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☆ Walmart expects a slowdown this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Walmart had a strong holiday shopping season, but the year ahead will be more challenging for America’s largest retailer. Walmart (WMT) forecast slower sales and profit growth, disappointing investors and sending its stock down during morning trading Tuesday. Government inflation data shows that grocery prices have increased 11.3% over the last year, and more shoppers are turning to discount chains like Walmart to save money. Sales were slower for traditional holiday products like toys, electronics and clothing, a sign that some consumers were cautious on discretionary spending. Holiday sales were sluggish for many retailers, and the industry is expected to have a weaker 2023.

☆ Why Pizza Hut’s red roofs and McDonald’s play places have disappeared
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

As fast-food chains spread across the US after World War II, new roadside restaurant brands needed to stand out. So restaurant chains turned to architecture as a key tool to promote their brand and help create their corporate identity. Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesBut the fast-food architecture of today has lost its quirky charm and distinctive features. Googie style fell out of fashion in the 1970s as fast-food style favored dark colors, brick and mansard roofs. But in the effort to modernize, some say fast-food design has became homogenized and lost its creative purpose.

☆ Tuesday Morning files for bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

New York (CNN Business) Tuesday Morning, the discount home goods retailer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, its second bankruptcy in three years. Tuesday Morning's previous bankruptcy came during the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic. It plans to close unprofitable stores and cut costs. Tuesday Morning joins a growing number of financially distressed retailers that have filed for bankruptcy this year. Consumer spending has slowed down in the face of inflation, and interest rates have increased, making it costlier for companies to borrow.

☆ Online sports betting is surging. So is gambling addiction
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

The booming sports betting industry, lawmakers and even the professional sports leagues themselves are making it easier, faster and more tempting for people to bet on games — and develop gambling problems, say gambling researchers and addiction specialists. A flood of advertising, technology that allows for one-click betting at home, and nearly unlimited betting options during games have collided. The sports gambling industry is most similar to financial markets, he said, but financial markets are much more regulated than banks. Most states require that sports betting ads disclose the minimum legal age to gamble and responsible gambling messages, such as problem gambling hotlines. From DraftKingsRegulators are wary of how tightly they can curtail messages in gambling advertising without running afoul of First Amendment protections on commercial speech.

☆ CVS wants to be the doctor for people on Medicare
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —CVS is buying a primary care doctor’s network, moving the pharmacy deeper into providing physician services for patients. Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, is a type of Medicare health plan offered by a private company that contracts with Medicare. In 2018, CVS bought Aetna, making it one of the largest health insurers in the country. “In the last three years, health insurers have become increasingly interested in purchasing primary care practices and employing physicians,” Nicholson said. Additionally, private Medicare plans typically offer higher reimbursement rates from the federal government than traditional Medicare, and CVS wants to capitalize on this, he said.

☆ How Bed Bath & Beyond ended up on the verge of bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Here’s how Bed Bath & Beyond, once a retailer pioneer, veered to the edge of bankruptcy and where it turns next. Brands coveted a spot on Bed Bath & Beyond’s shelves, knowing it would lead to big sales. Discount chains such as HomeGoods and TJ Maxx and have also undercut Bed Bath & Beyond’s prices. Without the differentiators of the lowest prices or widest selection, Bed Bath & Beyond’s sales stagnated from 2012 to 2019. Otherwise, too much of Bed Bath & Beyond’s revenue will go toward repaying debt that it won’t be able to turn a profit.

☆ Hoka sneakers: Why these chunky, ugly running shoes are selling like crazy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Hoka, which started in 2009 in France as a running shoe for hardcore marathoners, is growing rapidly with casual runners, hikers and weightlifters. “There wasn’t anyone doing what Hoka was doing.”But Hoka carved out a niche in specialty running shops. By 2019, Hoka sales topped $220 million. “We don’t see this as just a running brand,” Deckers CEO David Powers said in October. “This is a running, trail, hike brand that is more like a North Face” than Brooks running shoes.

☆ Why urgent care centers are popping up everywhere
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

And there are questions about the quality of care at urgent care centers and whether they adequately serve low-income communities. Additionally, passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 spurred an increase in urgent care providers as millions of newly insured Americans sought out health care. Private-equity and venture capital funds also poured billions into deals for urgent care centers, according to data from PitchBook. Equity concernsSome doctors and researchers worry that patients with primary care doctors – and those without – are substituting urgent care visits in place of a primary care provider. There are also concerns about the oversaturation of urgent care centers in higher-income areas that have more consumers with private health care and limited access in medically underserved areas.

☆ Premarket stocks: Wall Street is ignoring the Fed. That could be dangerous
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Price increases are also moderating: December brought the sixth consecutive monthly fall in consumer price index (CPI) inflation to 6.5%. That’s a change from 2022 when the Fed and the market tended to move in unison. This could mean that the upcoming Fed meeting will generate a lot of market disappointment, said Christian Scherrmann, an economist at DWS Group. The Fed flagged investors’ persistent belief in a pivot away from elevated rates as something that could hurt efforts to restore price stability. But even though the lawsuit drives at the heart of Google’s revenue machine, it could take years to play out.

☆ Premarket stocks: How Wall Street reacts to the GDP data will be telling
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

New York CNN —Wall Street analysts are holding their breath and crossing their fingers this morning as they await gross domestic product numbers for the final quarter of 2022. But that could all change if a recession looms into view and the US debt ceiling standoff drags on. “That is the worry: That you get turmoil in financial markets, a big tightening in financial conditions and that adds to downward pressure on economic activity,” he said. It’s not our expectation.”The United States hit the debt ceiling last week, forcing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to make accounting maneuvers to avoid breaching that $31 trillion borrowing limit. They argue it unfairly targets the fast-food industry and will increase prices and force businesses to lay off workers.

CNN —The end could be near for struggling retailer Bed Bath & Beyond, as it warned in a regulatory filing Thursday that it received a notice of default from its lender, JPMorgan Chase. Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) plunged more than 20% on the news, to about $2.56 a share. Bed Bath & Beyond could be forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization due to its financial woes. Founded in 1971, Bed Bath & Beyond became a staple for affordable home decor, kitchenware and college dorm room furniture. As of February 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond had 950 stores and 32,000 workers.

☆ Microsoft could bring back Clippy, but make him smart
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

New York CNN —This week, Microsoft confirmed it’s planning to invest billions in OpenAI, the company behind the viral new chatbot tool ChatGPT. The prospect of Microsoft, maker of software that people mostly hate, getting involved with ChatGPT, a product people generally like, is raising a lot of eyebrows. Almost immediately, people began joking on social media that ChatGPT could be used to revive the broadly maligned, big-eyed goon known as Clippy. “There is a kernel of truth to the Clippy comparison,” David Lobina, an artificial intelligence analyst at ABI Research, told Sam. All of the above suggestions were generated by asking ChatGPT various forms of the question, “How could Microsoft integrate ChatGPT into its products?”Argh, Samantha, you scamp!

☆ Chipotle, Starbucks and top chains spend millions to stop landmark state worker law
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The council could raise the fast-food industry minimum wage as high as $22 an hour, versus a $15.50 minimum for the rest of the state. California’s fast-food industry has more than 550,000 workers. Less than 4% of restaurant workers nationwide are unionized. This makes it nearly impossible to organize workers at fast-food and retail chains with thousands of stores. If restaurant worker compensation increased by 60%, limited-service restaurant prices would jump by up to 22%, the study also found.

☆ Walmart is raising its minimum wage to $14 an hour
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

In many areas of the country, particularly southern states that have not adopted higher wage laws, Walmart’s starting wage often serves as the local minimum wage. Amazon (AMZN) and Target (TGT) have a $15 minimum wage, while Costco (COST) starts at $17 an hour. Walmart is trying to keep pace with rivals as well as cities and states that have been raising their minimum wages. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since 2009. Washington State has the highest minimum wage in the country at $15.74.

☆ Amazon launches $5-a-month unlimited prescription plan
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Amazon is expanding its push into healthcare with a $5 monthly unlimited delivery pass on 60 common generic prescription drugs treating allergies, inflammation, high blood pressure and other conditions. Amazon announced the new delivery service, RXPass, on Tuesday and it will launch immediately in most states except California, Texas, Minnesota and others with specific prescription delivery requirements. The $5-a-month delivery pass is an add-on to Amazon Prime, Amazon’s $139 annual program, and is available exclusively to Prime subscribers regardless of their insurance status. Amazon has long offered a Prime prescription savings benefit to get discounts on generic and brand-name medications. Amazon’s new plan will mean consumers may see lower costs for some generic drugs, Nicholson said.

☆ Chase closes some New York ATMs early because of ‘rising crime’
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Citing “rising crime and vagrancy,” Chase Bank has shuttered 24-hour access to some of its New York ATMs. A JPMorgan Chase (JPM) spokesperson said some other ATMs are closing at 10 pm. New York City mayor Eric Adams addressed the ATM early closures at a press conference Monday. “And that is what I’m saying I need to stop because I don’t want my ATMs closing down. Major retailers have been vocal about surges in theft and “organized retail crime” since the pandemic began.

☆ Here are the companies that have laid off employees this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Tech firms went on a hiring spree. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees. The crypto brokerage announced in early January that it’s cutting 950 people – almost one in five employees in its workforce. Departments from human resources to the company’s Amazon (AMZN) Stores will be affected. They’re not in heavy people expansion mode every year,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to employees.

☆ Abandoned shopping carts cost taxpayers thousands of dollars
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Abandoned shopping carts are a scourge to neighborhoods, as wayward carts block intersections, sidewalks and bus stops. There is no national data on shopping cart losses, but US retailers lose an estimated tens of millions of dollars every year replacing lost and damaged carts, say shopping cart experts. They pay vendors to rescue stray carts and fork over fines to municipalities for violating laws on shopping carts. “It is the shopping cart.” Another New York Times article in 1957 called the trend “Cart-Napping.”There’s even a book, “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification,” dedicated to the phenomenon and a system of identification for stray shopping carts, much like guides for bird-watching. Coin-lock shopping cart systems are popular in Europe, and Poulos said more US companies are requesting coin-lock systems in response to the costs of runaway shopping carts.

☆ Party City files for bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Party City filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday after years of losses and weak sales. As of October, the Company had 761 total Party City (PRTY) stores and 149 temporary Halloween City stores. In 2021, Party City (PRTY) had more than 16,000 full- and part-time employees. Party City has struggled for years against competition for party goods and decorations from big-box chains and online retailers. Party City in December said it was at risk of a de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange because its stock fell under an average of $1 a share for 30 trading days.

☆ Stores say shoplifting is a national crisis. The numbers don’t back it up
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Videos of brazen shoplifting incidents, like this one posted to social media in 2021, have turned retail theft into a national issue. The metric incorporates inventory losses caused by external theft, including organized retail crime, employee theft, human errors, vendor fraud, damaged or mismarked items and other losses. Whatever the numbers say, though, retailers maintain that organized retail crime has gotten worse. Organized retail crime typically refers to large-scale retail theft and fraud by groups of professional shoplifters who conspire to steal and resell stolen merchandise. The NRF estimates that organized retail crime costs companies an average of just 7 cents for every $100 in sales.

☆ Best Buy and Dunkin' changed their rewards programs. Then came the backlash
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-14 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —If you want to earn rewards points at Best Buy, you’ll have to take out a Best Buy credit card to be able to redeem them. Starting next month, however, reward points will only be available to customers who hold a Best Buy credit card. Offering free rewards can be expensive for companies, and they are trying to control costs during a period of high inflation. The reaction to Best Buy’s move mirrored customer backlash after changes to Dunkin’ and Starbucks’ rewards programs last year. Dunkin’ said in October that it was replacing its old rewards program, DD Perks, with a new program called Dunkin’ rewards.

☆ Surging egg prices mean record profits for largest US egg producer
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —A spike in egg prices has squeezed customers. The egg shortage has enabled record quarterly profits and sales at Cal-Maine Foods (CALM), the largest producer and distributor of eggs in the United States. The company said it was “driven by record average conventional egg selling price” to its retail customers. The company’s selling prices for specialty eggs, which include enhanced, cage-free, organic, free-range, pasture-raised and brown eggs, rose 24.9% during the quarter to $2.37 per dozen. “The significantly higher selling prices, our enduring focus on cost control, and our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures led to improved profitability overall,” Max Bowman, Cal-Maine’s finance chief, said in a statement.

☆ Walmart bans single-use bags in more stores
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

New York CNN —Walmart will eliminate single-use paper and plastic carryout bags at the register from stores in New York, Connecticut and Colorado this month. The company previously stopped giving out single-use plastic bags in New York and Connecticut and in some areas in Colorado. Plastic-bag bans reduce the number of these bags in stores and encourage customers to bring reusable bags or pay a small fee for paper bags. In New Jersey, a ban on single-use plastic and paper bags has meant grocery delivery services have switched to heavy-duty bags. Reusable bags — cloth totes or thicker, more durable plastic bags — aren’t a perfect solution, either, unless they are actually reused.

☆ Bed Bath & Beyond is running out of time
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Bed Bath & Beyond lost a third of its sales during the holiday run-up and is running out of options to avoid bankruptcy. Sales plunged in large part because Bed Bath & Beyond did not have enough stuff on shelves from suppliers. Bed Bath & Beyond previously announced that it would close around 150 stores by the end of its 2022 fiscal year and cut costs by $500 million, including by cutting jobs. Last week, Bed Bath & Beyond issued a grim message about its future, warning that a bankruptcy filing is a possible outcome for the company. Many shoppers switched to those competitors as the novelty of Bed Bath & Beyond’s coupons faded – consumers can find plenty of cheaper alternatives on Amazon (AMZN) and other online sites.

☆ Abercrombie & Fitch is cool again
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN Business —Abercrombie & Fitch has shed its perfume-filled mall stores, shirtless models and logo sweatshirts to win over Millennials and Gen Z.It’s working. Abercrombie (ANF) said Monday that its women’s segment was on track to deliver its highest holiday sales period ever, and its men’s division was growing, too. “Abercrombie was a key destination for holiday shopping,” Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail, said in a note to clients Monday. “This a further sign that the brand has successfully ditched the baggage of its past.”The brand, which has about 225 stores, plans to open around 10 Abercrombie stores a year over the next three years. Today, Abercrombie’s stores are lighter than they once were and its clothes are looser.

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