Shoppers have a new compass to help them navigate the American retail jungle — their phone

Big-box retailers are developing indoor navigation tools to help shoppers find what they want. Some, including Target and Walgreens, have stored floor layout plans in smartphone apps. Walmart and Home Depot apps now can display aisle numbers for searched items.

In a store, “I can talk to an associate, but I can’t search for a two-sided tape,” says Gibu Thomas, Walmart head of mobile and digital. “Mobile brings the (online store) to the store.”

Within two weeks of Walmart’s May launch of the “In-Store” mode in its app, about 15% of page views were from shoppers in stores.

Retailers traditionally were reluctant, for competitive reasons, to release detailed merchandising data. But with mobile apps becoming a key sales channel, they’ve begun adding coupons, prices, store hours and bar code scanners.

Now they’re betting that item locators will help customers shop more efficiently and, as a result, buy more. About 20% of retail sales are lost because shoppers can’t find items, estimates Nathan Pettyjohn, CEO of Aisle411, an app with 9,000 store maps. A locator also can attract customers who need only an item or two and would avoid a big-box store, lest they waste time.

Nudging customers to share what they buy also gives retailers data for merchandising, inventory control and personalized deals.

Some efforts underway:

Walgreens. The chain partnered with Aisle411 to list store layouts in the Aisle411 app. Customers can make shopping lists and the items are spotted on their store’s map. Next month, Walgreens will embed the feature in its own app, says Abhi Dhar, chief technology officer.

Walmart. In May, Walmart’s app began showing the aisle number for a majority of items. And this year it is expanding last year’s Black Friday test of paper store maps locating popular items to add digital maps for Black Friday in the app.

Home Depot. With about 40,000 items in its stores, finding them is a common complaint at the home-improvement chain, says Matt Jones, manager of mobile. Last year, it added to its app store maps and aisle numbers of searched items. It hopes to locate items more specifically, but with so many items, accuracy and consistency from store to store is “a big challenge,” he says.

Start-ups. Several start-ups are pursuing item-locator technology to be used independently or licensed by retailers. Aislefinder collects aisle locations by calling stores individually and has about 5,300 stores in its app. Meijer, a retail chain in the Midwest, uses technology from Point Inside that shows the location of items on a map.

Reprinted from USA Today (August 29, 2012)

The price of food items such as beef, pork and dairy products is expected to stay high through the end of the year and into 2013, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast released Friday.

The Midwest drought, the worst in decades, has driven up corn and soybean prices, which, in turn, caused retail food prices to rise.

The July’s food price outlook, compiled monthly by the USDA, was largely unchanged from the month before, forecasting the price of all food to rise between 2.5% and 3.5% through the end of the year.

Next year, the department predicts that food prices will rise by as much as 4% as the effects of the drought become more pronounced on the nation’s food supply.

For many food items, the report was largely unchanged but still elevated.

• Beef and veal will rise between 3.5% and 4.5% in 2012, and by as much as 5% next year.
• Pork will rise between 2% and 3% this year, and up to 3.5% next year.
• Dairy products will rise by 3% this year and 4.5% next year.

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (August 24 2012)

Proposition 37’s backers claim it is a simple measure about slapping labels on certain foods. It’s not.

This food-labeling scheme – written by trial lawyers who hope for a windfall if it becomes law – has many flaws: It creates a new bureaucracy, has huge loopholes and hidden costs and will result in higher grocery bills.

Prop. 37 would impose a California-only ban of tens of thousands of perfectly safe foods containing genetically engineered ingredients unless they are specially repackaged, relabeled or made with higher-cost ingredients. Genetically engineered foods have been determined to be safe in more than 400 studies. Americans have consumed more than 3 trillion servings of food with genetically engineered ingredients – with not a single documented ill effect.

UCLA molecular biologist Bob Goldberg, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, told The Chronicle earlier this month: “There is not one credible scientist working on this that would call it unsafe.” He is absolutely right.

In fact, the World Health Organization, American Medical Association, National Academy of Sciences and other respected medical and health organizations all conclude that genetically engineered foods are safe.

Prop. 37 is full of politically motivated exemptions that make no sense. For instance, it requires special labels on soy milk, but exempts dairy products, even though cows are fed genetically engineered grain. Alcohol is exempt, even though it can be made from or contain genetically engineered ingredients. Pet foods containing meat require labels, but meat for human consumption is exempt.

Food imported from foreign countries is exempt if sellers merely include a statement that their products are “GE free.” Unscrupulous foreign companies surely would game the system.

According to the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst, Prop. 37 would allow trial lawyers “to sue without needing to demonstrate that any specific damage occurred as a result of the alleged violation.”

That means law-abiding grocers, farmers, manufacturers and distributors could be sued for products that are labeled properly. They would then need to choose between spending tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and tests to demonstrate the product is “GE free” or settling out of court.

The last thing California’s struggling economy needs is an avalanche of shakedown lawsuits hitting businesses. And the last thing consumers and taxpayers need is higher costs.

Prop. 37 should be rejected this November.

Dr. Henry I. Miller is a fellow at Stanford University‘s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration.

Reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle (August 24, 2012)

West Hollywood has become the latest in a string of California cities — including Santa Monica, Long Beach and Pasadena — to ban single-use plastic bags at store checkout lines.

The City Council adopted an ordinance Monday night prohibiting hundreds of pharmacies and grocery and retail stores — including clothing stores and newsstands — in the 1.9-square-mile city from distributing the bags. The ordinance was approved as part of the council’s consent calendar, along with routine items.

The ban is in line with one already in effect in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, city officials said.

“Local governments have been charged, I think rightfully so, to reduce the amount of waste we put in the waste system,” said West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang. Plastic bags “are costing us money and filling up landfills,” he said.

The ban is intended to reduce landfill waste and to encourage residents to shop with reusable bags or paper bags made with recycled materials.

Under the ordinance, stores can provide paper bags made with at least 40% post-consumer recycled content, but must charge 10 cents for each one as an incentive to encourage reusables. Customers who qualify for subsidized groceries will not be required to pay the bag fee.

Larger retailers — those with buildings of 10,000 square feet or more — will be required to stop using plastic bags within six months. Smaller stores have a year to comply. Farmers markets, restaurants and other food service providers are excluded from the ban.

West Hollywood’s plastic bag ordinance met with little resistance, officials said. The West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce supported the ban and has been helping businesses prepare for the transition, said Genevieve Morrill, president of the organization.

The California Grocers Assn. is comfortable with the action, said Sarah Paulson Sheehy, a spokeswoman for the organization. “What we particularly like about the City of West Hollywood’s ordinance is that it is for all retailers” and is not just targeted at supermarkets, Sheehy said. “If a plastic bag is detrimental at a grocery store, it’s harmful at a hardware store.”

San Francisco approved California’s first ban on plastic bags in 2007 and since then many municipalities have followed suit. Los Angeles approved a ban in May, becoming the largest city in the nation to do so. A ban in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County has been in effect for just over a year.

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (August 21, 2012)

Dry conditions that continue to grip Midwestern states, damaging crops and threatening to push up food prices, stirred new debate this week after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released crop yield projections capturing the severity of the drought. Though the U.S. is the largest producer of corn and soybeans, the report puts corn production at 10.8 billion bushels, down 13 percent from last year’s yield and 17 percent from July projections. It also slashes soybean yields, though not as sharply as corn.

The low projections are bumping up corn prices. The price spike in corn is causing some livestock farmers to turn to other sources, even candy, for their animals’ nutrition. While the USDA announced it will buy up to $170 million worth of meat to help relieve some of these farmers, low yield projections still mean feed could be more scarce next year. “I think this will help some in the short run, but what we really need is to change the ethanol mandate,” said Bob Ivey, a hog farmer and general manager of Maxwell Foods, of the USDA announcement.

Like Ivey, others renewed debate over the use of corn for ethanol production this week, putting more pressure on the U.S. to divert its corn crop to food. As required by the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is currently used in ethanol production, with the rest going to food, animal feed and exports. With agricultural production in other major exporting countries such as China and India suffering and the global food price index up six percent in July, some are concerned about global shortages of certain food commodities. As some legislators called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue a waiver of the corn ethanol RFS for the next year, the top United Nations food official, José Graziano da Silva, told the Financial Times that an “immediate, temporary suspension” of the mandate could help head off another world food crisis as poorer countries bear the burden of rising food costs. The Renewable Fuels Association urged the EPA to reject the waiver request, saying it “would do more harm than good to America’s economy and its energy security.”

Meanwhile, the federal government is poised to approve the use of sorghum to create advanced ethanol. It would join imported sugar-cane-based ethanol and domestic biodiesel to become the third “advanced biofuel” in the U.S. (Advanced biofuels produce fewer greenhouse gases over their lifetime.) A sorghum-based ethanol could be a welcome addition to the U.S. biofuel supply because sorghum is not an important ingredient in human foods (it’s mainly used as animal feed), it is more drought-tolerant than corn, and it produces the same amount of ethanol as corn using one-third less water.

Study: Temperatures May Climb 7 Degrees

If droughts weren’t enough, global warming and urbanization could cause temperatures in cities to climb seven degrees by 2050, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. That’s two to three times higher than the effects of global warming, says Climate Central’s Michael Lemonick.

One scientist affiliated with MIT is pursuing a technology that would help in droughts by mitigating water lost from reservoirs through evaporation. The technology involves coating the water with a thin layer of vegetable oil, which could possibly reduce evaporation by up to 75 percent.

Energy in the Arctic

Shell’s plans for drilling in the Arctic faced another delay—not one due to ice, but rather to failure to complete construction on a spill response barge, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “So it’s not a matter of ice. It is a matter of whether Shell has the mechanical capability to be able to comply with the exploration effort that had been approved by the government,” Salazar said. The window to drill is closing, The Wall Street Journal warns, as exploration in the Chukchi Sea must end by Sept. 24 and the end of October in the Beaufort Sea.

This came as the first comprehensive plan to manage the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska was announced, leaving open the possibility for a pipeline to transport oil and gas from the Chukchi Sea onshore. The plan would allow drilling on half of the 23 million-acre reserve estimated to contain 549 million barrels of recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

In the renewable energy sector, wind made headway in 2011, adding about 6,800 megawatts of power generation, which made it second only to natural gas of all new U.S. electric capacity. Specifically, wind accounted for 32 percent of energy, pushing U.S. wind power capacity to 47,000 megawatts.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Fifteen industry groups, including Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the National Grocers Association, the National Retail Federation (NRF) and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), have filed a joint amici curiae brief challenging the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Hours of Service Final Rules for commercial truck drivers.

According to the coalition of organizations, parts of a rule will retard productivity, harm jobs and have an adverse effect on agriculture, manufacturers, retail supply chains and distribution operations.

“For industries and carriers charged with delivering fresh food, keeping assembly lines running and making deliveries, this rule is concerning and will hurt the economy,” explained Rick Schweitzer, counsel for the business shipper group coalition. “With the lack of evidence that it will improve safety, moving forward with this rule will only create more uncertainties in an already cumbersome regulatory environment.”

The industry groups agree with the American Trucking Association’s legal challenge, supporting the view that the specific rest periods of the 34-hour restart and the exclusion of all on-duty nondriving work during the break should be held unlawful on the grounds that such changes are arbitrary and capricious.

“Shippers and transportation providers find the 34-hour restart change particularly burdensome,” observed Schweitzer. “It will increase wait times for drivers to return to work, and it creates a rigid rest structure, without scientific basis that it will place more trucks on the road during peak driving hours.”

According to the brief that the FMCSA failed to consider any costs to shippers, receivers or transportation intermediaries when deciding on changes to the rule. The coalition also opposed a challenge lodged by Public Citizen and backed the FMCSA’s decision to retain the 14-hour driving window and the 11-hour daily driving provision.

Among the other groups that took part in the filing were the American Bakers Association, International Food Distributors Association, National Association of Manufacturers, National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, Snack Food Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

Reprinted rom Progressive Grocer (August 2, 2012)

SACRAMENTO — With recent polling suggesting Californians want labels on genetically modified food, defense attorneys warn that an upcoming ballot initiative could generate a bumper crop of litigation.

Proposition 37, also known as the Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, would require labels on edibles containing ingredients whose DNA was tweaked to increase yield, to fight off disease or f or any other reason. If voters approve the initiative in November, California would become the first state in the nation to employ such a far-reaching consumer alert system.

Proponents say their measure has a simple rationale: Californians should know what’s in the food they buy and eat. But legal critics say compliance would be a far more complex task. And they point to an enforcement provision authorizing private consumer lawsuits, something defense lawyers compare less than flatteringly to Prop 65, the 1986 law that requires businesses to warn consumers about chemicals they use

“When I used to go and talk about Prop 65 when it was on the ballot, I would say the biggest beneficiaries would be lawyers. I think that goes double for Prop 37,” said Michele Corash, a environmental defense pa rtner with Morrison & Foerster.

James Wheaton, the Oakland attorney who helped draft Prop 37, said such claims amount to scare tactics.

Comparing Propositions 65 and 37 “is like comparing apples and hot dogs,” Wheaton said. “Both food, but [then] no resemblance.”

The Prop 37 campaign is shaping up into a multimillion-dollar battle between a team of grocers and food science companies like Monsanto and DuPont and a coalition of organic growers and natural food activists. Legal arguments surrounding the measure have generally taken a backseat to public talk about the contents of tomatoes and toasted oats.

But defense attorneys say the measure’s impacts could be sweeping.

“Go into a grocery store. That is the landscape that is available,” sai d Thomas Hiltachk, the managing partner of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk who’s working on the campaign to defeat Prop 37.

The initiative exempts a range of products from the labeling requirement, including meats from animals that ate genetically modified feed, alcohol and restaurant-served meals. Retailers and others in the food-supply chain could also shield themselves from fail-to-label lawsuits by providing sworn statements from producers indicating that the item wasn’t knowingly or intentionally altered.

That’s a potential record-keeping nightmare, Hiltachk said. What’s more, he said, many retailers will feel pressured to settle claims when threatened with litigation.

“It’s in my mind unquestionably g oing to happen because it already happens every day in California,” Hiltachk said. “And Prop 37 creates an entirely new opportunity for that to occur.”

Hiltachk and others in the defense bar cast a wary eye toward Wheaton, who is legal director of the Oakland-based Environmental Law Foundation. The organization has filed a number of Prop 65 lawsuits and secured two settlements totaling $660,000 last year, according to the attorney general’s office.
Wheaton said he wasn’t the principal author of Prop 37 and, in fact, wasn’t brought into the process until late in the drafting. He is listed as the official proponent, “but only as a conduit,” he said, for a diverse group of campaigners who wanted a single registered California voter for the job.

The measure authorizes shoppers to sue under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, which doesn’t require plaintiffs to show that they suffered any damages. Wheaton defended the initiative’s use of the CLRA, not as a dodge of the plaintiff restrictions in California’s Unfair Competition Law as critics have alleged, but as a better mechanism for enforcing the law.

“The CLRA was written to deal with the precise situation here, where hundreds or thousands of consumers each are duped in a small way to a cheater’s large benefit,” Wheaton said.

Backers say the public has little reason to worry the measure will unleash a wave of lawsuits, as critics complain Prop 65 has done. In fact, the Yes on 37 campaign commissioned a study comparing the two initiatives.

James Cooper, an adjunct professor at Virginia-based George Mason University School of Law, concluded that Prop 37 would cover a smaller number of products than Prop 65. And it would provide more legal protections to defendants, he said.

&quo t;Accordingly, there is reason to believe that these important differences substantially reduce the potential for [Proposition 37] to foster the type of abusive private litigation associated with Proposition 65,” Cooper wrote.

Hiltachk said Cooper underestimated the potential reach of Prop 37. Almost all U.S.-grown corn and soybeans, which comprise the base ingredient in many products, are genetically engineered. In its study of Prop 37, California’s legislative analyst cited estimates that 40 to 70 percent of food sold in the state contains some genetically modified ingredients.

A July poll of 800 likely voters conducted by the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University found that almost 65 percent of respondents supported Prop 37.

Reprinted from The Recorder (July 27, 2012)