All articles by Charlie Wright – Page 16
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NewsA million more shoppers a week drive surge in Sainsbury’s profits
Sainsbury’s has unveiled surging profits for the past year after seeing a million extra customers a week pass through its tills. Pre-tax profits at the supermarket giant grew by 12.8% to £827m in the year to 19 March.
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Comment & Opinion
'Bomber' Harris goes to war
Aside from Tesco appointing its next chairman, Philip Clarke unveiling a new strategy for the UK’s largest grocer, Sainsbury’s posting stellar profits and Ocado bizarrely blaming the bank holidays for a slowdown in sales while everyone else was struggling to match demand, it was shaping up to be a pretty quiet news day.
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Comment & Opinion
Making hay while the sun shines
Time to crack open the Champagne? Last week The Grocer reported a record Easter for independents, while Booker and P&H were among the wholesalers toasting “massive growth” in booze as well as other essentials over the long weekends.
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Comment & Opinion
Ups, downs and notable omissions
Yesterday the Sunday Times published its annual Rich List. Once again, the ranking of the UK’s 1,000 individuals and families with the most cash to splash featured its fair share of figures from our sector.
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Comment & OpinionA blind date with the Dolmio puppets
Italy doesn’t do Hairy Bikers - just immaculately groomed Gucci models sipping espresso as their scooters zip from one bunga-bunga party to the next.
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Comment & OpinionAd of the Week: The ears and the Body have a crinkled kind of love
Just as kids grow up faster the older you get, Walkers seems to have a new ad out every other week these days. With Lionel Richie still ringing horribly in our ears, Gary Lineker is back yet again, this time frolicking in a billowy Glenn...
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Comment & Opinion
Morrisons breaks out the bunting
Morrisons proudly revealed today that the bunting at Downing Street’s party for the Royal Wedding had come from one of its stores.
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NewsBrothers Cider makes canned debut
Brothers Cider is now available in cans for the first time. Eight-packs of the 440ml cans are already available to the off trade, with 12-packs due out later this month.
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NewsSAB Miller finance chief Wyman calls it a day
Malcolm Wyman, the chief financial officer at SAB Miller, is to retire at the end of August. He spent 25 years with the brewing giant, including a decade as finance chief.
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Comment & Opinion
Sainsbury's family values
Last week The Grocer revealed Sainsbury’s was leading all other supermarkets in the promotional stakes.
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NewsSainsbury’s: £50 to feed your family for a week
Sainsbury’s has launched a major advertising campaign telling shoppers they can feed a family of four for an entire week for just £50. Three-page colour adverts today appear in papers including The Daily Telegraph and The Times, in a renewed bid by the supermarket to push its value credentials.
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NewsEaster scorcher turns up the heat on Thorntons
Easter sales at Thorntons were down by more than a fifth from last year thanks to the recent hot weather. Like-for-like sales in the key Easter period were down 22.8%, the confectioner said today.
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Comment & Opinion
Not a bad substitute for chocolate
It may have been all that sickly-sweet love in the air, what with the fairytale romance (or the hideously indulgent waste of taxpayers’ money, depending on your politics) set to unfold at Westminster Abbey.
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Comment & OpinionCritical Eye... on gourmet geezers and gastro gulags
Time was, the closest our prison system came to haute cuisine was the old 'chisel in a cake' brought in by inmates' mums. That's changing. Nowadays contraband more commonly takes the form of heroin, firearms and mobile phones - and that's...
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Comment & OpinionAd of the Week: Strongbow’s sofa saga is more graft than craft
Carlsberg’s new campaign positions it as a ‘reward’ rather than the kind of foaming punishment in a glass over-refreshed rugger-buggers sometimes impose on each other, say. But wait! That acrid smell you whiff is stale Strongbow, the…
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NewsSchofield calls time on Premier tenure
Shares in Premier Foods rose 4% in early trading today following the news that chief executive Robert Schofield is to retire. Schofield, who has held the top job since 2002, will hand over the reins as soon as a successor is appointed “or no later than 28 April 2012”.
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NewsHighland Spring claims record market share
Highland Spring grew sales of its sparkling water by 8% in 2010, the company said today. It also claimed to have achieved a record 14.1% share of the market.
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NewsTesco and M&S targeted in Thanet Earth workers’ protest
Protestors dressed as vegetables will descend on Tesco and Marks & Spencer tomorrow in a bid to draw attention to working conditions at Thanet Earth. Officials from Unite vowed to “take the fight to the top of the food chain” to bring attention to what it claimed were “sweatshop” conditions ...
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Comment & Opinion
Going loco for local
It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Tesco. After those disappointing fourth-quarter results, its bank holiday began with the wrong sort of bang when a shiny new Express in Bristol was petrol-bombed by militants “dressed like ninjas”, according to one widely quoted bystander.
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NewsTrashed Tesco at centre of Bristol riot
A Tesco Express in Bristol was left badly damaged over the bank holiday weekend as police clashed with protestors opposed to the new store.