Much of the retail and grocery news in today’s press has been sparked by yesterday’s Kantar results which we also covered in The Grocer.
Hannah Boland, retail editor at The Telegraph uses the results to shine a spotlight on Asda’s ongoing travails. Asda, which suffered a 5.8% sales slide in the 12 weeks to 29 December according to Kantar, is held up as a big loser over the festive season with the article coming under the damning headline ‘Asda crisis deepens after ‘dreadful’ Christmas’.
On the flipside of this the Daily Mail looks to accentuate the positive by focussing its attention on the winners of Christmas trading. The Mail looks to the strong performances of Ocado and M&S as it hands out its laurels. Ocado was the strongest performing retailer in terms of growth with sales up 9.6% in the 12-week period while M&S saw its food and drink sales boosted by 8.7%.
The Kantar numbers were also interesting yesterday in terms of their new read on inflation and this has been picked up by The Guardian. Its jumps on the reported that UK food inflation has hit 3.7%. It says this is the highest level since March.
Another major story that continues to garner interest is the reports of sexual harassment and discrimination at McDonald’s. The Guardian focuses on the news that the fast food giant has sacked 29 employees in the past year in the wake of the allegations. The Guardian reports that McDonald’s UK boss Alistair Macrow, told MPs on a select committee yesterday that the company had been alerted to 75 allegations of sexual harassment over the last 12 months, 47 of which had been upheld with disciplinary action taken and 29 of which resulted in people being dismissed.
On a completely different tack there is an interesting profile in the Guardian of Osama Qashoo, the founder of Gaza Cola. London-based Qashoo came up with the idea for a Coca-Cola and Pepsi alternative at the end of 2023 and it has so far sold more than 500,000 cans. All of the profits from the sales of the drink are set to rebuild al Karama hospital, which used to stand in northern Gaza.
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