SN Top 10: Aldi, Publix, Dollar General top the week’s headlines

In this week’s recap of the Top 10 most popular Supermarket News articles, UFCW: COVID-19 threat ever-present for frontline workers ranked as the week’s top story. For the research, UFCW and UNMC conducted monthly surveys of 17,617 UFCW members in all 50 states from June 2021 to May 2022. Data from respondents showed that, from July 2021 to May 2022, COVID infection rates rose from 2% to 15% among UFCW members, including grocery, health care, meat packing and processing, and other food employees. Those rates of infection were 10 times higher than U.S. incidence rates over the same span, UFCW noted.

Among other top stories:

• Sobeys’ parent Empire adopts long-term climate change plan
• Ahold Delhaize hires Dollar General’s Sanja Krajnovic to head distribution ops
• Dollar General eyes bigger presence in health care
• Wedding bells to ring in Aldi’s aisles

In other news, Baked goods are among the grocery categories experiencing the highest price inflation. The food-at-home Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June jumped 12.2% year over year, topping the 11.9% rise in May and representing the largest 12-month uptick since the period through April 1979, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Other top stories:

• Comp-store sales at Natural Grocers edge up in third quarter
• New ESG reporting standard earmarked for grocers
• Aldi leads in private-label volume, growth
• Publix takes Q2 bottom-line hit despite 9.3% net sales gain