Blasphemous as it may be to mention around here, not everyone loves holiday shopping, but here’s hoping it doesn’t get so bad that anyone is tempted to start drinking jet fuel. Unless, of course, they’re at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, where “jet fuel” is the house brew, and was served gratis in its store as part of its Museum Store Sunday festivities on November 26.

Along with coffee, the museum store offered members 20% off purchases, and, for non-members, 20% off memberships.

Museum Store Sunday was launched in 2017 by the Museum Store Association, a nonprofit that supports retail stores at nonprofit cultural institutions. This year, more than 2,100 museum stores participated (from all 50 states in the US and 25 countries), up from 670 that first year.

This year’s results aren’t tallied yet, but 2022 was a banner year for Museum Store Sunday:

• Stores increased net sales by 39% YoY.
• Store transactions increased 43% YoY.

Keep reading here.—AAN

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The preference for online shopping on Black Friday is becoming the “new normal,” Deloitte Retail Research Leader Lupine Skelly told Retail Brew.

“It used to be really heavily in-store,” she said. “You kind of had to show up to get those doorbuster deals, and now it really has morphed into an omnichannel event.”

Early data from Adobe Analytics backs this up: Online spending on Black Friday jumped 7.5% year over year to $9.8 billion. This momentum carried over into the rest of the holiday weekend, with online sales rising 7.7% YoY.

Those gains reflected behind-the-scenes effort, Adobe noted; companies had stepped up their game ahead of the sales weekend.

“An uncertain demand environment pushed retailers to deliver big discounts this season, while also fortifying their e-commerce services with flexible payment methods, better personalization, and enhanced mobile functionality,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.

Keep reading here.—AV

Inflated grocery prices might be impacting food bank donations this holiday season, a survey by retail food-waste reduction company Divert found.

Demand at food banks often rises during the holiday season, and 46% of the 700+ consumers Divert surveyed in October said they’re more likely to contribute to food banks during this time than any other during the year. But only 25% said they’re more likely to donate in 2023 than in previous years, and 20% said they’re less likely, at a time when food banks’ budgets are pressured under the weight of inflation.

For those who do plan to donate to local food banks and intend to donate a different amount than last year, 20% said they’ll give less. Of those, 57% cited higher food costs as the reason. And for those choosing to donate more, 75% said it’s due to a “growing awareness of food insecurity.”

Keep reading here.—EC