Stephan's Friday Picks

• Rite Aid and Albertsons agree to call off merger in face of opposition (NYT)
• The primal pleasure and brutal history of sugar (Eater)
• Walmart co-leads $500M investment in Chinese online grocery grocery service Dada-JD Daojia (Tech Crunch)
• Petco partners with Canadian Tire (Retail Dive)
• From the archives (2015): How Indra Nooyi turned design thinking into strategy (HBR)

Stephan's Thursday Picks

• A guide to Walmart's ragtag alliances against Amazon (Bloomberg)
• Ikea opens first India store, tweaking products but not vibe (NYT)
• The reality behind voice shopping hype (The Information)
• Nestle has a plan to bring customers back to 'Big Food' (Washington Post)
• From Amazon to Alibaba, grocers' agony is endless (Bloomberg)

Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• The $300 million plan to farm salmon in the middle of the ocean (Bloomberg)
• Albertsons teams with VC firm on tech incubator (Supermarket News)
• Walmart to launch Everlane rival (Business of Fashion)
• JD launches its first international unmanned store in Indonesia (Pandaily)
• Amazon and Walmart's rivalry is reshaping how we'll buy everything in the future (The Verge)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• The decline and fall of Diet Coke (The New Yorker)
• Uniqlo has a vest vending machine in the San Francisco airport (Racked)
• Nestle experiments with tracking Gerber baby food on the blockchain (WSJ)
• The surprising psychology of dieting and plate design (Fast Company)
• Patron made tequila top-shelf. Will Bacardi dilute it (Bloomberg)

Stephan's Friday Picks

• America's love affair with beer is on the rocks (WSJ)
• Standard Cognition is first Amazon Go to rival to unveil deal with stores (Fast Company)
• Prices for canned goods about to go up in Canada as tariffs start to bite (CBC)
• Third Point seeks allies to put pressure on Campbell Soup (Reuters)
• From the archives (2017): Who killed Sears Canada (The Globe and Mail)

Stephan's Thursday Picks

• Meet the kinder, gentler - and Canadian - face of Tim Hortons (CBC)
• Kroger to launch grocery delivery service (WSJ)
• The freshest ideas are in small grocery stores (NYT)
• How Everlane hacked your wardrobe (The New Yorker)
• The future of retail (Trend Watching)

Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• Nike's plan to survive the retail apocalypse: Go direct to consumers (Quartz)
• America's most loved brands 2018 (Morning Consult) 
• How grocers buy better for growth (Bain)
• How Big Food drives impulse buys online (Food Dive)
• The internet is irrationally hyped about Panera's double bread bowl (Eater)