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Sandwich maker Potbelly is being acquired by the gas station and convenience store chain RaceTrac for $566 million. Potbelly, which was founded in Chicago in 1977, has 445 restaurants across the U.S. The company said the deal with RaceTrac will help it reach its goal of quadrupling in size to 2,000 locations. Potbelly stores are both company- and franchise-owned. With RaceTracs resources, we will unlock new opportunities for this incredible brand while staying true to the neighborhood sandwich shop experience that makes Potbelly special, Potbelly CEO Bob Wright said in a statement Wednesday. Potbelly shares jumped more than 31%, to $17. Sandwich chains and restaurants have struggled in recent years, starting with the pandemic that had millions eating at home when they would usually have dined out. Yet Potbelly’s profits have been rising, and growth in its franchised businesses has been strong. Now it is inflation that is hitting restaurants hard as they pay more for ingredients and customers tighten their belts. At the same time, national chains are being pressured to lower prices, with lower-income customers pulling back on spending and sticking to essentials. McDonalds said this month that it is cutting prices on some combo meals to woo back customers whove been turned off by the rising costs of grabbing a fast-food meal. Some chains have become takeover targets. Daves Hot Chicken was acquired over the summer for $1 billion by a private equity firm. The same firm, Roark Capital, snapped up Subway in 2023 for nearly $10 billion. Roark specializes in franchised businesses and backs two holding companies that own multiple restaurant chains: Inspire Brands, the parent of Arbys, Dunkin, Jimmy Johns, and Buffalo Wild Wings; and Focus Brands, which owns Auntie Annes, Carvel, Cinnabon, and Jamba. RaceTrac was founded in 1934 and is family-owned. The Atlanta company operates more than 800 locations in 14 states. RaceTrac chairman and CEO Natalie Morhous said the company is eager to expand its stable of brands. RaceTrac said it will acquire all of Potbellys shares for $17.12 per share in an all-cash deal. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter. By Dee-Ann Durbin, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind the popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, just announced plans to cut 11% of its workforce as competitors like Eli Lilly continue to encroach on its market share. On September 10, Novo Nordisk shared in a press release that it intends to nix 9,000 positions out of its global workforce of 78,400. The company cited a more competitive obesity market, as well as a recent slowdown in growth, as two of the main reasons driving the move to reduce organisational complexity and costs. As the global leader in obesity and diabetes, Novo Nordisk delivers life-changing products for patients worldwide, Mike Doustdar, Novo Nordisk president and CEO, said in the release. But our markets are evolving, particularly in obesity, as it has become more competitive and consumer-driven. Our company must evolve as well. In the wake of the announcement, Novo Nordisks share price held relatively steady. However, the company has been losing steam more broadly over the past few months: Since this time last year, its stock has declined by 58%. Novo Nordisk is facing increased competition on several fronts, including from providers offering compounded versions of its drugs (which its actively fighting in court) and from fellow pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisks main rival and purveyor of the weight-loss medications Zepbound and Mounjaro. Novo Nordisk faces heightened competition For Novo Nordisks business, a top concern at the moment is the ongoing prevalence of other companies offering compoundedor non-FDA approvedversions of its brand-name drugs using the active ingredient semaglutide. Back in 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared a shortage of GLP-1 medications including Ozempic and Wegovy, which permitted compounded versions of the medication under federal law. But after that shortage notice was officially lifted back in May, Novo Nordisk says the compounded versions of Ozempic and Wegovy are still being produced and sold. In June, Novo Nordisk cut ties with the telehealth company Hims & Hers Health after accusing Hims of selling alleged knock-off weight-loss drugs, and the pharmaceutical company is actively in court with dozens of other U.S. companies that it claims are similarly duping its drugs. In July, Novo Nordisk also cut its full-year 2025 guidance, which it attributed in part to compounded drug sales. For Wegovy in the US, the sales outlook reflects the persistent use of compounded GLP-1s, slower-than-expected market expansion and competition, the company said at the time. It added that, as far as Ozempic was concerned, the updated outlook is negatively impacted by competition in the U.S. Aside from companies selling compounded drugs, Novo Nordisk is also facing increasingly tough competition from Eli Lilly and its two popular FDA-approved weight-loss drugs. Eli Lillys second-quarter earnings report, released in early August, showed that sales of Mounjaro reached nearly $5.2 billion in revenue, up 68% from the same quarter last year, while sales of Zepbound reached $3.4 billion, up 172% year-over-year. Given these wins, Eli Lilly increased its full-year guidance. Around the same time, Novo Nordisk released a second-quarter report that reflected its lowered growth expectations. It appears that Novo Nordisks layoffs are part of a push to meet these challenges head-on. Per the press release, the workforce cuts are expected to deliver total annualized savings of around $1.25 billion by the end of the yearsavings that will be redirected to growth opportunities in diabetes and obesity. Doustdar added that the job cuts are part of a necessary shift in the companys mindset, so we can be faster and more agile.
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E-Commerce
At SXSW, Fast Company asked festival goers why pizza parties fall flat as employee rewards.
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E-Commerce
Always-on internet connections have become as essential as running water, heat, and power. But a massive outage affecting Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in recent days underscores the fragility of the infrastructure that keeps us online. Some 15 subsea cables run through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, and four were reportedly severed, significantly disrupting internet traffic. Hundreds of subsea cables lie on the sea floor, carrying nearly all global internet traffic (an estimated 99%). We had cuts in the Red Sea last year, and now were in the same boat again, so to speak, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. When capacity is lost, providers must reroute traffic to the remaining links, creating latency and reliability issues. The continent-affecting internet outages, which are likely to persist because of issues accessing the area affected, have led to a renewed debate about the reliability of subsea cablesand whether there are alternatives, such as satellite-based links provided by the likes of Starlink. Although past cable outages have sometimes been deliberate, this one is widely believed to be accidental. The Red Sea is a kind of problematic area because you have all the maritime traffic coming through the Suez Canal, and theyre waiting their turn to get to the Suez, Madory explains. They have to drop an anchor while they’re waiting, and when you have a lot of ships dropping a lot of anchors in shallow water, its just a recipe for disaster. Cable cuts are often repaired quickly, but this case is more complicated because of its location off the coast of Yemen, where conflict involving the Houthis slows repair efforts. With as many as 200 incidents reported annually, the frequency of disruptions is prompting renewed interest in alternatives. One option is satellite internet, such as Starlink, which Ukraine has relied on to avoid Russian sabotage of cables. Other competitorsincluding Project Kuiper and Eutelsat OneWebare also expanding rapidly, according to a new report by equity research firm MoffettNathanson. Starlink has already amassed more than six million subscribers across countries around the world, and in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, it has become an important backstop when terrestrial connectivity fails. The theory is that outages such as the Red Sea cuts could speed up adoption in markets where consumers and businesses are willing to pay a premium for resilience. However, the service remains expensivekits cost several hundred dollars and monthly fees run higher than many local providersputting its reach beyond mass consumer adoption in lower-income areas. Still, satellites cant yet compete with fiber optics. Starlink, or any satellite service, is just not going to be able to re-create the capacity that you get on a fiber optic cable, Madory says. Subsea cables can carry three petabits of data per second, compared with 150 terabits via satellites. That gap may narrowplanned launches over the next three years could boost satellite capacity to 800 terabits a secondbut for now, subsea cables remain the backbone of the global internet.
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E-Commerce
The signature of an American president is one of the planet’s most powerful symbols. It can set your tax bill, your immigration status and who does or does not get aid from the world’s largest economy. Now, though, Donald Trumps distinctive signature is being scrutinized for a decidedly unpresidential reason. Two documents in Jeffrey Epstein ‘s 50th-birthday album purportedly include Trump’s signature one on a risque line drawing of a female body and one on a picture of Epstein holding up a novelty check bearing Trumps name. A House committee released the 2003 book on Monday, with some members insisting the multi-peaked black signatures are authentically Trump’s, one of the best-known autographs in the world. The White House says the president did not sign the letter or the check to Epstein, who was later exposed as a sex offender and died by suicide in prison in 2019. Its not my signature, Trump told reporters outside a restaurant in Washington on Tuesday night. And its not the way I speak. Also Tuesday, the president declared the Epstein matter a dead issue in a phone call with NBC News. The birthday book signatures matter in part because they are perceived as a measure of how close Trump was to Epstein before the president says he ended the friendship two decades ago. And they are part of a bipartisan push in Congress for the release of the so-called Epstein files after years of speculation and conspiracy theories stoked by Trump and many of his allies. The Justice Department in August began turning over records from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation to the House Oversight Committee. Signatures have a history of conferring authority. But now? By the standards of handwriting scholars, determining whether its truly Trump’s signature is difficult. By the standards of the U.S. political system, its impossible. Despite the obvious resemblance to Trumps other signatures, partisan loyalty is driving opinion. Tamara Plakins Thornton, professor emerita of history at the University at Buffalo and author of Handwriting in America: A Cultural History, said handwritten signatures have conferred authority and authenticity by consent since the printing press raised their popularity in the 19th century. We have a fondness for signatures as marks of the unique self, Thornton said. But of course its kind of baloney if you think about it. Its been a long time since (a signature) really could give that rock-solid proof. Authenticity is a very difficult thing to prove, said Tyler Feldman, owner of Inscriptagraphs, a memorabilia firm in Las Vegas. The multibillion-dollar memorabilia industry, he said, revolves around establishing an objects authenticity via science and analysis contracted to specialists. In the age of AI and deepfakes, there are so many fraud signatures out there, he added, whether he signed it or not, its too hard to say. Nonetheless, signatures have great value and a long history in American folklore. The signing pens themselves are status symbols of presidential access, shown off in lobbying and congressional offices around Washington as signs of clout. It is customary, for example, for presidents to sign legislation into law using multiple pens they then give out, often on camera, to stakeholders in turn. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did the same when she signed articles of impeachment against Trump in 2020 in what amounted to a power flex as the leader of a separate and equal branch of government. John Hancock, one of the nation’s founders, famously signed his name to the Declaration of Independence in a large and flamboyant style the better, legend has it, for the king of England to read without his spectacles. Now, one’s John Hancock is a nickname for one’s signature. If not proof, signatures point to stubborn political pain for Trump Even Trump can see from experience that he can’t just command the sizable swaths of his own base demanding a full accounting to let it go, especially after his allies stoked the call to release the Epstein files. He’s tried repeatedly to deflect attention to other matters and shame weaklings who persist in asking about Epstein. Trump has called the scandal a Democrat hoax that never ends and vowed to sue The Wall Street Journal, which first revealed the letter. Even the hoax characterization has changed in the face of questions of logic: Who would have forged his signature in 2003 and why? On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt answered that it was all a Democratic and media narrative to drag on this bad story about him. She said the White House would support analyses of Trumps purported signature on the Epstein scrapbook. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is leading a bipartisan push for a House vote to force the Justice Department to release its Epstein files, played down the letters relevance. I think the documents a distraction,” Massie said. I do think that it does bear on the credibility of the people who are trying to keep these documents from being released. Its sort of indicative of the things that might come out if we were to release all of the files. In other words: embarrassing, but not indictable. Trump understands the value of his utograph Trump was a celebrity before he was a politician, and his signature is an extension of his brand. He has long been fond of sending notes to people, always with his thick scrawl at the bottom. In December 2015, Trump was widely photographed signing the chest of a female supporter at a rally in Manassas, Virginia, rock star-style. Smiling, she then blew him a kiss, according to photos of the exchange. He understands the value of authenticity: As recently as June, Trump repeated his long-standing allegations that President Joe Biden’s White House relied on an autopen to sign presidential pardons, executive orders and other key documents, and said that cast doubt on their validity. Pressed by reporters, Trump acknowledged he had no such evidence, and Biden said any such suggestion was false. As president, Trump keeps Sharpie markers handy. When he went to the U.S. Open, on Sunday, he signed hats and tossed them to supporters in the crowd. Trump also enjoys the theatricality of signing documents, a way to demonstrate the power of the presidency. He frequently summons the press into the Oval Office while he completes executive orders. An aide lays the document on the desk in front of him, Trump scrawls his signature and then holds it up for the cameras. Seriously, is that a good signature? he asked during one such session on Aug. 25. Who can write like that? Nobody. Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Matt Brown contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
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