While you’re likely familiar with the experience of staring at the shelf displays of a grocery store, mulling over the choices amid the many products and brands before you, you may not be aware of the people who help craft—or should we say Kraft—them.

CPG giant Kraft Heinz has an entire team dedicated to working with retailers to workshop their planograms (the plan for the layout of the aisles and shelves) to give better on-shelf visibility not only to its brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Heinz Ketchup, Kool-Aid, and Jell-O, but also improve the appearance and performance of entire categories on store shelves.

This customer development team, part of its sales organization, is a relatively new one at Kraft Heinz, built in 2020 “out of the need of just how important category growth can be,” Andy McKeon, head of customer business development, told Retail Brew. After food giants Kraft Foods Group and H. J. Heinz Company merged in 2015 to form Kraft Heinz, there was “a lot of reorganization,” he noted, and category insights and resources were hard to come by. Retail buyers told the company, one that sells some of the most well-known brands in grocery, that it needed Kraft Heinz to advise them on how to present their products and the categories they reside in on the shelf.

Keep reading here.—EC

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When you pull into the fast-food drive-thru, you’re probably not thinking about the complicated logistics dance that enabled your afternoon pick-me-up.

Now, an autonomous truck could be part of the equation for a limited number of people in the Southwest US.

Kodiak Robotics, the Mountain View, California-based autonomous-trucking startup, announced on Thursday the start of a new delivery route for global logistics company Martin Brower, which counts McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A among its customers.

Keep reading here on Tech Brew.—JG

We’re starting the week with the news that some janitors and security officers in Minnesota reached tentative deals with subcontractors before March 4, when a strike would have started. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26 voted last month “to approve an unfair labor practices strike on behalf of its 8,000 members,” CBS News reported, but many other workers plan on following through with the strike. In the meantime, let’s dive into what else is going on in retail this week.

In new hires: Rent the Runway’s new chief marketing officer starts her tenure today as the company ramps up its marketing efforts. Natalie McGrath most recently worked at Afterpay, where she was a VP of marketing.

In new partnerships: Starting Wednesday, DTC skin care brand Dieux will make its way into Sephora’s physical stores after launching online last month. It’s the brand’s first wholesale partnership, and its products will be in 714 Sephora locations.

In earnings: Target reports earnings tomorrow. It’s coming off a Q3 when, although it beat Wall Street’s expectations, revenue still dropped more than 4% YoY as customers eased spending ahead of the holidays. Analysts anticipate that Target will bring in higher YoY earnings and a revenue bump.

Keep reading here.—KM

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