Pop quiz: And no cheating with your favourite AI… which well-known South African soft drink’s colours best complement the colour teal? Anyone? Sparletta Crème Soda’s, that’s whose, with its soft, pastel green packaging. So really, it was only a matter of time before one of South Africa’s favourite fizzy drinks would team up with The Teal Titan of South African FMCG, Checkers. The duo joined forces to bring us a limited‑edition, co‑branded collector’s “can you can’t buy”, which from 1 to 6 April was delivered to lucky Sixty60 shoppers. Sixty60 makes frequent use of what it calls its ‘surprise-and-delight’ model, popping bespoke branded products into its shopping bags around special occasions.

Still with Checkers, it has launched another ‘store-within-a-store’, this time at its Checkers Hyper in Centurion Mall. And the brand in question is none other than Nespresso. The Nespresso shop-in-shop offers Hyper shoppers a full range of Nespresso capsules and pods, machines and accessories. “Expanding accessibility is one of the key levers to unlock the full potential of the coffee capsules category,” says Gabriel Nobre, CEO of Nespresso South Africa. “Through our partnership with Checkers, we are accelerating this ambition with a true omnichannel approach.” Western Cape shoppers will be pleased to know that a second Nespresso shop-in-shop is set to open at the Checkers Hyper Paarl Junction soon.

And this just in, Sixty60 now has a Smart AI shopping assistant by the name of… Pixie! Developed entirely in-house by ShopriteX, Pixie predicts what individual customers need and when. The experimental service will start rolling out on the app today (9 April). We’ll bring you more news on this next week, but in the meantime, have a look at the video here.

Here’s an interesting one… our very own Woolies has been the subject of a four‑year PhD study coming out of Coventry University in the UK. Conducted by Sustainable Food Systems Researcher Catherine Mazhandu, the research has found that the Farming for the Future programme – running now for 17 years – is indeed helping farmers in real and tangible ways. How so? By improving soil health, water efficiency, biodiversity and the resilience of the fresh-produce farms within the programme, supporting “climate-smart” agriculture and ensuring long-term supply security. This is the first independent academic review globally to evaluate a retailer-led sustainability programme, analysing 16 years of data from Woolworths’ Top 30 suppliers to assess environmental performance. “What makes this research especially important is that Woolworths opened the programme up to full independent scrutiny – something retailers almost never do,” said a grateful Mazhandu. “Our analysis shows steady, meaningful improvements that really matter on the ground”.

In case you’d missed it, K-beauty is well and truly a thing, that skincare philosophy from South Korea that is taking the beauty world by storm. We intentionally use the word philosophy here because K-beauty stands for more than just its skincare products – unlike more mainstream, ‘Western’ brands, K-beauty is not about fixing a skin problem by stripping, covering or hiding it, but rather preventing it from occurring in the first place through nourishment and maintaining the skin’s natural balance. A quick look online shows us that there are many niche e-tailers with dedicated K-beauty ranges in SA, but among our major retailers, Clicks has taken the lead, with various brands now available both online and in-store. And internationally, big guys like Target, Walmart and Amazon have extensive offerings too.