"Quite simply, we didn't think that the regulations hit the mark in really addressing the risk with a reasonable cost or burden," says Fulton, noting concerns about duplication with existing provincial systems, such as livestock inspection in Western Canada.
Google will begin to highlight data quality account issues related to Vehicle ads within Google Merchant Center starting in mid-April 2026. This initiative aims to ensure compliance with Google's Vehicle ads data quality requirements by evaluating both submitted vehicle data and the associated website content for every vehicle uploaded.
Within roughly the past six months alone, Swiftly expanded its alcohol rebate programs from about 11,000 stores to more than 33,000 stores in 44 states. Swiftly had built an alcohol cashback product in 2023 but scaled it through the acquisition of alcohol promotions platform BYBE in 2024.
When you purchase the top-selling creatine gummies on Amazon, you expect to get what you pay for. But a recent study found that four out of six popular brands contained virtually no creatine at all. In the case of the worst offender, customers would need to consume 2,000 gummies to get the advertised 5-gram dose. Still, combined these products sell over 50,000 units monthly and boast 4.4+ star ratings.
In enterprise commerce, totals don't drift because someone forgot algebra. They drift because reality changes: promos expire, eligibility changes when an address arrives, catalog data updates, substitutions happen, and returns unwind prior discounts. When someone asks "why did the total change?" you need more than narration. You need evidence - a trail of facts you can replay and a pure computation that deterministically produces the same result.
Sourced directly from a manufacturer, private-label brands remove one or more layers of intermediaries from the supply chain, usually distributors or other brands. A nearly identical private brand can earn more margin, even at a low price.
The threat is no longer a discrete piece of bad content that a keyword list or a domain block can catch. Its volume - hundreds of millions of posts a day, a growing share of them generated or manipulated by tools that didn't exist two years ago, uploaded across every major platform faster than any human review process can follow.
As OpenAI advances with trialling an advertising model on its flagship chatbot, retail and grocery ads are dominating. A month into the trial, app analytics provider Sensor Tower revealed that 44% of ad impressions served on ChatGPT fell under these categories. Retailers involved in the testing include Target, Sephora, and Wayfair, among others.
Whole Foods shelves sit empty after a data breach shut down its wholesale distributor. Meat packers working for JBS Foods are paralyzed as an $11 million ransomware attack takes out their processing facilities. Some 2.2 million workers at Stop & Shop and Hannaford have their personal data exposed as the result of a cyberattack on parent company Ahold Delhaize USA. These scenarios, straight from a William Gibson novel, are becoming increasingly common in supply chains across the world.
If you were excited about the Trader Joe's fried rice waiting for you in your freezer at home, we're sorry to burst your bubble, but a recall may mean it needs to be tossed pronto. This recall was just announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Ajinomoto Foods North America, Inc., the manufacturer of the Trader Joe's product in question. According to the USDA recall notice, two products, including Trader Joe's Chicken Fried Rice, may be contaminated with glass.
My grandmother's refrigerator ran for forty years. The washing machine she bought in the 1970s? Still spinning when she passed away. Meanwhile, I'm on my third coffee maker in five years, and don't get me started on the laptop that mysteriously died two weeks after the warranty expired. This isn't just bad luck or nostalgia talking. There's something fundamentally different about how products are made today versus decades ago.
"Ironically, many if not most of these 'sustainability' projects remain disassociated from companies' core procurement strategies, meaning the coffee produced from these projects is not necessarily bought by the companies involved, or only in minimal quantities," the paper states. "And for the coffee that is purchased, prices do not factor into the project design, despite the fact that price is the single variable impacting farmer income that is in the direct control of companies."
Europe's supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum. Brands using plastic packaging from Kraft's Heinz Beanz to Mondelez's Philadelphia use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world's largest corporate greenhouse-gas emitter (over 70m tonnes up to 2023).
End-of-line packaging often sits at the quiet end of a production line, yet it carries an outsized responsibility. This is the final checkpoint before products leave your facility, meet customers, and represent your brand in the real world. A single error here can undo hours of upstream efficiency and compromise overall product integrity. That's why building reliability into this stage is essential for both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Retailer-owned products not being seen as a cheap alternative anymore, but instead, a way to convey luxury and exclusivity. Price-Led Positioning is No Longer Dominating UK Supermarkets. Small UK businesses are aggressively growing, with price-led positioning becoming a dated trend. It's becoming evident that brands are no longer using their own branded products as a way to be a cheap alternative.
In 2016, I presented at @Roblox Indie Game Developer Meetup about design strategy as an indie developer. Back then, I had no idea children as young as 5 were interacting with random adults on their platform. Today, the same company (NYSE: $RBLX) is filled with poorly moderated "games" like Bathroom Simulator and worse - all while letting adults animate their avatars for sexual role play.
Refrigeration is one of the most important elements of a successful food safety program, regardless of whether you run a retail operation, catering service or restaurant. Smart refrigeration technologies allow for greater protection against spoilage, reduced time spent monitoring refrigerators/freezers and the ability to provide inspections without the need for manual monitoring. Keep reading to find out how smart refrigeration technology works, and the ways in which it protects your business.
Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we've come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They're not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they're not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code.
Member's Mark, the Sam's Club equivalent of Costco's Kirkland Signature in-store brand, announced back in 2022 that it was taking steps to eliminate over 40 ingredients that were considered "unwanted" by consumers. Changing long-running manufacturing processes and recipes takes time, and Sam's Club periodically released updates on its progress. Now the chain has announced that it has fully removed 100% of its targeted ingredients from its Member's Mark products.
As prices climb, shoppers aren't just spending less-they're spending differently. Nearly half are buying smaller quantities or trading down to lower-cost options, such as canned fruit instead of fresh, according to Capgemini's report, "What matters to today's consumers 2026." It's not about cutting things out entirely-it's about making budgets stretch. Low- and middle-income households are especially deal-focused right now: more coupons, more frequent but smaller trips, and fewer meals out.
Markup is how much you add to your cost to get your selling price. If something costs $10 and you sell it for $15 , you added $5. That's a 50 percent markup on your cost. Where people get confused is that markup isn't the same as margin, even though the terms get used interchangeably all the time. Margin measures profit as a percentage of the selling price, and markup measures it based on your costs. Same dollar, different percentages.
Statistics from the 2025 holiday shopping season clearly show that AI is playing a huge role in how people shop. But new research from retail payment platform Adyen found that many consumers are ready for AI to become their personal shopper. Just over half-51%-said they're open to letting AI take over the entire shopping process, including making final purchases. Millennials are the most willing to let agents do their shopping, with nearly three in five saying they are ready for such a shift.
