11/30/21 Farm Stores, a 'Convenient Drive-Thru,' Opens Third Store in New Jersey The New Jersey convenience store market is about to get more crowded and more convenient. Farm Stores, with its headquarters and most of its store locations in Florida, is expanding its "convenient drive-thru" franchise to the Northeast. The franchise chain will celebrate its newest location in Newton, the state's third, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday. . . Groceries can be pre-ordered online or at the store similar to fast food restaurant drive-thrus. Instead of the faceless intercom system, Farm Stores have a sliding door that is opened by an employee who takes the order. Employees then deliver the groceries to the vehicle, simple, said Byun. 11/29/21 Survey: Struggle to Find Workers (Despite Raising Wages) Has 1 In 4 Business Owners Thinking Of Selling Their Companies How bad is the staffing crisis in New Jersey? Consider this: Nearly three out of four business owners struggled to find help in 2021 - despite increasing pay rates - and more than one in four said they will consider selling their businesses sooner than they had planned because of it. For those struggling to find help, one in three reported they hired people with lower qualifications than they wanted - and one in four said they were forced to reduce the hours/days they were open. The statistics are part of the 2022 Business Outlook Survey by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, which released its 63rd annual look Monday morning. 11/24/21 Philadelphia Can't Enforce Flavored Tobacco Sales Ban, Federal Court Rules A federal appeals court on Wednesday barred Philadelphia from enforcing a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products, a measure aimed at cracking down on sales of cigars marketed to taste like candy. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Cigar Association of America and a group of cigar manufacturers, importers, and distributors in concluding that the 2019 ordinance was preempted by state law. . . The Philadelphia ordinance banned sales of tobacco products with a characterizing flavor other than tobacco, including flavored cigarettes and chewing tobacco. It included a narrow exception for tobacco product distribution businesses, defined as institutions closed to minors that derive most of their sales from tobacco products. 11/24/21 How Much Will Gas Prices Fall Now That Biden Is Tapping U.S. Strategic Reserves? Where are gas prices going now that President Joe Biden released 50 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic reserve? They're going down. . . "You'll see prices drift a little lower in response to today's announcement," said Tom Kloza, Oil Price Information Service global petroleum analyst. "You're not going to run out and get a boat. It's not enough." Similar announcements were made by China, the United Kingdom and Japan to release oil from their strategic reserves to lower oil prices. Crude oil is the raw petroleum product from which gasoline is refined. Bids are scheduled for Dec. 6 with sale of the first 18 million barrels of crude oil scheduled to be announced Dec. 17, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 11/23/21 Swipe Fees Help Drive Thanksgiving Inflation Swipe fees are a significant contribution to rising holidays costs, adding millions of dollars to prices paid by consumers, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition. . . Credit card swipe fees remain one of the highest operating costs for convenience store retailers after labor, according to NACS State of the Industry data. Consumer preferences for more touch-free transactions and the coin circulation challenge in summer 2020 led to record debit and credit card usage at convenience stores. In 2020, 74.6% of all transactions were paid by plastic, and overall card fees paid by the convenience store industry were $10.7 billion, NACS SOI data indicate. When all brands of credit and debit cards are included, processing fees totaled $116.4 billion in 2019, up 88% over the previous decade, according to Nilson. Debit-card swipe fees are limited to 21 cents per transaction for the nation's largest banks if they follow Visa and Mastercard's fee schedules, but smaller banks can charge more. 11/23/21 U.S. To Release Oil from Reserves in Coordination with Other Countries to Lower Gas Prices President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the administration will tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a global effort by energy-consuming nations to calm 2021′s rapid rise in fuel prices. The coordinated release between the U.S., India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom is the first such move of its kind. The U.S. will release 50 million barrels from the SPR. Of that total, 32 million barrels will be an exchange over the next several months, while 18 million barrels will be an acceleration of a previously authorized sale. 11/22/21 Bracket Creep: Under-The-Radar Tax Hikes For NJ Wage Earners No major tax hikes are on the agenda for the current lame-duck session of the Legislature, but that doesn't mean all New Jersey residents will escape the year unscathed. Instead, due to rising inflation, some people could be getting hit with an income-tax hike if their wages increase enough on paper to put them in a new tax bracket. Under a circumstance known as "bracket creep," the tax hikes will come even as inflation - which has increased significantly over the last year, according to the latest federal data - erodes the buying power of their take-home pay, resulting in a net loss for the taxpayer. 11/22/21 Supply Chain Issues Impact Day-To-Day Items Need by NJ Businesses Supply chain issues are impacting businesses in New Jersey such as dry cleaners and delis who rely on some day-to-day items in order to operate. New Pearl Cleaners and Jimmy's Deli struggled to remain in business during the pandemic. Now with the current supply chain issues, those businesses are paying more for supplies. 11/22/21 Here's What's Going on With Gas Prices Gas prices are always a hot topic, and it's never been more so than right now. California is facing record prices a few days in a row. The national average is as high as it's been this time of year in late November. The holiday travel season kicks off this week with Thanksgiving, and prices historically rise. What's going on with gas prices? "Gas is increasing at a time when it usually decreases. Part of that could be related to demand, but it's really more related to oil prices and how they've continued to ramp up and refining margins being fairly robust," said Jeff Lenard, NACS vice president of strategic industry initiatives, and this week's Convenience Matters podcast host. 11/21/21 How the U.S. Lost Ground to China in the Contest for Clean Energy China's pursuit of Congo's cobalt wealth is part of a disciplined playbook that has given it an enormous head start over the United States in the race to dominate the electrification of the auto industry, long a key driver of the global economy. But an investigation by The New York Times revealed a hidden history of the cobalt acquisitions in which the United States essentially surrendered the resources to China, failing to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments in Congo. The sale of the two mines, also flush with copper, highlights the shifting geography and politics of the clean energy revolution, with countries rich in cobalt, lithium and other raw materials needed for batteries suddenly playing the role of oil giants. 11/21/21 Kudos to Wawa Gas Attendant Who Actually Provided Full Service at the Pump
This is something you don't see often. Full service at the gas pump, with actual full service. Well okay, maybe not full service for what it used to be, but it's close enough. Anytime a gas attendant goes beyond taking the gas cap off and putting the pump in is a rarity within itself. Back in the day (as the old saying goes), full service meant the gas attendant checked everything for you. Not only did they fill your car with gas, but they also checked the wiper fluid, cleaned your windshield, and checked other vitals of the car as a courtesy. It's said that some even went as far as top off your oil. Now I don't think I'd trust a gas attendant to mess around under my hood in today's world, but I don't think having a windshield squeegeed is such a bad thing. But that's exactly what this gas attendant did.
11/20/21 A Power Struggle over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution This wooded stretch of southeast Democratic Republic of Congo, called Kisanfu, holds one of the largest and purest untapped reserves of cobalt in the world. The gray metal, typically extracted from copper deposits, has historically been of secondary interest to miners. But demand is set to explode worldwide because it is used in electric-car batteries, helping them run longer without a charge. Outsiders discovering - and exploiting - the natural resources of this impoverished Central African country are following a tired colonial-era pattern. . .Now, with more than two-thirds of the world's cobalt production coming from Congo, the country is once again taking center stage as major automakers commit to battling climate change by transitioning from gasoline-burning vehicles to battery-powered ones. The new automobiles rely on a host of minerals and metals often not abundant in the United States or the oil-rich Middle East, which sustained the last energy era. 11/19/21 FDA Appears in Court Over Menthol Ban Lawsuit Attorneys for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appeared in court yesterday as anti-tobacco groups accused the agency of failing to implement a ban on menthol cigarettes. A 2013 report by the FDA found that menthol cigarettes make it easier to start smoking and harder to quit, so the American Medical Association, African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council and Action on Smoking and Health sued the agency last year, urging it to take action based on the findings of the FDA report. n April 2021, the FDA proposed a ban on selling menthol cigarettes and cigars by April 2022. In September, the FDA denied marketing applications for flavored electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products submitted by 34 companies, representing about 355,000 products. Last month, the agency authorized the marketing of R.J. Reynolds' Vuse Solo e-cigarette and three tobacco-flavored e-liquid pods, but said it was "still evaluating" the company's application for menthol-flavored products. 11/18/21 Merchants Ask FTC to Probe Card Firms' Role in Gas Price Hike The Merchants Payments Coalition yesterday called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate the credit card industry, saying swipe fees charged to process transactions have contributed to increases in gasoline prices. "Card fees are up nearly 20% for gasoline retailers this year," said Doug Kantor, NACS general counsel and MPC executive committee member. "The card industry is making more right now from gas sales than local gas station owners. That's not right." The MPC move comes as President Joe Biden yesterday asked the FTC to investigate whether oil companies are engaging in any illegal conduct that has led to higher gas prices. |
