Top Things You Missed IN Retail

he playbook for CAVA as it explores going public is one written on guests’ terms and defined by choice; just as customization catapulted the assembly line category from its inception, so today is the omnichannel experience for those brands built to do so, Schulman says. Customers are asking restaurants for the ability to order where and when they want, from whatever avenue.

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PCC Community Markets to offer on-demand grocery delivery from 15 locations in and around Seattle. PCC is the first community-owned grocer available on the DoorDash marketplace, providing consumers with a reliable and convenient way to stock up on their favorite organic grocery needs and home essentials.

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Medallia, Inc., a leader in customer and employee experience, today announced that Holiday Inn Club Vacations, a leading vacation ownership company, successfully leveraged Medallia to improve “Guest Love” scores for the brand’s customer support call center to their highest levels ever.

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Noodles & Company is spending approximately $10 million to roll out digital menuboards across its system this year in what CEO Dave Boennighausen called a “transformative investment” for the fast-casual chain.

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Seamless integration between the restaurant, its end-to-end software platform, and its myriad partners is the fuel that keeps the engine humming along. For Wichita, Kansas-based Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, integration between its management platform and sales technology was instrumental in helping it grow to 448 locations in merely six years.

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The Italian cooperative company Realco has significantly improved its inventory management through its partnership with RELEX Solutions, provider of unified supply chain and retail planning solutions.

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Pet Supermarket, a retailer with locations throughout the US Southeast, is to begin using Bringg on Salesforce (BoSF) to manage delivery operations, expand fulfilment capabilities and enhance the customer experience.

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ampliFI Loyalty Solutions announces Walmart as its newest retail client to join its real-time redemption offering Checkout With Points, which is powered by FIS. ampliFI's real-time rewards suite gives financial institutions the power to engage cardholders during the transaction flow in a real-time, immediate way.

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Ferguson has deployed Parcel Pending by Quadient smart lockers, including a new line of oversized lockers, in response to customer demand for a streamlined in-store pickup experience during and outside of regular store hours.

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KeHE Distributors, one of the largest natural, organic, specialty, and fresh product distributors in North America, has revealed a partnership with WeStock to bring first-party consumer data into the conversation when it comes to its product foraging, curation and assortment decisions.

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REWE has opened its fourth Trigo powered store, situated in Cologne, Germany’s fourth largest city.

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For the first time, Amazon “Just Walk Out” cashierless shopping technology is available in a store on a college campus. In an email to Chain Store Age, Amazon announced that an on-campus convenience store located in the lobby of Gerard Phelan Hall at Marymount University in Arlington, Va. (the city where Amazon is building a second headquarters).

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The membership warehouse club retailer is deploying the Simbe Robotics Tally AI-based robotic solution across all stores. The robots will autonomously roam store aisles multiple times per day, leveraging computer vision technology to collect shelf data to help ensure that products are in-stock, shelved appropriately, and accurately priced.

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The athletic-inspired apparel retailer is implementing the latest Oracle retail cloud platform technology. The deployment includes upgrading an existing install of the mobile Oracle Retail Xstore POS solution; as well as rollouts of Oracle Retail Store Inventory Operations Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Customer Engagement Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Order Broker, and Oracle Retail Assortment Planning Cloud.

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Hart House has intentionally sought out business partners that share its vision for the future. Opus, an AI-powered, mobile-first training platform designed for the frontline worker, became the go-to training resource for Hart House.

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One hundred autonomous drones are now operational in Ikea stores - the latest in Ikea Zaventem, Belgium – with owner Ingka Group saying it is the first retailer to use such a solution for stock inventory.

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Fresh Thyme Market will be the first retailer to offer the Learn & Earn program powered by Merryfield Rewards, which uses business management software Cornerstone’s Smart Shelf Tag technology to boost in-store consumer engagement and influence point-of-purchase decisions via in-aisle branded digital content and exclusive incentives and rewards unlocked with a smartphone.

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Luke and her team recently added UPshow SHIFT, a digital solution that’s helping Womac Group communicate pivotal information to its employees in a seamless, real-time fashion. Here’s how it works: an UPshow TV is installed in the back-of-house.

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As technology becomes increasingly essential to all facets of a restaurant operation, brands and third-party partners are exploring how new advancements can enhance onboarding and training. For hot dog and burger concept Dog Haus, that meant teaming up with 1Huddle to put a fresh spin on the process. The training platform uses gamification to turn employee handbooks into interactive games that team members play in lieu of traditional training seminars and reading.

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Rimi Baltic has implemented SymphonyAI Retail CPG cloud-based macro and micro space solutions across Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania stores.

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Advertising technology firm The Trade Desk has announced a partnership with online grocery big hitter Ocado Retail.

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Walmart has partnered with edtech company Springboard to launch this latest branch of their learning and development program, Live Better U. By adding this new string to their bow, the retail giant hopes to boost associates’ career mobility within the company and equip their team members in competitive, in-demand skillsets.

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Asos is entering a retail media advertising partnership with Criteo. Under the agreement, Criteo will serve as the exclusive partner for third-party advertising across Asos’ app and web channels.

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Best Buy is partnering with the top TV streaming platform in North America to provide first-party customer data for ad targeting and measurement. The consumer electronics giant is collaborating with Roku to enable its brand partners to target, optimize, and measure their ads on Roku using Best Buy shopper data.

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IDIS has been chosen by Finnish retailer Prisma to implement a video surveillance upgrade that tackles shrink and improves system usability at four of its hypermarkets.

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The chain’s new online ordering feature, which is in partnership with Paytronix, launched as Rutter’s dedicates focus toward on expansion in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware and remodeling existing convenience stores.

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In recent months, Unilever has developed a number of new technology applications to help its lines of business in the markets of tomorrow. One of the most important is “Alex,” short for Alexander the Great. Alex, powered by ChatGPT, filters emails in Unilever’s Consumer Engagement Center, sorting spam from real consumer messages. For the legitimate messages, it then recommends responses to Unilever’s human agents.

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In order to achieve a full-scale revamping, the company partnered with Zebra Technologies to implement its task management and scheduling resources.

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Co-op has expanded its trial with tech recirculation startup, Spring, with the introduction of reusable pouches for shoppers’ old and unwanted phones and electronic devices.

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DB Schenker, a supply chain management and logistics service provider, has opened an automated e-commerce facility servicing its retail customers in Spain, Portugal and France.

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Coca-Cola plans to use generative AI to help create new marketing content. And while the company hasn't detailed exactly how it plans to deploy the technology, the move reflects the growing pressure on businesses to harness tools that many of their employees and consumers are already trying on their own.

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Handheld devices crossed category lines as COVID cracked wide a world of digital adoption, bringing a tech-centric spin on service into an experiential-driven segment. But are they improving customer experience at sit-down restaurants?

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Puma has been working with Stylitics for almost three years now with the primary aim of increasing basket sizes.

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Many other c-store industry players are offering attractive benefits and salaries to try to bring in new workers and retain the ones they have. They are also turning to technology to enable their stores to run with less staff if necessary. When it comes to finding workarounds, one of the top solutions is technology — whether it's robotics in the kitchen, self-checkout, or automated inventory and ordering.

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Stater Bros. Market shoppers will soon get a nudge at the cash register—through the use of conveyor-belt advertising service MessageWrap—to join the grocer’s Digital Deals loyalty program.

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H-E-B is providing a digital home management platform with its first presence in physical retail. The San Antonio, Texas-based regional grocery retailer is rolling out branded displays from Thumbtack, which provides homeowners digital access to home service providers, in more than 300 of its Texas-based stores.

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Starship Technologies has partnered with Trafford Council and the Co-op to bring autonomous grocery deliveries to residents across Sale in Greater Manchester.

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To ensure that all of its shoppers receive quality customer service, regional grocer Wegmans Food Markets Inc. has introduced enhanced in-store pharmacy auxiliary aids and accessibility options for customers with sensory disabilities, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing and/or those with visual impairments.

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Fast fashion giant Inditex is investing in technology after reporting strong 2022 sales. The Spanish clothing company, whose brands include Zara, will invest in increasing its logistics capacity with a special focus on automation, as well as other new technology, as the brand finds itself fighting for space in an increasingly crowded fast fashion sector.

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Curator Hotel & Resort Collection vetted multiple AI solutions and recognized an opportunity to incorporate the innovative technology into the Travel Outlook scope of services, helping lead the development of Annette, The Virtual Hotel Agent. Annette’s proprietary conversational AI understands how people actually speak, by using tools like movie dialog and Facebook for design and programming.

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Festival Foods has partnered with the Zipline platform to boost execution and create a clear line of sight among the independent grocer’s 8,000+ employees.

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The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 10.5 million times in February, 4.2 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of February, downloads of the top 36 quick-service restaurant apps are up 33.7 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey.

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Tops Markets LLC is expanding its program with Flashfood, the digital marketplace that gives shoppers access to deeply discounted food nearing its best-by date, to 18 more Rochester, N.Y.-area stores. This brings the total number of Tops stores offering the program to 68 across western New York state.

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Walmart shoppers in Plano might not know it, but there’s a gaggle of chefs at a new ghost kitchen right by the front door of the store at Ohio Drive and State Highway 121.

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