies yesterday announced he would step down next year, adding the search for his replacement will begin soon.
The bank’s shares are down by a fifth since he become chairman in 2015.
He said: “One would have hoped the share price would have been stronger, but that’s the way banks are valued at the moment.”
Sir Howard added NatWest had a “robust and resilient balance sheet” as he distanced it from the recent turmoil at Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse, which sparked financial sector jitters.
He said: “Ultimately, poor risk management and long-standing, idiosyncratic challenges were largely to blame for those failures.”
PRE-PAYMENT meter customers have not claimed £160million of help on offer.
The Energy Bills Support Scheme sent £780million of vouchers to low-income homes entitling them to £400 discounts on energy bills but only £620million has been redeemed.
Primark goes for growth
PRIMARK is forging ahead with expansion plans.
The retail giant is rolling out its click-and-collect online ordering service to 32 London stores this summer as it dips its toes into the digital age.
Primark is rolling out its click-and-collect online ordering service to 32 London stores this summer[/caption]
And it is opening its first store in Texas, becoming one of Britain’s best fashion exports.
CEO George Weston said: “In cash-constrained times, we do well because we sell to a wide demographic.”
He added that the retailer had been helped by Government energy support, which put more cash in shoppers’ pockets.
Primark has also been boosted by selling more expensive premium ranges to lure middle-class shoppers on a budget.
These include £20 dresses and £40 trench coats.
Mr Weston said Primark would hold off raising prices again this year, as the costs of cotton, polyester and shipping are expected to come down.
Cheated by firms
UK firms are short-changing more than a million workers by a total of £255million by flouting employment laws.
About 900,000 staff do not get the holiday pay they are due, while 400,000 are paid below the minimum wage, says the Resolution Foundation.
The think-tank said 14 per cent of the lowest-paid get no paid holiday at all.
It has called on enforcement agencies to be given more powers to tackle breaches.
ChatGPT can help you shop now via Mercari’s AI-powered assistant
Run Britain’s famous pasty shop in the new and improved free Greggs Simulator
When I think of quintessentially British games, a few highlights come to mind. Fable‘s fairytale world of stocky goblins and poverty-stricken orphans with Victorian-era voices is definitely very British, as is Banjo-Kazooie’s dry wit and sarcasm. A decent bucket of contenders, but the crown has to go to the Greggs Simulator, a free shop sim that tasks you with managing a Greggs pasty shop that’s a staple of every UK high street.
Thieves cut through adjacent shop wall to steal $500K worth of iPhones from Apple Store
TechCrunch+ roundup: YC Demo Day faves, thrift shop VCs, cybersecurity product challenges
Starting up in San Francisco still has benefits: moderate weather, great food, and sure, the world’s largest concentration of venture capital.
TechCrunch+ roundup: YC Demo Day faves, thrift shop VCs, cybersecurity product challenges by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch
Washington Apple Store Robbed of $500,000 in iPhones After Thieves Tunnel Through Coffee Shop Wall
The burglars were able to bypass the Apple Store’s security system by using the adjacent coffee shop, stealing a total of 436 iPhones that were worth around $500,000.
According to Seattle Coffee Gear manager Eric Marks, the coffee shop is not noticeably adjacent to the Apple Store because of the way that the store is laid out. “I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store, how it wraps around I mean,” Marks told King 5 News. “So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout.”
Good morning Twitter fans! Yesterday was a weird day…
1. Two men broke into one of our retail locations. Why? To cut a hole in our bathroom wall to access the Apple Store next door and steal $500k worth of Iphones🙄
2. Later that night on the way to the grocery store my wife… pic.twitter.com/DcUld6ULEd
— Mike Atkinson (@coffeemikeatkin) April 4, 2023
Police were able to obtain surveillance footage of the theft, but as it is part of an active investigation, it has not yet been released. Nothing was stolen from the coffee shop, but it will cost $1,500 to replace locks and repair the bathroom wall.
No employees were at the Apple Store when the theft happened as the Alderwood Mall had closed for the night. An Alderwood spokesperson said they were working with the police to solve the incident, but Apple has not yet commented.
This article, “Washington Apple Store Robbed of $500,000 in iPhones After Thieves Tunnel Through Coffee Shop Wall” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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Amazon To Close Book Depository Online Shop
According to the trade magazine the Bookseller, an email sent out to vendors and publishing partners explained that Book Depository will be closing, and that the last date customers will be able to place orders is 26 April. “Over the coming weeks we will complete a winding down of the business, including discontinuing our listings as a marketplace seller and closing our website,” Andy Chart, head of vendor management, wrote. “I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you, from everyone at Book Depository and our book-loving customers, for your supportive partnership over the years in helping us to make printed books more accessible to readers around the world,” he concluded.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon closing UK-based online shop Book Depository
FBI Seizes Bot Shop ‘Genesis Market’
But earlier today, multiple domains associated with Genesis had their homepages replaced with a seizure notice from the FBI, which said the domains were seized pursuant to a warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. But sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity that law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada and across Europe are currently serving arrest warrants on dozens of individuals thought to support Genesis, either by maintaining the site or selling the service bot logs from infected systems. The seizure notice includes the seals of law enforcement entities from several countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. […]
One feature of Genesis that sets it apart from other bot shops is that customers can retain access to infected systems in real-time, so that if the rightful owner of an infected system creates a new account online, those new credentials will get stolen and displayed in the web-based panel of the Genesis customer who purchased that bot. “While some infostealers are designed to remove themselves after execution, others create persistent access,” reads a March 2023 report from cybersecurity firm SpyCloud. “That means bad actors have access to the current data for as long as the device remains infected, even if the user changes passwords. SpyCloud says Genesis even advertises its commitment to keep the stolen data and the compromised systems’ fingerprints up to date. “According to our research, Genesis Market had more than 430,000 stolen identities for sale as of early last year — and there are many other marketplaces like this one,” the SpyCloud report concludes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.