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The historic Buffalo Trace Distillery has temporarily closed after deadly flooding ravaging Kentucky swept into its facilities, forcing the popular bourbon company to turn away the public and staff. In a statement released on Sunday, the Frankfort, Kentucky-based distillery said it would remain closed through April 10 but warned that date could change. Due to the unprecedented and ongoing rain and flooding, we are not able to advise on the impact to our total distillery footprint, Buffalo Trace said. We will assess those realities in the coming days as the facilities become safe to navigate and will make necessary adjustments to operations as required. A spokesperson for Buffalo Trace declined to comment further. Days of unrelenting torrential rain in Kentucky and across the U.S. South and Midwest have caused catastrophic flooding and raised fears the damage could linger for days as rivers swell. In Frankfort, the Kentucky River curves throughout the capital city and has been known to flood. On Monday, the river was cresting at Frankfort Lock approaching the record of 48 1/2 feet (14.78 meters) set on Dec. 10, 1978, according to CJ Padgett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Louisville, Kentucky, office. Buffalo Trace is far from the only distillery in Kentucky, the home of bourbon country, but it is one of the closest to the banks of the Kentucky River. Notably, the distillery has markers of several high-water marks from previous floods inside its Frankfort buildings, with the most recent being the 1978 flood. As of Monday, several Buffalo Trace buildings were flooded at lower levels and parking lots and cars were underwater. The water tower bearing the brands logo stood over the visitor center and warehouses that appeared to be inundated with water. Residents stopped to take pictures of the well-known bourbon makers property as it was flooded out. Traffic signs directing trucks and visitors to parking peeked over several feet of rushing water. Buffalo Trace Distillery is an American, family-owned company that has operated for more than 200 years. Its products include the holy grail for bourbon fanatics: Pappy Van Winkle 23-year-old, which can sell for tens of thousands of dollars on resale markets. Kimberlee Kruesi and Kristin M. Hall, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Redbox is getting ready for one final sale. The defunct DVD rental chains assets, and those of its corporate siblings Crackle and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, are being auctioned off in New York later this month, according to a court filing published Monday morning. The asset sale is just the latest chapter in Redboxs tumultuous downfall: Once one of the countrys biggest DVD vendors, the rental chain saw its revenue evaporate overnight during the pandemic, leading to its bankruptcy in June of 2024. Much of this had to do with consumers switching to streaming, but the exact circumstances of Redboxs demise remain highly contested: Last month, the trustee in charge of the bankruptcy proceedings filed a lawsuit against Chicken Soup for the Soup Entertainments former executives and board, alleging that the company and its subsidiaries were victim of mismanagement and pillaging by insiders on a scale rarely seen with public companies. For sale: Everything but the kiosks When the assets of Redbox and its corporate siblings go on sale on April 23, potential buyers will be able to bid on Redboxs and Crackles trademarks, patents and other intellectual property. Among other things, the sale also includes various rights associated with hundreds of movies and TV shows produced and distributed by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment subsidiary Screen Media Films. Titles mentioned in Mondays filing range from Jeepers Creepers to Machine Gun Woman to the 2021 Nicholas Cage flick Willys Wonderland. While its hard to estimate what the assets will ultimately be selling for, there does appear to be some interest in those film catalogs. The court-appointed trustee noted in a legal filing earlier this year that he had received offers in excess of $100 million. Notably exempt from the firesale: Redboxs once-ubiquitous red rental kiosks. The filing does not explain why the DVD vending machines arent being sold at this point, but one reason could be that many of them have already found their way to landfills and Ebay auctions. When Redbox went bankrupt, it still operated about 27,000 kiosks, located in front of grocery stores, pharmacies and other retailers. Redbox had stopped paying many of these retail partners contractually owed commission fees long before it went bankrupt, leading to lawsuits from major chains including CVS and 7-Eleven. After the company went under, the kiosks became even more of a nuisance for retailers, with Albertsons complaining in a legal filing that its electricity bill for the machines amounted to $184,000 a month. Eventually, the bankruptcy court granted most retailers the right to dispose of the kiosks themselves. A few machines were saved by enthusiasts, while others apparently have been stripped for parts that are now being sold on Ebay. Wildly unrealistic projections The story of Redboxs downfall has few parallels in modern corporate history: The company surpassed $1 billion in revenue in 2018, and had long planned a transition to streaming. Those plans were thrown into upheaval when the pandemic hit in 2020, with many of its consumers embracing much-larger streaming competitors like Netflix and Disney+ overnight. Redboxs revenue declined to around $250 million in 2021, and the company was effectively out of money by early 2022. Thats when Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book publisher, swooped in to acquire Redbox for $375 million. The deal included the assumption of $325 million in debt, but Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainments leadership forecast at the time that DVD rentals would quickly recover. That didnt happen. Instead, Redboxs revenue continued to crater. The company found itself in a cash crunch, unable to buy new DVDs, which further depressed rentals. In early 2024, the companys cash on hand was so low that it wasnt able to pay most of its bills, even leaving its service technicians stranded because corporate credit cards meant to pay for gas for company vehicles stopped working for days at a time. Employees would later discover that they had lost their health insurance while still working for the company. This was all too expected, according to the bankruptcy trustee. Redboxs recovery never could have reasonably been expected to happen and were based on wildly unrealistic business projections and plans, the trustee claimed in his recently-filed lawsuit. The lawsuit also alleges that Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainments corporate leadership used the company as their personal piggy bank by relying on unusual fee arrangements: Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment and its subsidiaries were obligated to pay 10% of their revenues to the book publisher every month in exchange for management services as well as the right to use the publishers trademarks. These fees allegedly ballooned to $18.4 million dollars a year following the Redbox acquisition, despite the fact that Redbox was losing money hand-over-fist. Payments even continued after Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment had stopped paying payroll taxes in late 2023. The trustee now wants executives to pay back those fees; any money recovered through such legal actions as well as this months auction is likely going to go to the companys primary lender HPS, which is reportedly owed $500 million.
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E-Commerce
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke shared an internal memo on X on Monday that stressed the importance of using AI effectively in daily tasks. In fact, he wrote, using AI is now a fundamental expectation of Shopify employees. Spotify product designers are now expected to use AI tools to do all platform feature prototypes. The results, Lutke says, are more exploratory and faster to produce and share. Shopify already provides employees with access to various AI coding tools from Github (Copilot), Cursor, and Anthropic (Claude code). Our task here at Shopify is to make our software unquestionably the best canvas on which to develop the best businesses of the future, Lutke wrote in the memo, which he said he posted to X because he believed it was about to be leaked anyhow. We do this by keeping everyone cutting edge and bringing all the best tools to bear . . . for that we need to be absolutely ahead. Lutke says his company will judge employees in performance reviews on how well they know and use AI tools. Employees are expected to continue to learn about and experiment with new AI tools, and share their findings within the company. Spotify product designers are now expected to use AI tools to do all platform feature prototypes. The results, Lutke says, are more exploratory and faster to produce and share. Shopify already provides employees with access to various AI coding tools from Github (Copilot), Cursor, and Anthropic (Claude code). But the new focus on AI tools such as Anthropics Claude and Githubs Copilot may not end at helping clients. Lutke says that before Shopify hires any more humans to work at the company, the hiring managers must explain why an AI tool couldnt do the job. [T]eams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI, he wrote. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? Shopify has been a boon for merchants by providing a comprehensive, user-friendly platform that streamlines the process of establishing and managing online stores. Our job is to figure out what entrepreneurship looks like in a world where AI is universally available, Lutke wrote in the memo. And I intend for us to do the best possible job of that, and to do that I need everyones help.
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E-Commerce
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