Grocers expanding into delivery services (US)

Grocery heavyweights including Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Kroger Co. and Meijer, Inc. are broadening delivery areas across the country and the ways in which customers get their groceries. Meijer said Thursday that it will start delivering groceries later this month in the six Midwestern states—Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin—where its 230 stores are located. A fifth of shoppers bought groceries online last year, up from 16% in 2015, according to a recent Nielsen survey for the National Grocers Association. More than half of those online shoppers said they used Amazon’s Prime delivery service for groceries, compared with just 22% at the online offerings of traditional grocers. Nielson and the Food Marketing Institute expect online grocery spending to be worth $100 billion by 2025, a fifth of the projected market. Amazon recently dropped the price of a subscription to the Fresh grocery delivery service it offers in 20 cities to $15 a month from $299 a year. Amazon is testing several brick-and-mortar store models, including a convenience-style shop at its Seattle headquarters.
Supermarkets were slow to mimic Amazon and other grocery-focused online delivery services like FreshDirect and Peapod. But competition for customers has become fiercer, as even older consumers outside of urban areas have warmed to online shopping.
Source: www.wsj.com
Sugar tax will raise less money than expected (UK)
A sugar tax on soft drinks will raise less money than expected because companies have started making their products less sweet to avoid extra costs, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, has said. According to tax and spending forecasts in the budget, the levy will raise around £385m a year, less than expected. He said £1bn from the tax, set at 18p a litre or 24p for the sweetest drinks, would go to the Department for Education to fund sport in schools. Irn-Bru maker AG Barr has moved to make Scotland’s best-known fizzy drink less sugary, though larger firms such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola are yet to make any such commitment. While soft drinks will be taxed more heavily, duty on wine, beer and spirits will continue to rise in line with inflation. This will add 2p to a pint of beer, 8p to a bottle of wine and 40p to a litre of gin.
Source: www.theguardian.com