Our Developing Delaware conference is scheduled to be held virtually on October 14. You can sign up here.

This is an important event because we try to identify a key topic that inevitably becomes a priority.

This year we will focus on big data and the insights it provides - Data in Delaware: What we know, what we don't know, and why it's important to your business. We will also pay particular attention to retail trends since shopping, and, well retail, is everywhere in Delaware! You can look forward to hearing from national and local experts, Gary Laben of Dynata and Patrick Callahan of Compass Red, and Brookfield Properties CEO Jared Chupaila, owners of Christiana Mall and many similar properties around the country.

Before COVID, about 18% of all shopping was online. Since mid-March, that number has exploded! So, what has that done to physical retail stores and shopping malls? CNBC reported last week in a story titled, “25% of U.S. Malls are expected to shut within 5 years. Giving them a new life won’t be easy” that 25% of the roughly 1,000 malls in the U.S. will close in 3 to 5 years. One reuse is the possibility of adding multi-family housing or Amazon fulfillment centers to vacated stores. We will cover these and other challenging topics at Developing Delaware.

Today we look at numbers 21 and 22 on the CNBC Disruptor/50 list:

Eat JUST: Eat JUST, more widely known as JUST, is on a mission to build a food system where everyone eats well. The San Francisco-based company uses scientists, researchers, farmers and Michelin-starred chefs to create plant-based foods that are delicious, healthier and more sustainable. Learn more >

goPuff: The Philadelphia-based company was started in 2013 by Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev, two college students at Drexel University who got tired of having to jump in their car whenever they got a late-night craving for M&Ms or soda. To disrupt the $230 billion-a-year convenience-store industry, the pair created an app where a user places an order (there are over 3,000 items listed) and, for a flat $1.95 delivery fee, has their selections delivered in under 30 minutes. The company operates in more than 500 cities across the U.S. and works with distributors to deliver snacks, drinks, ice cream, personal-care items, home essentials, baby products, alcohol, over-the-counter medicine and more. Learn more >

In market and economic reporting news this week, look for July construction spending figures on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we’ll see factory orders for July. Thursday offers several early August insights on initial jobless claims and July trade deficit figures. We’ll close out the week on Friday with nonfarm payroll, unemployment rate, and average hourly rate data from August.