With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• The Nashville Business Journal reports that Dollar General has opened its first international store, Escobedo, Nuevo León, Mexico, under the banner Mi Súper Dollar General.
The plan is to have 35 Mi Súper Dollar General stores operating in communities in northern Mexico by the end of the current fiscal year.
• In western New York, the Democrat and Chronicle reports that Hegedorn's Market, a single-store independent grocer, will close after seven decades in business.
"It's a tough gig to be an independent grocer now," says Jonathan Gonzalez, grandson of the store's founder. "It's sad but its been a great run. This business has come to an end of its life cycle."
"In 1953, Bruce Hegedorn and his wife, Mary, opened a 2,000-square-foot market at the corner of Ridge and Hard roads in Webster as an IGA store," the story says. "After several expansions, the store is now 45,000 square feet, with a floral shop, bakery and a large selection of craft beers, but it remained family-owned and -operated. Second- and third-generation owners of the market work side by side with staffers who have worked there for decades and know their customers."
The story also features comments from a number of customers bemoaning the closing of the store, but clearly there were not enough of them doing their shopping at the store to keep it open. Gonzalez is right about it being a tough market - Hegedorn's is about a dozen miles northeast of Rochester, as well as being one mile from the closest Wegmans, three miles from the nearest Walmart, and eight miles from a Tops store.
• ABC News reports that CVS is closing on its $8 billion acquisition of health care services company Signify Health, which it writes makes CVS "among the first pharmacy chains in the U.S. to enter the at-home health care space after building its successful Minute Clinics … Signify Health has thousands of employees including physicians, nurse practitioners and other clinicians which provide a 'holistic suite of clinical, social, and behavioral services to address an individual's healthcare needs and prevent adverse events that drive excess cost, all while shifting services towards the home,' the company said in a press release."
• It isn't just the technology companies that are laying people off as they seek to streamline their operations.
Variety reports that "Disney will begin layoff notices this week for more than 7,000 staffers whose positions will be eliminated as part of a deep cost-cutting effort that will be felt across all of the company’s key divisions.
"Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed Monday morning in a memo to employees that the layoffs will come in three waves, starting today. Iger disclosed the plan to significantly cut Disney’s overhead with massive staff reductions on Feb. 8. The cuts are expected to hit across the board and hit senior management levels as well as lower-level executives … The mass layoffs reflect the depth of the transformation that Disney and other media companies face amid the difficult transition from analog TV and traditional movies into the on-demand streaming era.
"One area of Disney employment that is expected to be mostly spared is employees who interact with guests at the company’s theme parks. After the pandemic shutdowns, the resiliency of demand for Disney’s global theme parks has been a vital ballast for the company in turbulent times for Hollywood."
