You are hereHomeProvidence Salon & Spa Providence Salon & SpaHostess and Nestlé Dreyer’s launch range of frozen snacks EFSA releases new guidance for health claim applications Bridor reveals $40m expansion to Canadian bakery facility Diageo creates new whiskey with investment at St James’ Gate Red Bull expands range of Editions with three new flavours Investment in UK food and drink industry at ‘3-year high’ ‘How innovation can disrupt a traditional market like wine’ Arla Foods to invest further £37m in UK operations during 2017 Global sugar production to record deficit for second year in a row Minute Maid juice launches three new ‘exotic’ flavour combinations Nestlé Italia to sell confectionery brands including Rossana to Fida Nestlé Italia has agreed a deal to sell six of its confectionery brands – including Rossana – to Italian sweet company Fida. As well as Rossana, the brands being sold by Nestlé Italia are Fluxes, Glacia, Fruttallegre, Lemoncella and Spicchi.

Their production will move from Nestlé’s Perugina site in Perugia, where they are currently made, to Fida’s plant in Castagnole delle Lanze – 30 miles southeast of Turin. The acquisition will further strengthen Fida’s position in the family confectionery market and will provide the best possible opportunity to enhance the Rossana brand, Nestlé said.handyman in queens ny Fida currently controls around 3.5% of Italy’s family candy market and, in 2015, generated sales of approximately €15 million.business for sale algarve Leo Wencel, head of market for the Nestlé Group in Italy, commented: “We were impressed by the warmth and affection shown by consumers against Rossana in recent months. business for sale andover nj

We are therefore particularly pleased to have found a solid and experienced partner in the field that, we are sure, will continue to promote these brands in the best way and ensure a successful future.” Fida president and chief executive officer Eugenio Pinel added: “We are proud of the agreement reached today, which – thanks to significant technological synergies, production and sales – allows us to strengthen our market position by expanding our product portfolio with a much-loved, historical brand. “We are ready to invest human and financial resources in its development and empowerment.” The transaction is expected to close by the end of the month. It forms part of Nestlé’s €60 million plan to strengthen Perugina’s position inside Italy and increase the number of export opportunities to overseas markets. Part of that plan, announced by FoodBev in March, includes a €15 million investment in strengthening its existing San Sisto factory in Perugia, modernising the facility and reaffirming its position as one of the foremost centres of excellence for chocolate production within the Nestlé Group.

© FoodBev Media Ltd 2017Silicon Valley is grabbing a piece of the hidebound used-car industry with technology that makes buying a car a matter of a few clicks on a smartphone. Launched in the past two years, valley startups Shift and Beepi, Phoenix’s Carvana and a few others have put pre-owned car buying online, where deals can be struck and financing obtained in minutes, with the car delivered to your door. “I think we’re all in agreement that a lot of things can be done to positively impact how cars are sold in the U.S.,” said Valentin Gui, co-founder of Instamotor, a San Francisco startup which has an app that connects sellers and buyers, performing digital checkups to root out fraud and other problems. “There are so many things you can do with technology to improve on that.” The used car business — estimated at $640 to $700 billion in 2015 — “has changed little over the past 50 years,” according to IBISWorld’s 2015 industry report. But change is coming.

By using mobile technology and algorithms that accurately predict how much a car will fetch and business models that keep overhead much lower than that of dealers, the new ventures say they can get a better deal for both sellers and buyers. They also emphasize transparency and value with seven- to 10-day returns with no questions asked. I got a firsthand look at a mobile technology-driven car purchase a couple months ago as my son was browsing Craiglist for a pre-owned car, encountering some of the usual problems. The first car he found wasn’t registered in the seller’s name. The next one was 30 miles away with a different prospective buyer coming in a half-hour. A dealer had one listed, but it hadn’t been detailed yet and wasn’t immediately available. Then he found a Prius on Craigslist that was advertised by Shift for its owner, someone who lived in San Francisco. A Shift “car enthusiast” (that’s an official title) drove the car to my house in Palo Alto from Shift’s lot in South San Francisco.

Shift’s enthusiast — a USC grad like my son — went over a 200-point inspection of the car by the company’s mechanics. After a test drive, my son bought it, signing the papers — including registration — in my living room. I asked the enthusiast how he was going to get back to San Francisco. A couple minutes later, an Uber taxi picked him up and he was gone. “We are very much not a dealership,” said Minnie Ingersol, Shift’s chief operating officer and a former Googler who managed the launch of Google Fiber. “We’re a peer-to-peer marketplace. We don’t have a retail showroom that our customers ever come to. We don’t have lot of overhead a dealership might have and we also never own the car. That allows us to pass on savings to our customers.” After years of online startups trying and failing to capture a piece of the huge U.S. used car market, 2013 seems to have been the magic year, said Ernie Garcia, a Stanford engineering graduate who founded Carvana in Phoenix.

“It’s an absolutely massive market, but some customers are actively dissatisfied and our view was that technology was the solution,” Garcia said. “It’s rare you find an industry a trillion dollars in size where consumers have been actively asking for something different for very long period of time,” he said. Carvana buys cars from sellers, spends about $1,000 reconditioning them and then lists them online, delivering cars to the buyers on flatbed trucks or in some cases, giving buyers the option of picking them up at a Carvana “vending machine.” A seemingly big hurdle — lack of a test drive — was easily cleared by Beepi, which has been growing at a 20 percent annual rate since its launch in 2013. “At first I was hesitant,” said Rosanna Peña, who recently bought a VW Beatle through Beepi. “It’s just like shopping online for clothes. You find it and buy it, because you don’t get to test drive it. I thought how do I know it’s good?” Peña looked at Beepi’s reviews on Yelp.

“All of their reviews were really, really good. The only bad ones were from people upset that their cars weren’t accepted to be sold because of issues with the engine or the maintenance wasn’t good. I thought, if they’re so picky, the cars must be good,” she said. “And if you don’t love it, you can return it.” Beepi co-founder and CEO Alejandro Resnik explained how research he did while a student at MIT convinced him there was a huge market for online used car sales waiting to be tapped. After an unpleasant experience buying a used Jeep that caught fire, Resnik, a serial entrepreneur, wondered why used car buying couldn’t be made easier by taking it online. The stumbling block was the test drive, he was told. Americans want to test-drive the car. “In Argentina, there is no culture of a test drive,” Resnik said. “Research showed (in the U.S.) people do test drives thinking they are assessing car. The reality is, there is nothing further from the truth.

You cannot assess the quality of a vehicle with a test drive.” And, Tesla showed that people are receptive to buying direct. He surveyed 1,000 people. Eight out of 10 said they wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive. “But when you ask, would they buy a car without a test drive if the car is inspected by a mechanic you trust, from a brand you trust, with a 10-day money-back guarantee, only two say no.” And that’s what led to Beepi’s model, which is so easy that buying a used car could almost be done on impulse. “We make it dangerously easy to buy a car,” Resnik said, noting that only 3 percent of Beepi cars are returned. “You open Beepi, fall in love with something, and that’s it. It’s definitely going to stress some marriages. Most of our returns, the wife bought it without husband knowing, or the husband without the wife knowing. When the Porsche arrives, it’s ‘This is not what we discussed!’ Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419. Beepi: 14 U.S. metro markets;