Along with releasing their always-anticipated annual holiday cup, Starbucks made another announcement this week as well. The coffee mega-giant is selling their Tazo tea brand to Unilever for $384 million as they say they will be focusing on Teavana as their sole tea brand. The sale includes all recipes, intellectual property and inventory. Tazo, founded in 1994, was sold to Starbucks just five years later for $8.1 million. The brand is primarily sold in grocery stores. Consumers can buy Tazo as a packaged tea, K-Cup pod or in bottled-form. Tuesday’s announcement was made as Starbucks released their fourth-quarter results and…
Author: Kirsten Loose
Commuting sucks and new research proves it. A study conducted by the University of the West of England, “Commuting and Wellbeing,” suggests that long commutes are having a negative impact on workers’ mental health and job satisfaction. The study, which was sponsored by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, was conducted between February 2016 and August 2017. The researchers used data taken from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), which has been surveying adults from 40,000 households across the UK since 2009. For “Commuting and Wellbeing,” researchers focused on six years of data, from 2009/10 to 2015/16. According to…
The bidding war for Amazon’s second headquarters began on Monday, and several cities have already submitted their proposals. New Jersey has submitted a bid for their city of Newark, offering up what could potentially be the greatest financial incentive for Amazon—$7 billion in tax breaks. Just last month, Amazon announced a competition to source a location for their second headquarters. Dubbing it “HQ2,” Amazon is looking to spend up to $5 billion building the new hub, which will run in tandem with the Seattle-headquarters. The city lucky enough to land the gig would gain 50,000 jobs with an average salary…
The investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffray released the findings of their latest biannual “Taking Stock with Teens” Survey, MarketWatch reports, and apparently, Nike is losing touch with teenagers. Instead, the demographic seems to be spending more with Adidas and Amazon. Before you throw out your swoosh-covered sweats and socks, Nike (NKE) still holds court as the top clothing and footwear brand. The survey does relay that the sportswear giant is among the top brands that experienced the largest declines. Other household names that suffered sharp declines include: Ralph Lauren (RL); Steve Madden (SHOO); Ugg, (DECK); Fossil (FOSL);…
Google is rumored to have a new smart device in the works, TechCrunch reports. The tabletop smart screen for the home will serve as the competitor for Amazon’s Echo Show, which has been on the market since June 2017. If true, such a device would keep Google in the smart home market race with Amazon and Facebook. The rumors follow Amazon’s announcement Thursday of a cast of new Echos. The company now has a total of seven Amazon Echo devices to choose from. With Amazon covering all the bases in the home, and essentially ruling the current smart home market,…
McDonald’s announced yesterday, Aug. 23, that it would begin the process of removing human antibiotics in their chickens worldwide starting in 2018. Currently, McDonald’s only sells antibiotic-free chicken in the America’s. The announcement will bring the fast-food giant into a global effort to “battle dangerous superbugs,” according to Reuters. The company’s target is antibiotics that are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “highest priority critically important antimicrobials” (HPCIAs) to human medicine. Reuters points out that the plan to phase out antibiotics is still “not as strict as the company’s policy for the United States.” In the US, chicken…
Uber capitulated to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) early this week, agreeing to submit to two decades worth of audits. The San Francisco-based company will need to implement a privacy program and submit to audits every 2 years for the next 20 years, reports ET Tech. The settlement follows an intense probe from US regulators concerned that Uber has “failed to protect the personal information of drivers and passengers and deceived the public about efforts to prevent snooping by its employees.” The agreed terms are to ensure the company meets certain FTC requirements. ET Tech reports the…
Google is once again making headlines this week due to a familiar issue in Silicon Valley—the gender pay gap. At least 70 current and former female employees are expected to file a class-action lawsuit against the tech giant with the help of a San Francisco employment law firm, Altshuler Berzon LLP. James Finberg, the civil rights lawyer and Altshuler Berzon LLP partner spearheading the class action suit, told Forbes that several dozen women came forward in just “a matter of weeks” after the firm posted both Facebook and LinkedIn notices “seeking women currently or formerly employed at Google for possible…
ASOS, a British online fashion and beauty store, released a statement announcing plans to build a new warehouse in the United States on Tuesday, August 8, Business Insider reports. The giant e-commerce fulfillment center will be located in Union City, near Atlanta, GA and will cost the company an initial investment of $40 million to build. The Union City warehouse will be half the size of ASOS’ main warehouse in Barnsley, England and large enough to house 10 million clothing and accessory items. This plan is to help fuel US sales growth, which makes up 12 percent of ASOS’ total…
