Stephan's Friday Picks

• Wellness is dead. Long live the martini (Grub Street)
• Sweet and squishy as ever, the gummy universe keeps expanding (NYT)
• America may have eaten its fill of chicken wings (Bloomberg)
• The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap (The Hustle)
• From the archives (2012): Richard Baker: A balancing act in choppy retail waters (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Thursday Picks

• A generational portrait of Canada's aging population (Statistics Canada)
• Candlesticks make a resurgence (NYT)
• The next frontier in consumer goods: Digitally enabled innovation (McKinsey)
• Giant Tiger partners with Instacart (Newsire)
• JCPenney owners offer to buy archrival Kohl's for $8.6B (New York Post)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• How inflation is impacting U.S. discretionary spending (First Insight)
• The correlation between dollar stores and food deserts (Eater)
• The Amazonification of the American workforce (Vox)
• The convenient truth of rotisserie chicken (Taste)
• Canadians are sitting on record amounts of cash - but nobody is sure what to do with the money (Globe and Mail)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• State of Grocery Europe 2022 (McKinsey)
• How a Dollar General employee went viral on TikTok (NYT)
• Roger Martin: The purpose of corporate purpose (Medium)
• How Reebok lost its number 1 spot (Retail Dive)
• Competition between Shopify and Amazon heats up as one company plans billion-dollar acquisition and other announces new strategy (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Monday Picks

• What you don't know about Amazon (NYT)
• How bricks might save clicks (WSJ)
• The world's food system is too dependent on wheat (Bloomberg)
• Four hidden reasons food prices are crazy right now (Washington Post)
• Metro says food basket inflation hits 5%, warns of more price pain to come (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Friday Picks

• How America's farmers got cut out of the supply chain (NYT)
• Grubhub owner Just Eat considers sale after orders fall (WSJ)
• Nestle starts year with strongest price increase in decade (Bloomberg)
• Inflation rate shatters expectations, hits 31-year high (Globe and Mail)
• From the archives: Joe Beef and the excesses of restaurant culture (The New Yorker)

 Stephan's Thursday Picks

• Shopify restructuring boosts Lutke's power rather than curtailing it (Globe and Mail)
• Walmart heirs launching their own Woodstock with an art and music festival (WSJ)
• The rising risk of a global food crisis (McKinsey)
• Why prepared rotisserie chickens are cheaper than ones you cook yourself (CBC)
• FDA investigating reports of illness from Lucky Charms (NYT)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• How Barnes & Noble want from villain to hero (NYT)
• Tesco: A cautionary inflationary tale (FT)
• Canadian Tire and Loblaw pay out millions in bonuses to top executives as after COVID-19 sales boom (Globe and Mail)
• Return to the office? Managers shouldn't overstate the benefits (Bloomberg)
• Asda's private equity buyer records 20-fold return from debt-laden deal (FT)

 Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Roger Martin: Talent strategy in 2022 (Medium)
• How keeping quiet about politics helped make Uniqlo China's favourite fashion brand (Bloomberg)
• Demand for comfort food greases market for all things fried (WSJ)
• How Panera Bread navigated Covid, the labour market, inflation, and more (NYT)
• Why a federal salmon study that found viruses at B.C. fish farms took 10 years to be released  (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Monday Picks

• Yes, investing in ESG pays off (HBR)
• A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world (The Guardian)
• GoPuff buys time for its 30-minute or less grocery promise (NYT)
• The FDA's food failure (Politico)
• Our food system isn't ready for the climate crisis (The Guardian)

 Stephan's Thursday Picks

• How the pandemic hollowed out America's biggest cities (Slate)
• Paypal CFO John Rainey leaving to join Walmart as CFO (WSJ)
• One or two days in the office is the 'sweet spot' of hybrid work (Bloomberg)
• Baby-formula shortages prompts rationing at Kroger, Target, CVS, and Walgreens (WSJ)
• From the archives (2019): Lean Cuisine's post-diet rebrand to wellness didn't really work (Vox)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• Shoppers are obsessed with Wegmans and Publix. Here's what it's like to work there (Fortune)
• Shopify shares rise as company announces 10-for-1 stock split (Globe and Mail)
• What to know about the Etsy strike (The Cut)
• Brooklinen CEO has answer to woes of digital brands: Be profitable (Bloomberg)
• Albertsons wants out of the discount aisle (WSJ)

 Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Roger Martin: The presumption of guilt (Medium)
• Inside the fierce, messy fight over health sugar tech (MIT Technology Review)
• 'Cheap as chips' no longer true in U.K. as prices soar for a favourite meal (NYT)
• Amazon drone crashes hit Jeff Bezos' delivery dreams (Bloomberg)
• The mystery of the missing Georgia peach ice cream sandwiches at the Masters (WSJ)

 Stephan's Monday Picks

• Shrinking The Gap: How a clothing brand lost its way (The Guardian)
• Rise of Shein tests and industry's go-green commitments (Bloomberg)
• Surging costs hard to swallow for makers of the humble BLT (FT)
• The home cooks (and startups) betting on prepared meals (NYT)
• The 15-minute ultrafast delivery craze slams into reality (Bloomberg)

 Stephan's Friday Picks

• Federal government earmarks $56-billion in new spending, higher taxes, but short on growth plans (Globe and Mail)
• Alphabet's Wing kicks off drone delivery service (The Verge)
• How to unionize at Amazon (The New Yorker)
• Walmart offers as much as $110,000 starting pay to lure truck drivers (WSJ)
• From the archives (2021): Where mushrooms come from (Food & Wine)

 Stephan's Thursday Picks

• Hasbro rejects activist's call to split company (WSJ)
• The 'coasting' workers who have checked out of their jobs (BBC)
• Instacart won the pandemic but its rivals are catching up (WSJ)
• Kroger and Bed Bath & Beyond launch national e-commerce experience (Kroger)
• Disclosures on nature, climate go hand-in-hand, Nestle Chief Risk Officer says (WSJ)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• Jamie Dimon's 2021 Letter to Shareholders (JP Morgan Chase)
• This is what happens when there are too many meetings (The Atlantic)
• Shein in talks to raise funds at $100 billion valuation (Bloomberg)
• Starbucks new CEO scraps stock buybacks to 'invest more profit into our people' (NYT)
• Your loyalty program might be losing you money (HBR)

 Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Roger Martin: Strategy, disruption & you (Medium)
• The best way to de-stress workers? Scrap meetings (Bloomberg)
• Unlocking value in food service through revenue growth management (McKinsey)
• How we lost our sensory connection with food - and how to get it back (The Guardian)
• How much do things really cost (The New Yorker)

 Stephan's Monday Picks

• Instant grocery: Will it stay or will it go (McKinsey)
• New apps offering grocery delivery in under 10 minutes pin their hopes on power of habit (CBC)
• The delivery giants are throwing a pivot party (Bloomberg)
• JCPenney's new CEO is done chasing customers (WSJ)
• Corporate Canada wants Ottawa to focus on real growth, not "Sugar Pops" economics (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Friday Picks

• Dollarama set to hike prices up to $5 (Globe and Mail)
• Brand loyalty takes a hit due to inflation, shortages (WSJ)
• Consortium to buy Nielsen for $10 billion (WSJ)
• Power Corp of Canada buys Lios Partners to create new agri-food private equity fund (Globe and Mail)
• From the archives (2019): L'Express, the beloved Montreal bistro where so much began (NYT)