Biography

Heather Lalley

Editor in chief, Winsight Grocery Business

 Contact Heather

Heather Lalley is the editor in chief of Winsight Grocery Business, overseeing a team of editors and a web producer to write, report and publish breaking news, features, trend stories and industry analysis. She spent six years as an editor with sister publication Restaurant Business, covering many facets of the restaurant industry.

Before joining Winsight, Heather spent nearly a decade as a reporter for the daily newspaper in Spokane, Washington. She is the author of "The Chicago Homegrown Cookbook." She holds a journalism degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the two-year baking and pastry program at Washburne Culinary Institute in Chicago.

She is the mother of two and rarely passes up a chance to eat tater tots.

Articles by
Heather Lalley

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Retailers

Food retailers: 'We need to talk about theft'

Aisle 1: Shrink dominated quarterly earnings discussions for Dollar Tree, Target, Walmart and others. But solutions are hard to come by, writes WGB Editor-in-Chief Heather Lalley.

Retailers

Dollar Tree undertakes transformation plan as stock plunges on tough Q1 report

Increased theft and the ongoing mix shift to lower-margin food and beverages are negatively affecting the discounter’s bottom line, the parent of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar reported.

The U.S. Department of Labor said it found blocked aisles, emergency exits and more at nine of the discounter’s stores in Maine, North Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Steve Deckard, who led the discounter’s recent expansion into Mexico, has been promoted to the new post as EVP of growth and emerging markets.

Billed as the “world’s most technologically advanced indoor vertical farm,” the Plenty Compton Farm is designed to grow up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens per year in one city block.

The Texas grocer is continuing its expansion in the Dallas-Fort Worth area following the opening last fall of an 111,000-square-foot store in the Denton County city.

The high-tech facility in Bentonville, Arkansas, is key to the retailer’s strategy of relying on its stores to complete digital orders. It’s powered by Alphabot, a proprietary storage and retrieval system.

Alcohol will now be available for delivery from the retail giant in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana and Ohio, expanding a program that began in 2019.

The fast-growing specialty retailer has new locations planned in the coming months in California, Arizona and Florida.

Midwest Quality Wholesale, a subsidiary of the Midwestern grocer, is the new owner of Webster City Custom Meats.

Aisle 1: The retail giant continues to grab food-and-beverage market share, but the trend is putting pressure on its margins, writes WGB Editor-in-Chief Heather Lalley.

The retail giant said it continues to grow market share in grocery as higher-income shoppers look to save money. General merchandise sales are being far outpaced by sales of food and beverage.

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