Consumer Confidential: Wal-Mart on top, restaurants rebound and free coffee

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Here’s your that’s-another-fine-mess Thursday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Who’s the top dog on this year’s Fortune 500? It’s our friends at Wal-Mart, retaking their place at the head of the corporate table thanks to consumers’ keen interest in low, low, low prices. A drop in oil costs bumped Exxon to second place, and beleaguered General Motors fell from sixth place last year to 15th (marking the first time ever that GM didn’t hit the top 10). Fortune says this year’s list shows that a recovery is under way, but it’s going to be a long slog.

-- Another sign that the sky isn’t falling: Restaurants are reporting brisk business again. ‘There’s no question about this,’ Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst at market researcher NPD Group, told the New York Times. ‘There’s a recovery going on.’ Food sales are up, and restaurants are hiring again, with the sector adding more than 42,000 jobs during the first three months of the year. This means, of course, that we’ll have trouble again getting reservations at hot spots. But that’s a problem I think we can live with in these slogging-recovery days.

-- Free coffee -- whoo-hoo! Starbucks is pouring free brew all day if you bring your own travel mug. The company wants to get the word out that we can be nicer to the planet if we start toting reusable mugs, rather than relying on paper cups. A fine sentiment and a fine way of promoting it. See you there.

-- David Lazarus