Our interview guest—the first in our ICSC interview series—is Lacy Beasley, President of Retail Strategies; she joins the show to discuss current trends in small- and mid-sized market retail. Topics include the importance of retail to rural markets, what retailers are doing to adjust based on market size when entering a rural market for the first time, and which retailers and restaurants are seeing the most demand from the markets themselves. In news, Advance Auto Parts sees a dip in DIY sales during their first quarter, but that doesn’t dampen their expansion plans; also, Albertsons trials an AI-based scan-and-go shopping cart.