Charles Redfield, executive vice president for Walmart’s U.S. food division, recently spoke at an event for their local Chamber of Commerce in Bentonville, Arizona and outlined a few directions the mega-retailer is undertaking this year. He mentioned a new food lab and sensory kitchen they are creating to help food suppliers and Walmart improve on future food offerings. The food lab is scheduled for completion in late May and is expected to be unveiled during Walmart’s annual shareholders week in early June.

According to Redfield, Walmart U.S. grew its food market share by 1.3 per cent between 2011 and 2015. They also plan improvements in dry grocery and have hired 30 new managers to oversee a lot of changes for the fresh and frozen food categories.

He also noted two key customer segments Walmart will focus on this year: the 79-million millennial generation consumers and the growing Hispanic market. Now comprising just 18 per cent of the general U.S. population, Hispanics will represent 38 per cent of the growth in food sales they project.

Redfield was also careful to note that, unlike competitors such as Target and CVS who have been viewed as a tad dictatorial in their crusades for healthier options, Walmart is more driven by consumer demand than the need to be seen as a “green” retailer.

According to their own blog, Bullseye View, U.S. retailer Target is putting more focus on healthier food and transparency. Last November they announced their collaboration with global design firm IDEO and MIT Media Lab, to create Target’s Food + Future coLab. This week, their first two actions were revealed, both centred on food labelling.

Firstly, their new food brand, Good & Gather, will display ingredients on the front of packaging rather than in fine print on the back. Secondly, new labels on fruits and vegetables will allow consumers to scan them, revealing real time nutritional information, and allow payment based on nutritional value and freshness.

Target’s Food + Future coLab opened in January near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, as their blog describes, is a “bustling lab full of bioengineers, students, nutritionists and farmers [who are] hard at work testing big ideas about the future of food.” With plans for several years of collaboration, the lab staff will centre on urban farming, supply chain and health, and food transparency.

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Despite overall performance declines they describe as short-term, Moody’s Investor Service is giving Whole Foods Market a “thumbs up”. They expect that Whole Foods will maintain and strengthen their lead in the organic/natural health retail sector.

“The company is also implementing a long-term plan to broaden its appeal to more price-conscious consumers and alter the perception that the natural and organic lifestyle it promotes is only accessible to a higher-income demographic,” notes Moody’s.

This is a real shot in the arm for the industry leader after several boycotts and protests by activist groups and a layoff of 1.6 per cent of its work force last year.

Although Moody’s expects flat comparable sales growth during fiscal 2016 for Whole Foods, it expects greater improvement of 1.5 to 2.5 per cent in 2017.

According to a February 8th report by TD Economics, U.S. cross-border spending is at an all-time low. It’s expected that daily visits to the U.S. for shopping by Canadians will be at its lowest levels since the Great Recession in the late 2000s. The same report projects the loonie will average roughly US $0.71 this year, leading many Canadians to rethink their travel plans to the U.S.

This is not all bad news. The report’s co-author Derek Burleton, vice-president and deputy chief economist with TD Bank Group suggests that Americans will likely cross Canadian borders more this year, injecting some tourism dollars into their hungry economies.

Burleton says he believes Canadian border communities that are seen as tourist destinations will more likely benefit from an increase of U.S. visitors. “You can’t paint all border communities with the same brush,” he told the Globe and Mail. “Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake, for example, stand to benefit more from U.S. traffic because they have that lure as a tourist destination.”

General Mills EVP and COO Jeff Harmening announced they have decided to not only comply with the state of Vermont’s pending GMO labelling laws, it will soon do so nationwide. In an effort to not increase costs to customers, General Mills plans to include GMO labels on their products for the entire United States.

“We can’t label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers and we simply will not do that,” says Harmening in the company’s blog.

It makes sense to make this change across all company marketing, and Harmening noted the company’s organic and natural brands Annie’s, Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen and Larabar are already GMO-free.

General Mills has also created a search tool on its website where consumers can find which products contain GMOs.

In a similar move, Campbell has decided to also support federal GMO labelling requirements. “Campbell is optimistic a federal solution can be established in a reasonable amount of time if all the interested stakeholders cooperate,” said Campbell in a company statement. “However, if that is not the case, Campbell is prepared to label all of its U.S. products for the presence of ingredients that were derived from GMOs, not just those required by pending legislation in Vermont. The company would seek guidance from the FDA and approval by USDA.”