Point of Sale: Refreshing beer, $100M for new employees and Tesla on pause

Stella Artois for brunch, lunch and dinner

Stella Artois is setting sights on a new audience. Adweek reports that the beverage brand announced a new campaign aimed at being more representational and attracting more multicultural customers in an effort to become the beer folks prefer with meals.

One of these campaign projects is called Table Drop and will focus on the relationships people make around the dinner table — not like a family connection, more like a group of new friends meeting and making memories. 

“The only way to be real is to show real people doing real things,” Marcela Garcia, the vice president of marketing, told Adweek. “Moving to a world that is vibrant and real is fundamental to be able to communicate this new direction that it’s still about owning a new premium, but through the lens of the modern consumer.”

Garcia said this campaign will “refresh” the brand. The campaign will include food influencers, chefs and a sense of connection between Stella Artois beer and the food you enjoy. Adweek said influencers will be highlighted throughout the year. The campaign will launch in the U.S. and be pushed out to Argentina, Canada, South Africa and other countries later in the year.

“This is just the first chapter,” said Garcia. “This is us kicking off this equity refresh. Then we’re going to continue driving our table in meaningful connections during different cultural moments during the year. So expect more coming from us starting this summer when we are inviting other friends into the family to join us around the table.”

The trading post

(Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

DG invests in its people

If you’ve spent as much time on the road scouring random towns as I have, then you know every town has two things: a Subway and a Dollar General. This is merely an observation, but even the smallest of towns seems to carry those two. And if you’re lucky, you’ve had the ice cream at a few particular Subway locations.

While I know Dollar Generals can be found in many places, it still surprised me to learn that this year the retail giant opened its 19,000th location. There are 19,000 Dollar General stores — and counting. The company plans to open more than 1,000 new locations in the future and bring on new employees to fill those stores. These moves are included in the company’s $100 million plan.

Retail Dive reports that Dollar General’s Q4 net sales grew 18%, bringing in $10.2 billion. Annually, it brought in $37.8 billion, with folks buying less apparel and seasonal products but more items like food and drinks.

John Garratt, Dollar General’s chief financial officer, believes the $100 million investment in staffing will drive “stronger in-store execution,” allowing the company to build the momentum it has with customers. Essentially, more in-store employees equal a better experience for shoppers.

“While we anticipate the first half of fiscal 2023 to be negatively impacted by ongoing sales mix pressures, higher shrink levels, increased damages, and higher interest expense, we are confident in our full-year plans,” Garratt told Retail Dive.

Analysts seem to have mixed views on what these Q4 numbers mean for Dollar General and its outlook. Check out the full article here.

Gigs and gadgets

(Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Superchargers on hold

Tesla is pressing pause on building four Supercharger sites in California. Car Scoops says these projects would have cost $6.4 million and included the world’s largest Supercharger site with 164 charging ports. Why is it put on pause? Tesla reportedly lost public funding because of the design of the charging stations. These stations don’t have screens so they cannot offer payment options to their customers. This fact makes the charging stations ineligible for money in Clean Energy Commission subsidies from the state of California. That money equaled $6.4 million — $1.6 million per Supercharger site.

“The California Clean Energy Commission (CEC) has been a great visionary in the expansion of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in California,” said Tesla’s policy and business development lead Jennifer Cohen. “Unfortunately, due to unnecessarily cumbersome payment infrastructure requirements, we are unable to utilize this award.”

Car Scoops explains that the state requires these types of chargers to have multiple payment options for customers to use credit, debit or app options, and if Tesla isn’t moving forward with the projects, it might be because it’ll cost too much to remake the charging stations with screens.

We’ll see if Tesla figures something out in order to build these Superchargers. The projects were planned for Baker, Barstow, Willows and Coalinga, California.

SONAR steals

(Source: FreightWaves SONAR)

This week we’re checking out the Outbound Tender Rejection Index (OTRI) in Memphis, Tennessee. OTRI rates represent measurements of carriers’ willingness to accept the loads tendered to them by shippers under contract terms. OTRI is expressed as a percentage of loads rejected to total loads tendered.

Outbound tender rejection rates in Memphis fell 220 basis points week over week (w/w), from 6.84% on March 9 to 4.64% on Thursday.

During that same w/w period, outbound tender volumes declined 5.1% from 177.4 points on March 9 to 168.32 on Thursday.

The Memphis market frequently experiences a spring surge in volumes as shippers ramp up production for mowers and home improvement goods, but excess truckload capacity may be filling this demand. Rejection rates have fallen to levels not seen since the first week of January. 

Is SONAR for you? Check it out with a demo!

Need to speak to the manager? Shoot me an email with comments, questions or story ideas at sedwards@freightwaves.com.