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Its no secret that fast casual restaurants have struggled in recent years, with some companies turning to cheaper options as a way to lure customers back. The latest chain to do so is Panera Bread, which just announced its first-ever value menu. It includes 10 items that are each $4.99. Customers must pick at least two items to use the menu and will get the typical free side of an apple, chips or bread. Anyone who has been to Panera will recognize it as a scaled-down version of the long-standing You Pick Two deal. [Photo: Panera] There are four half sandwiches, three half salads, and three cups of soup. There will be a rotating seasonal item, but to start Paneras value menu will include: Sandwiches Toasted Italiano Toasted Caprese Focaccia Bacon Turkey Bravo Cranberry Walnut Chicken Salad Salads Fuji Apple Chicken Ranch Parm BLT Caesar Soups Creamy Tomato Homestyle Chicken Noodle Bistro French Onion Paneras value menu follows similar offerings that have popped up from restaurant chains like Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and more. Theyve come as high inflation caused fast food menu prices to shoot up and customers to revolt. In 2024, McDonald’s released its $5 value meal, a move that has proved successful in increasing sales, The New York Times reported earlier this month. Panera has also faced controversies and layoffs of late Alongside changing spending trends, Panera has also been rocked by controversies. In 2023, the company faced multiple lawsuits over deaths allegedly related to its high-caffeine Charged Lemonade drinks. Two deaths were due to cardiac arrest. Panera has since settled the lawsuits and removed the Charged Lemonade drink from its menu, NBC reported. Panera also laid off 72 employees last year after shutting down a production facility in Missouri, USA Today reported. It follows the shutdown of four other facilities in the United States.
Category:
E-Commerce
AMC, the worlds largest movie theater chain and a one-time darling of meme stock traders, said this week that it expects to continue closing more movie theaters than it opens going forward. While the move is sure to disappoint cinephiles, AMC believes that shuttering certain cinemas will ultimately be better for the companys bottom line. Heres what you need to know about the upcoming AMC theater closings. Whats happened? On Monday, AMC Entertainment Holdings reported its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results as well as its full-year 2025 results. Its fair to say the company did not have a blockbuster quarter or year. For the companys Q4 2025, which ended on December 31, AMC reported total revenue of $1.28 billion. Thats a drop of 1.4% from the $1.3 billion the company reported for the same quarter a year earlier. Fewer people are attending movies AMC said that both its global and international attendance figures were down. For Q4 2025, AMC’s total attendance equalled 56.3 million. Thats a drop of nearly 10% from the 62 million during the same period a year earlier. U.S. attendance was down less (about 7.5%) for the quarter than international attendance (down about 15%). However, for its full fiscal 2025, AMC did slightly better. Total full-year revenue was actually up about 4.6% to $4.84 billion. And its attendance figures, while still down across the board, didnt fall as much as it did in the forth quarter. Still, the downward trend in attendance was obviously a blow to AMC, which relies on attracting foot traffic to its theaters so it can sell tickets and high-margin concessions. Attendance problems are not unique to the company. In recent years, movie theaters worldwide have struggled with declining foot traffic. The reasons most often cited for those declines include higher ticket prices, fewer films with mass-market appeal, and increasing competition from streaming services like Netflix, which stream original feature film content right into viewers homes. Declining foot traffic can turn some theater locations into a financial burden instead of a guranteed positive revenue source, so it was little surprise when, in addition to annoucning its financials, AMC revealed that in the years ahead it is planning to close more theaters than it opens. AMC reveals it will close more theaters than it opens AMC currently has about 860 theaters across the globe, making it the largest theater chain in the world. Yet on the companys financial earnings call earlier this week, CFO Sean Goodman revealed that AMC will be closing underperforming locations in the futuresomething the chain has already been doing for some time. The CFO further revealed that since 2020, AMC had already closed 213 locations, while opening just 65 new ones during the same timeframe. Which AMC movie theaters are closing? The company did not provide a list of theaters that it plans to close, but local media outlets have reported numerous closures in their respective communities over the last year. AMC location closures in 2025 have included: An Alabama location in March A Kansas location in April A Georgia location in August Three Illinois locations in August A Colorado location in September A Buffalo, New York, location in December The ongoing reshaping of our footprint reflects our commitment to improve asset productivity, expand margins, and position AMC for sustainable long-term growth, Goodman said on the companys financial call, according to a PitchBook transcript. When asked about the companys portfolio footprint by an analyst, Goodman said that about 10% of the chains theaters come up for lease renewal each year, and those renewals give AMC the opportunity to renegotiate leases or shutter the locations. “Like most organizations or companies with a retail footprint, our theaters are a kind of normal distribution and there is a tale of underperforming or loss-making theaters,” he said. “And we see an opportunity to close those theaters or renegotiate leases and then take on new theaters that are significantly, very significantly, more profitable.” He added that investors can expect a similar pace going forward and that the company will be “closing more theaters than we open, but the new ones that we open are generating significantly more profit than the ones that we close. AMC stock price has been getting hammered Since announcing its latest quarterly results on Monday, shares of AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) have been relatively flat. The stock price currently sits at around $1.16 a share in premarket trading as of the time of this writing. That’s only a fraction of what the companys shares were once worth during its heyday as a meme-stock darling in the early pandemic years. During that time, meme stock traders on Reddit poured money into buying AMC shares, driving the price to almost $650 per share in June of 2021. Todays share price of around $1.16 represents a more than 99% decline from AMCs nearly $650 high.
Category:
E-Commerce
Women’s sports continue to thrive. Record-breaking WNBA viewership, a flood of new brand investment, and now Unrivaled: the women’s basketball league built by players, for players. Commissioner Micky Lawler pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to launch a high-stakes sports startup in the full glare of the public eye. The question is no longer whether women’s sports can compete. It’s how fast they can grow. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Responsewherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I first came upon Unrivaled last year around this time. I’m a basketball fan, but other 3-on-3 leagues didn’t really connect for me. But Unrivaled, it grabbed my attention right away. The format, the players, the model of playing in one location in Miami, adopting what the WNBA did during the pandemic bubble, it’s fun. You felt what I felt when I first heard about it. I loved it from the start. I could see it, I could feel it. And what’s not to like about the name, Unrivaled? And the timing for the league when it came out was great. It was just as the Caitlin Clark mania was surging, although I know Caitlin hasn’t competed on Unrivaled. But women’s leagues overall were accelerating, the WNBA, the NWSL. How much did that timing matter for you? Look, I’ve spent a lifetime working in professional sports, and in particular in tennis, most of it in women’s tennis, and so I could see the momentum. And sometimes the world has a way of working in mysterious ways, because the timing was also perfect for me, having just retired from the WTA. Were you into basketball before this? I mean, your life was obviously tennis, so that was where your time and your energy was focused. When you work in sports, it’s your microcosm, so I was very familiar with the opportunity of women’s basketball, and I always loved it. When my kids played sports, basketball was my favorite season because it’s so much fun to watch. And I did play in high school, very badly, so basketball was not entirely foreign to me, but it’s like you lived in San Francisco and now you’re moving to New York. It’s the same country, but it’s two very different cities. Does that make sense? Yeah. Part of Unrivaled’s appeal for the players is financial. WNBA salaries remain modest. Players generally have to look for other paying gigs in the off-season. It’s why Brittney Griner went to Russia. You’re offering sort of an alternative to going overseas. Your salary pool isn’t enormous, but there are other benefits, including equity. This is part of the selling point to the players is the financial opportunity, and I guess the vibe in Florida where Unrivaled happens. As a professional athlete, when you are competing six months of the year, you need to have another source of competition. Income, yes, but also competition. You need to stay sharp, you need to stay in shape, you need to keep working on your craft, on your game. So both Breanna and Napheesa are mothers, and for them it was increasingly difficult to go overseas for three months, and also for their own brand exposure in the market. So we looked at this as a way to really build the entire ecosystem of women’s basketball and support what clearly is a very interesting league, which is the WNBA. SAFIAN: Yeah. You’re separate from the WNBA, right? LAWLER: Yes. Yes. But as you say, you travel in these concentric circles with players and media partners and sponsors. How do you approach that relationship? Well, we have 54 WNBA players here in-house, so our approach is to really deepen the focus on players, getting them into the public eye. And so, we hope that this is all very, very positive and good for the environment in which the WNBA operates. So the relationship is complimentary. You’re deep into Unrivaled’s second season. The playoffs start February 28th, the end of the month. The business of the league keeps evolving. More sponsors, more facilities, more teams. You added the 1-on-1 tournament mid-season, took the league on the road to Philadelphia, and the semi-finals will be right near me at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This sort of business roadmap, how does it compare to your efforts growing the WTA? How much do you look at and focus on, what’s the lowest hanging fruit, what’s easiest to get versus long shot plans? At the WTA, you have a structure where owners, tournaments, and players sit on the same board. There’s a 50/50 ownership. The players, they’re not contracted by the WTA, so they are self-employed and they have their own commercial rights. So the tour has to try to elevate the whole thing with limited assets, getting to a point that perfects the pressure on the players, not overstressing them, but you also have to answer to players number one to 250. And the number one is going to play many more matches. But in any case, it’s a lot to juggle. Over here you’ve got a clean slate and you’re giving players real equity from the start. So the players were very, very fast to understand that the more Unrivaled grew, the better for them from every angle. The more that they could participate in telling brand stories, the more their own story would be relevant. So it’s completely different because you don’t have to argue about the value of social media like we did with the WTA many years ago. We need to change the media requirements from a post-match interview to giving some time to the social side. In tennis, that took a long time. Here it’s front and center. They want to be doing it. They understand the holistic side to the business, that it’s not just about being a phenomenal basketball player. You have to be good at social. You have to serve the press, serve all your fans, create an environment that is community. If I had any doubt that this was going to work, well, that was quickly gone because of the intensity of the fans and the intimacy. Sephora Arena is a place where you come to be very happy and entertained, and you see just stellar performances. The players are aware that it’s a start-up, but they’re also aware that everything goes to serve them. We are highly, highly focused on making sure that they have everything that they need. Having two player founders in Breanna and Napheesa, we know they need a glam room. They need, of course, a weight room. They need training, and a very good training room and a training team. The best childcare. Saunas. Infrared for inflammation and recovery. I can’t do it justice. I loved the 1-on-1 tournament that happened. Yeah. When you go to the players and you say, “Hey, what about doing a 1-on-1 tournament?” Are they like, “Oh, that’s great. We play 1-on-1 against each other all the time,” or are they like, ̴Oh, I don’t know. It’s more work for me”? Both. You have the players that shy away from it a little bit, but once they play, they’re all-in. And it is, again, the crowd was so into it. The men talk about it, how much they would love it, and so we did it. And these women, they leave no stone unturned. They fight. Well, that was part of what I loved about it. They looked exhausted. You could physically see they’re not dogging this. Sometimes in an all-star game, you can tell the players are a little sort of they’re in it. Totally in. Personally, in year one I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is starting to look like a tennis tournament. Is this the right place?” But it has been a big success. Players love it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Some bad news for all the mutual fund managers out there: A new study from researchers at Harvard Business School seems to support the fear that artificial intelligence and machine learning could do their jobs. But here’s the catchwith only about 71% accuracy, depending on how predictable their trades are. The working paper Mimicking Finance from Lauren Cohen, Yiwen Lu, and Quoc H. Nguyen, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds “that 71% of mutual fund managers trade directions can be predicted in the absence of the agent making a single trade.” The paper goes on to say, For some managers, this increases to nearly all of their trades in a given quarter. Further, we find that manager behavior is more predictable and replicable for managers who have a longer history of trading and are in less competitive categories.” What does that mean? Basically, that the trades of more senior managers, especially those who are in less competitive areas, are easier to mimic (and thereby, those jobs might be easier to replace with AI). The findings are based on data the researchers analyzed from 1990 to 2023 that took into account the size of the fund, the broader economic indicators, and investor flows. Perhaps what’s most alarming for mutual fund managers, though, is the paper’s conclusion: “For some managers,” AI predicted “nearly all of their trades in a given quarter”which is the equivalent of a mic drop. However, there are a few big caveats. The paper finds that the larger the ownership stake of the manager in the fund, the less predictable their behavior. It also found less predictable managers strongly outperform their peers, while the most predictable managers significantly underperform. Even within each manager’s portfolio, the research shows “those stock positions that are more difficult to predict strongly outperform those that are easier to predict” (a bright spot for fund managers who want to keep their jobs). The study is significant because it explores which tasks could be automated using AI, and how that could affect jobs in the financial sector. It estimates the U.S. asset management industry to be worth about $54 trillion.
Category:
E-Commerce
Early drivers steered cars by pushing a lever left and right. That was fine at slow speeds, but disastrous when you accelerated. It took years before the steering wheel arrived. Granola CEO Chris Pedregal says AI interfaces are still in the lever era. Pedregal, who in 2019 sold the edtech startup Socratic to Google, says were just beginning to figure out how humans should interact with AI. Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, people still associate AI with typing into a chat box. Granola is betting on a new approach to AI-enhanced note-taking. The London-based startup doesnt record audio or video or send bots into your meetings. Instead, its tool sits on your computer or phone, transcribing in real time while you maintain control. Chris Pedregal [Photo: Granola] You can jot notes alongside its transcription, building a personal knowledge base instead of a raw archive of recordings. The viral spread of its tool helped the company raise $43 million last year, bringing its total funding to $67 million at a valuation of $250 million. Its also grown from a team of 4 to 35. Fast Company spoke with Pedregal about the steering wheel moment still ahead for AI interfaces and the surprising ways people are using Granola to take notes on everything from therapy to vet visits. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Youve described Granola as a steering wheel for large language models. What do you mean by that? I think its very, very early days in this new wave of AI, particularly on the user interface interaction side of things. The technology developed very quickly, but it takes human time to figure out the right interaction patterns. I looked it upit was over three years from when the iPhone came out to when Instagram launched. I think we’re in that time period right now. People might be like, ChatGPT has been out for three years, and we’re still just dealing with chatbots. Is that the end of it? I think it’s just early days. Early cars were driven with a lever, literally a stick that you’d move left and right to steer. It was fine if youre going slowly, but the moment you started going quickly, it was easy to go off the road. It took quite a while for them to develop the steering wheel. Once they figured out the steering wheel, it became very natural and it stuck. AI interfaces are still in their lever era. Granola deliberately doesn’t record audio. Why make that choice when competitors do? Granola doesnt record audio by design, which is probably annoying if you ever try to use Granola for interviews. But it makes it less invasive for work conversations, because really what you want are the notes. The goal is not to have an audio recording. The way I think about it is: What’s the minimum amount of invasiveness for the most value? That’s how you have to thread the needle. AI is here, we’re all going to be using tools like this in the future because they’re so useful. But what are the norms? What’s the thoughtful, ethical design of these tools so that we maximize the gains for the cost? How is Granola different from Otter, Fathom, and other meeting notetakers? It all really comes down to this: Granola feels like a tool that lets you be your best self in meetings. The operative word there is tool, and that means you control it. You can write your own notes. When the AI generates notes, you can edit them. The AI is subservient, augmenting your abilities. Its your personal place where you have all this information. I think a lot of the other toolsOtter is like 9 years old at this pointare really about meeting capture, meeting recording. You log in and heres all your meeting recordings. Thats useful, but it feels very different than when you open Granola. Its like, heres my personal context where I can ask questions. It’s not really about the meetings. It’s about the notes, the knowledge inside of it. As we look towards the future, Granola and those other tools are going to look more and more different. I see Granola as being much more of a contextual workspace where Granola has all this helpful context about you. Now if I need to go write an article or a blog post, or institute some process changes inside the company, I will go into Granola and write that first draft because it has all that context. I can’t imagine doing that in Otter or Firefliesit just doesn’t feel like the right place for it. You’ve found that mixing work and personal contexts in Granola is actually more useful. Why? Right now, I use Granola for all my work meetings, therapy sessions, and logistics conversations about my life. If you had sat me down two years ago and asked if that’s really useful, I would have said noI want those things separate. It turns out when you’re asking Granola questions, it having a 360-degree view of different things that are going on in your life is very useful. When you’re making decisions, you’re weighing all those constraints and prioritiesnot just the ones tied to this specific project at work. I was just at the vet this morning, and I used Granola because it’s my mom’s cat and I’m not going to remember exactly what the vet says. Moments like going to the doctor, parent-teacher conferences, talking to a construction worker or plumberany situation where there’s sometimes technical language that’s really important to get right, that you’re not familiar withare incredibly valuable to capture accurately. Theres a different question around data ownership. I dont necessarily want my company to have my therapy notes. But as models get better, the AI having access to the right context makes all the difference in terms of the quality of the response. What’s appropriate etiquette around recording conversations with Granola? I think right now, the etiquette is simple: Ask. I imagine that the norms around this will change quickly, but it will remain very situation-dependent. Inside our company, its expected that meetings are Granola’d unless someone asks not to be. But in social environments the norms will be very different. Ive tried some of these pendants that record everything, and the idea of wearing those at a party just makes me feel a bit icky. I also think the video conference providers will adapt and make it easy to show meeting participants that you are using something like Granola, so ou won’t have to think about it. I think it really comes down to the social nuances of the situation. I usually frame it simply: Talk about it in terms of notes and transcription. Is it okay if I take notes? This thing will transcribe so I don’t forget the important stuff you say. That’s basically what I say. What’s been your biggest mistake as you’ve grown Granola? The biggest mistake I’ve made so far was that we didn’t grow the team fast enough. We had product-market fit in a fast-moving space, and I didn’t recognize that early enough. By the time I did, we were drowning in user tickets, requests for billingall the kinds of stuff that happens when you grow. There were only four of us on the team when we launched the product. I was trying to use my playbook from my last startupkeep the team super small, grow slow and steady. [I realized] that’s great, Chris, but actually the world wants this and you have to respond. I thought growing quickly meant sacrificing how thoughtful we could be about product, and I wasn’t reactive enough. We’re 35 people now, and most of that has happened in the last couple of months. What are some surprising ways people are using Granola? All the personal stuff was surprising at firsttherapy, vet visits, parent-teacher conferences. Then there were these founders early on who used Granola as their collective brain. They logged in with the same account and would record every conversation they had because they were early in their startupevery brainstorm, every argument. It became a single shared memory between the two of them. One user followed this famous sales methodology where every conversation falls into one of 14 buckets. He created very specific templates for each bucket, and at the end of the meeting he’d select the right one. Granola would basically spit out all the next steps to win that deal based on that framework. He encoded his entire sales process into itsuper intricate. I didn’t see that coming.
Category:
E-Commerce
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