TrendSource Trending Blog

Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, which recently went public and now trades as GO, just keeps on GOing. In their first earnings report, the company posted double-digit sales increases, beat their earnings forecast, and increased same-store sales by 5.8%. They’ve posted fifteen (15!) consecutive years of positive comps, hitting in $1.25 billion in net sales in the first half of 2019, up 11.2% from their $1.13 billion in the previous year. 

Pedialyte is growing up. Abbott’s life-saving rehydration product formerly marketed to parents of diarrhea-dehydrated children now wants to save adults from a different kind of dehydration, the kind that comes from drinking one (or seven) too many adult beverages.

The first month of school always seems to fly by, right? Getting to know new people, meeting and dreaming about your newest crush, finding your place in the class, and of course sizing up your new teacher—yup, that first month just flies by.
So why should it be any different with Market Research 101 where, we are shocked to realize, we have already completed our first month of Market Research learning? So far, we’ve covered panel surveys, customer intercepts, and focus groups, and today it’s time for shop-alongs.

Northgate Market, a chain of Mexican-oriented grocery stores and a bonnafide southern California institution, is living the dream. From its bootstrap immigrant origin story to its current stranglehold on the Latinx grocery market, its national recognition as essential to low-income communities to its seduction of hipster/millennial shoppers, Northgate Market’s history and trajectory tell us a lot about the evolving nature of ethnic grocery stores.

The Cheesecake Factory, everybody’s favorite ‘everything under the sun’ casual dine-in, is going fast casual, rolling out a piloted pan-Asian fast casual concept in a tony Los Angeles suburb. The new location, called the Social Monk (more on the name and the monk later) will look to capitalize on food service and fast casual trends, and when an avowed leader of the casual dine-in segment is jumping into the fast casual life raft, it merits some contemplation (yes, that is a monk joke).