When you can’t fill your open roles, consider paying your customers instead.
That’s the strategy Domino’s is using to compensate for both labor shortages and a decline in sales. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-headquartered pizza chain announced this week that it will offer customers a $3 “tip” to apply to their next order (placed within a week) if they pick up their online orders themselves. The promotion is expected to run through late May.
There might be some bad news for Starbucks regulars, and they can thank the seemingly never-ending supply chain issues for it.
Starbucks reported that it will be increasing prices in stores later this year thanks to less than stellar Q1 2022 results. Though total revenue topped estimates at about $8.05 billion, earnings did not meet Wall Street’s expectations.
“Our pricing strategy … is driven by several factors such as inflation rates, partner investments, the infrastructure investments that we want to make, and then obviously, the investments we want to make on continuing the innovation pipeline. We do all those things while balancing the premium value for our customers and the experience we want to provide them,” John Culver, group president of North America and COO of Starbucks said on its quarterly earnings call.
IN DECEMBER 2021, 27,591 aircraft took off or landed at Frankfurt airport—890 every day. But this winter, many of them weren’t carrying any passengers at all. Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, which is based in Frankfurt, has admitted to running 21,000 empty flights this winter, using its own planes and those of its Belgian subsidiary, Brussels Airlines, in an attempt to keep hold of airport slots.
Although anti-air travel campaigners believe ghost flights are a widespread issue that airlines don’t publicly disclose, Lufthansa is so far the only airline to go public about its own figures. In January, climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted her disbelief over the scale of the issue. Unusually, she was joined by voices within the industry. One of them was Lufthansa’s own chief executive, Carsten Spohr, who said the journeys were “empty, unnecessary flights just to secure our landing and takeoff rights.” But the company argues that it can’t change its approach: Those ghost flights are happening because airlines are required to conduct a certain proportion of their planned flights in order to keep slots at high-trafficked airports
In just a few short years, 23-year-old Jimmy Donaldson—better known as MrBeast—has built one of the largest audiences on the internet; become the highest-paid YouTube star ever, thanks to his videos generating some 10 billion views; and even convinced 456 people to compete in a precise reimagining of the activities at the heart of Squid Game (minus the bloody death) for $456,000. A year ago, he launched a restaurant concept called MrBeast Burger, using ghost kitchens to scale up very quickly. It sold 1 million burgers in its first three months.
Now, starting today, January 29, he’s also a major packaged-food brand.
The passing of President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) legislation could mean the scrapping of a loophole referred to as the backdoor Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA). The Roth IRA unlike traditional IRAs is funded with after-tax dollars making contributions not tax-deductible. But once account holders start withdrawing funds, the money is tax-free. It gives them an edge over traditional IRA deposits which are generally made with pretax dollars and income tax is charged when money is withdrawn from the account during retirement
Critics of the backdoor Roth say that it allows individuals a loophole to get around the income limits that normally prevent high earners from owning Roths.
Users of Amazon’s Alexa complained that the voice assistant was not working on Friday morning.
According to the website Down Detector, the problem appeared to affect the UK and parts of Europe and lasted about an hour.
Some users posted on social media that they had been unable to get Alexa to respond or help with their morning routine.
Abhi Ramesh had expected to return with only fresh fruit the first time he went apple-picking with his future wife in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But he also brought home a business idea.
“There were apples all over the ground,” says Ramesh, a serial entrepreneur who had earlier founded a coding school and an e-commerce startup. “I saw just firsthand how much food goes to waste at the farm level. I was shocked at the time.”
Washington DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana announced the latest lawsuit against Big Tech Monday, alleging that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled.
“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” DC Attorney General Karl Racine said. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data.”
Space may soon house a full-fledged TV and film studio, thanks to Space Entertainment Enterprise (S.E.E.).
According to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), the company that is co-producing Tom Cruise’s upcoming space movie (which is set to be filmed in space), is intending to launch the studio by 2024, in addition to a streaming studio and sports arena.
The microgravity production broadcast module, named SEE-1, will be fitted to the Axiom Station, a commercial space station being made by Axiom Space and that will be attached to the International Space station prior to orbit.
Amazon has a new venture outside of e-commerce, cloud computing, content streaming, smart devices, Whole Foods, cashier-less technology or anything else you’ve come to associate with one of the most successful companies in American history.
It’s a physical clothing store. Like, you know, a real brick-and-mortar space where you go try on stuff, buy it and then bring it home. An IRL store. Google it if you’ve never been to one.
Dispatches From The Front 