AUGUST 13, 2014 news.com.au The packaging often infers they’re good meal replacements, but how healthy are these liquid breakfasts really? Fiona Baker investigates. In this busy, chaotic world, liquid breakfasts in a carton can seem like the perfect meal choice – according to the packaging, they’re nutritious as well as easy to grab-and-go. But some health experts aren’t convinced they should replace a traditional breakfast, at least not on a regular basis. “They should be thought of as an occasional food,” Nutrition Australia spokesperson and accredited practising dietitian Aloysa Hourigan says. “While they have some nutritional value, they’re mostly too high in sugar and low in both fat and kilojoules to constitute a healthy breakfast. “I know the packaging likes to say the product is the equivalent, nutritionally, to having a breakfast that includes a healthy cereal and milk, however, sitting down to a bowl of wholegrain cereal with milk…

Melissa Kress August 12, 2014 Convenience Store News GREENSBORO, N.C. — The news that Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) was buying Lorillard Inc. may have shaken up the tobacco industry a bit, but all should remain business as usual for convenience store retailers once the deal closes in the first half of 2015. In an interview with CSNews Online Tuesday afternoon, Murray Kessler, Lorillard’s chairman, president and CEO, detailed why all four companies involved in the transaction — Lorillard, RAI, Imperial Tobacco Group plc and British American Tobacco (BAT) — believe the deal “is good for competitors, good for shareholders, good for customers and good for consumers.” In the Details The deal, which was announced on July 15, has a lot of moving parts. Under the structure, Winston-Salem, N.C.-based RAI buys Greensboro-based Lorillard for $27.4 billion and keeps the Newport brand, which represents 90 percent of Lorillard’s existing sales and profitability,…

Jared Lynch August 13 The Age A farmer co-operative in northern New South Wales has a relatively simple plan to capitalise on Asia’s fast-growing middle class. While some dairy manufacturers are focusing on exporting high-margin and high-value added products such as infant formula, Norco has pinned its hopes on dairy’s most basic ingredient – milk. The company has begun flying fresh milk direct to Shanghai, where it is fetching $8 to $9 a litre. It is exporting about 16,000 litres a week to China, after a 1000-litre trial in March, and the demand is growing. About every two weeks, the co-operative gains about another four Chinese customers. “Some of the numbers that are being put to us are like telephone numbers in terms of potential,” Norco chief executive Brett Kelly said. “The market we are targeting is the middle class. They’re pretty well educated, quite financially well off and very,…

August 13, 2014 CSNews CLEVELAND — Grocery shopping decisions are on the minds of working women at the same time as they are busy trying to juggle their job responsibilities during the day, according to new research. WorkPlace Impact, a Cleveland-based marketing company that targets consumers directly at work, recently surveyed 1,340 American working female consumers and found that 84.4 percent of those polled said they regularly or occasionally add items to their grocery shopping lists at work. Working women also make frequent trips to grocery stores on personal time that bumps up right against the workday. According to the survey, nearly half of working females (49 percent) make trips to the supermarket between Monday and Friday, while 46 percent reported that they regularly purchase groceries on their way to or from the office, or during a lunch break. “We’re finding an increasing blending of work and personal lives among…

Dr. Roch Parayre August 13, 2014, CSNews With 151,000-plus convenience stores competing for nearly $700 billion in sales annually in the United States, today’s competitive landscape is more intense than it ever has been. While c-store leaders are no strangers to competitive pressures, the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment makes it even more important for organizations to seriously reevaluate their strategies and strengths relative to the competition, or risk becoming obsolete due to industry disruption. To truly anticipate change and be prepared for what happens next, leaders must look beyond their own industry to scan wider for both emerging and unconventional competitors as industry boundaries and geographic limitations continue to erode. A new, nimble player with a progressive approach to the traditional c-store business model has the potential to change the industry landscape overnight. Traditional competitors are also evolving as they embrace business model innovations to better…