Los Angeles — chargeFUZE will scale its innovative and autonomous out-of-home mobile phone charging stations into Westfield shopping centers in the U.S. The initiative is part of an effort to ensure that Westfield guests have the best experience possible and can take advantage of all digital and tech-forward initiatives onsite. chargeFUZE’s portable charging network is being rolled out across Westfield’s US shopping centers, allowing guests to charge their devices while ‘on the go.’ chargeFUZE’s technology will enable Westfield visitors to remain untethered and to charge any device from the comfort …
software/technology
Minneapolis — Target Corporation has hired Prat Vemana as executive vice president, chief digital and product officer. Vemana will join Target on Oct. 31 as a member of Target’s leadership team, reporting to Cara Sylvester, chief guest experience officer. In this role, he will oversee Target’s digital business, including site merchandising, user experience, digital operations and product, and Target+, the retailer’s growing online third-party marketplace. Additionally, Vemana will provide key support for Target’s industry-leading product teams across the company by bringing a holistic view to the retailer’s overall product strategy. …
— By Rob Tedesco — The next digital frontier for restaurants. Brands have spent the past few years adapting to a digital-first mindset. They’ve reoriented their businesses toward programs like online ordering, invested in their tech stacks and started gathering first-party customer data But as the paradigm now truly shifts, and “outside the four walls” matters more, what’s missing from brands’ digital roadmaps? What will be the next major leaps in restaurant technology and digital guest experiences? Here, we discuss four ways in which digital tools help restaurants …
— By Kristin Naragon — Communicating a brand’s commitment to environmental impacts requires transparency in today’s omnichannel shopping landscape. More so than ever, consumers are inundated with choices. For any given product or service, they have a seemingly endless list of options to choose from — meaning they have the ability to choose to support corporations whose values align with their own. It happens more often than you may think; according to this Global B2C Survey conducted by our team, half of the 3,500 survey participants said …
Malvern, Pa. — Cantaloupe, Inc., a digital payments and software services company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market, has named Ravi Venkatesan as chief executive officer, effective October 1, 2022. Venkatesan, who currently serves as Cantaloupe’s COO, will succeed Sean Feeney, who will retire from Cantaloupe on September 30, 2022. Feeney will step down from the board of directors and Venkatesan will join the board of directors, effective October 1, 2022. “On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to congratulate Ravi on this …
Menlo Park, Calif. — Dragonfruit AI, retail’s first massively scalable video AI platform, has named Ray Cooke — most recently senior vice president at Hanwha Techwin America — as its new vice president of business development. Dragonfruit’s Frontier was custom-built for Retail Loss Prevention/Asset Protection (Video Summaries, ORC Investigations, OSHA Compliance, Slip/Fall, Liquid Spill), Store Operations (Checkout Metrics, Point-of-Sale Analysis with Video Verification) and Marketing/Merchandising (In-store Commerce Funnels). Designed from the ground-up for multi-location retailers, Frontier provides the flexibility for retailers to start solving their most pressing needs and add …
— By John Moody — Insights for boosting profit margin with technology. According to the USDA, the level of food price inflation for restaurant food purchases rose 7.4% from May 2021 to May 2022. While some operators are forced to increase menu prices to accommodate this remarkable spike in food costs, others are trying desperately to find other ways to remain profitable without passing the additional burden on to their customers. There are three primary controls that restaurant operators need to pay careful attention to when trying …
Stratham, N.H. — Position Imaging, Inc, a pioneer in package logistics and asset tracking technology, has added Lucas Carvalho as senior vice president of operations. Carvalho will lead all Global Operations, Service, Fulfillment and Human Resources across all of Position Imaging’s business units. The company is now adapting its tracking technology to retail logistics. Before joining Position Imaging, Carvalho, in his role as executive vice president of corporate resources, spent 17 years leading the team at BAMSI, an organization with over 2,000 employees operating out of 120 locations throughout Massachusetts. …
St. Louis — On Aug. 29, 2022, Panera Bread began testing AI technology in drive-thru lanes with an aim to improve and enhance the guest experience. With support from OpenCity, select Panera bakery-cafes in the greater Rochester, N.Y., area have implemented OpenCity’s proprietary voice AI ordering technology, called “Tori,” for drive-thru orders, with the goal of maximizing efficiency and increasing speed of orders. Guests at Panera Bread cafes in Greece, N.Y., and Webster, N.Y., are the first Panera locations to experience this drive-thru innovation. Tori is installed at these select …
— By Bryan Falk — How to meet customer expectations, maximize efficiency and deliver the ideal brand experience. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers are changing the way they shop, dine and spend money. This customer shift, paired with industry challenges such as labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, created the perfect storm leading to unprecedented times for retail and restaurant managers. The response from operators to the rapid industry changes will likely set the path for future successes or challenges. Store owners and managers …