News Briefs

Bay Cities Packaging & Design is expanding its Midwest operations with two major moves aimed at strengthening client service, production capacity and speed-to-market.

The company is relocating its Midwest packout, fulfillment and logistics facility to a new site in Oak Forest, Illinois. Bay Cities described the location as a “state-of-the-art” operation that will support continued growth and improve operational efficiency.

The move follows the recent opening of an office in Blue Ash, Ohio, just outside Cincinnati, in November. 

Bay Cities said in a company blog post that the Cincinnati office was established to better serve clients across the Midwest and East Coast by offering greater proximity, faster turnaround times and expanded services. The site brings together the company’s full suite of capabilities, including:

• Graphic and structural design.
• Project management.
• Sales support.
• Color mockup production and digital printing.
• Retailer execution expertise.

The office also provides strategic access to major retailers in the region, including Cincinnati-based Kroger.

“Our expansion into Cincinnati reflects Bay Cities’ commitment to creativity, customer intimacy and being exactly where our clients need us,” said Greg Tucker, chairman and CEO of Bay Cities. “This new location allows us to deliver on our concept-to-completion model — helping brands win with their retailers, their suppliers and ultimately, their customers.”

Leadership and Next Steps

The Cincinnati operation is led by Jeff Craig, senior vice president of sales. According to the company, the team is focused on developing new partnerships and providing faster prototyping, rapid response times and enhanced retail expertise.

Both the Oak Forest relocation and Blue Ash office opening are part of Bay Cities’ broader strategy to expand where client demand is growing and reinforce its end-to-end packaging and retail execution capabilities.

Beverage alcohol data company Jenda has introduced Executive Intelligence 2.0, an upgraded platform designed to give suppliers and distributors a daily, national view of commercial conditions across more than 60,000 off-premise retail locations. The platform is now rolling out broadly after a limited beta program. 

Jenda was recently described by an industry leader as the “Moneyball for BevAlc” for its ability to surface undervalued opportunities and reveal hidden risks at the outlet level, according to a media release.

For years, BevAlc suppliers have relied largely on delayed or incomplete insight into store-level pricing, assortment and competitive activity. Executive Intelligence 2.0 seeks to close that gap by providing daily assessments of how brands are positioned to win or lose across retail accounts, mirroring real shopper experiences and focusing on the factors that most influence purchase decisions — including presence, availability and price, per the release.

“Executive Intelligence 2.0 gives leadership teams a clear view of what’s happening across the country today and the ability to act on it,” said Harry Shulman, CEO of Jenda. “This new tool replaces assumptions with accuracy and provides suppliers with the clarity needed to compete in a complex environment.”

Key Features of Executive Intelligence 2.0

The expanded platform unifies Jenda’s commercial data into an executive-level interface designed to highlight the most important dynamics affecting performance. Core components include:

Nationwide Portfolio Health: A national assessment of execution fundamentals, surfacing markets and retailer groups where conditions are strong as well as areas where weaknesses — such as recurring out-of-stocks, distribution gaps or misaligned price positions — are creating risk.

Pricing Alignment & Market Visibility: A consolidated view of retail pricing across tens of thousands of outlets, signaling where pricing aligns with intended brand strategy and where mismatches may be slowing performance or squeezing margin.

Share Capture Opportunities: Identification of markets and retailer groups where competitive vulnerabilities — including sustained availability lapses, reduced shelf presence or disadvantageous pricing — create immediate potential to capture share.

Execution Issues & Early Indicators: “High level” detection of emerging issues related to distribution, availability, pricing and competitive pressure, offering leadership early visibility into problems.

“Our partners want immediate visibility into the signals that impact today’s performance,” Shulman added. “Executive Intelligence 2.0 is designed to surface those priorities.”

Wakefern Food Corp. is increasing the in-store retail media touchpoints within its ShopRite stores. 

The retailer-owned supermarket cooperative is adding digital screens to 31 ShopRite locations across New York and New Jersey through an expanded partnership with Grocery TV. The rollout brings the platform’s presence to more than 230 ShopRite stores and over 6,500 stores nationwide.

The installations include screens at store entrances, front-end lanes and pharmacy areas. They allow ShopRite to communicate sales, promotions, service updates and job information while giving brands additional opportunities to reach shoppers during their trip.

“In-store retail media is no longer a test-and-learn channel,” Marlow Nickell, co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV, said in a media release. “Our expansion with ShopRite shows how quickly retailers are scaling networks. It's part of a broader shift we’re seeing nationwide, as grocers formalize in-store media as a strategic revenue stream and a core part of the shopper experience.”

ShopRite first partnered with Grocery TV in 2021 and has steadily expanded its use of the platform. In 2024, ShopRite began rolling out Grocery TV’s digital screens near the pharmacy counter to serve health-related information and brand advertising to shoppers.

“By customizing screen placement to fit each store’s unique layout and traffic patterns, we can deliver a variety of important information to customers from ShopRite and national brands,” added Darren Caudill, chief sales officer for Wakefern.

Related: Grocery TV Marks Milestone Amid In-Store Retail Media Growth

The expansion adds to Grocery TV’s broader national growth across more than 120 grocery retailers, reaching a reported 95 million unique shoppers and offering brands additional in-store touchpoints near the point of purchase.

Vanguard Cos. has named longtime corrugated and design industry leader Chad Burghart as its director of creative services. Burghart will oversee the company’s regional design teams, guiding the creation and enhancement of Vanguard’s display, packaging, fulfillment and customer solutions.

Burghart will report to Chris Cummings, executive vice president of sales.

“We are thrilled that Chad has joined our team contributing his industry and design experience,” Cummings said in a media release. 

James Beard, Vanguard’s chief executive officer, added that Burghart’s expertise will “strengthen our business and help drive our continued success.”

Burghart brings extensive experience across point-of-purchase displays, corrugated materials and packaging innovation. He previously held leadership roles at Packaging Corporation of America (PCA), Sonoco, Georgia-Pacific, Miller Zell and, most recently, Bay Cities.

Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, Vanguard Cos. provides a wide range of P-O-P displays, retail and industrial packaging, signage, e-commerce packaging and fulfillment services. The company combines shopper insights, structural and graphic design, and program management capabilities to support omnichannel merchandising programs across retail sectors.

Love’s Travel Stops has named Dallas-based TRG (formerly The Richards Group) as its strategic agency of record for creative, media and brand strategy, beginning in January 2026. 

It’s the latest step in the convenience retailer’s broader effort to elevate its brand, unify its marketing approach and accelerate customer acquisition and retention initiatives.

The move follows a year of increased marketing investment for Love’s. In May, the company hired its first-ever chief marketing officer, former Walgreens SVP and CMO Patrick McLean. In October, it launched Love’s Media Group, a retailer media network designed to reach professional truck drivers and highway travelers more targeted, relevant advertising experiences. The addition of a full-service strategic agency of record is the latest signal that the company is building a more cohesive, growth-focused marketing engine.

McLean said the selection of TRG followed a competitive agency search that began in summer 2025 and was managed by Joanne Davis Consulting. Love’s previously relied on smaller agencies for project-based work, making this its first formal strategic agency partnership.

“Love’s looks forward to working with TRG to support our journey to build a marketing growth engine and evolve our already great brand into an iconic one that is virtually synonymous with the travel stop category,” McLean said in the company’s announcement. He added that TRG stood out for its strategic insights into the Love’s brand and customer base, noting the agency’s long track record helping build well-known American brands, including Chick-fil-A, Ram, Charles Schwab and The Home Depot.

The TRG appointment comes as Love’s works to modernize the customer experience across its more than 660 travel stops in 42 states. The retailer has signaled plans to more tightly integrate brand building, store experience improvements and data-driven media as it looks to strengthen loyalty.

Love’s, founded in 1964 and headquartered in Oklahoma City, operates travel stops and convenience stores, as well as fuel, trucking and mobility services across North America and Europe. 

Amazon Ads has expanded access to its Omnichannel Metrics (OCM) solution, allowing advertisers across additional categories — including consumer electronics, fashion, home goods and furniture, home improvement, and toys and games — to measure the offline sales impact of their Amazon DSP campaigns.

Previously available to a smaller set of verticals (primarily grocery categories), OCM now gives both managed and self-service advertisers the ability to evaluate how display, audio and video ads across Amazon and the open internet influence purchases both on and off the Amazon store.

OCM leverages Amazon’s first-party Shopper Panel data alongside third-party purchase signals to connect ad exposure with offline transactions — tracking how ads influence buying both on and off Amazon.

According to an Amazon Ads launch announcement via its website, this holistic approach helps advertisers better understand total sales impact and optimize media strategies across the full funnel.

By automating the study creation process, OCM removes a key barrier that previously made omnichannel measurement time-consuming or limited to larger campaigns. The update makes it easier for brands to routinely track how Amazon Ads contribute to total sales — not just online conversions — and refine investment decisions accordingly.

The expanded feature is currently available in the U.S. to eligible advertisers using Amazon DSP.