News and Analysis

StreetFight - The Skinny on FAT Brands Franchise Innovation

BOOM: The Skinny on FAT Brands

FAT Brands sends us regular news announcements about their growth, menu updates, and company strategies. We’re wowed by their speed of franchise innovation. We reached out to their executive team to get insights into the FAT philosophy and forward-looking path. As a MULO (multi-location) brand, they are clearly one of the gentle yet powerful giants. […]

Technology MULO Brands Need Today, According to RizePoint

Technology MULO Brands Need Today, According to RizePoint

Paul Damaren is the Chief Revenue Officer at RizePoint. The company develops technology for the restaurant, hospitality, retail, and processing industries. Although their tool suite helps these MULO brands with compliance, they are also designed to “help brands create a culture of excellence and ensure that every customer experience is as good (and safe) as […]

Beware the “Brobot?” The Women of AI

At CES (where AI was the buzzword this year), a group of women gathered to discuss the role of women in technology, and specifically in artificial intelligence. AI is already having an impact on all aspects of the MULO (multi-location) retail and restaurant ecosystem — from real-time analytics to inventory management and security. According to […]

Commentary

What You Need to Know about the Google My Business Name Change

The GMB name change brings with it a fair degree of uncertainty. Google may be retaining, for instance, the model of an API that helps partners manage listings for both SMBs and larger brands, but if the company is simultaneously building out a snazzy new interface for those same multi-location brands to manage Google profiles on their own, does this fact represent an existential threat to listing management companies?

LBMA: Chili’s Tests a Robot Server

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Chili’s restaurants testing a robot server named Rita, Locky Dock Media Network blending media and public good, ProMobi releasing tech to track frontline workers, and EzFill adding gasoline to a growing list of on-demand delivery items.

Holiday Insights: Partnerships and Covid

Each month, Street Fight sources expert insights from the businesses in our ecosystem on our theme. This month’s theme is the Hybrid Holidays, and our experts share their takes on taking advantage of partnerships, navigating Covid, and optimizing for holiday grocery preferences.

Latest Posts

5 Brands Leveraging AI to Give Consumers What They Want This Holiday Season

What do shoppers really want this holiday season? As more brands transition to first-party data, advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are taking the guesswork out of managing supply and improving the shopping experience with more personalized service.

Last-Mile Delivery

With Supply Chain in Crisis, Retailers Use Tech-Enabled Processes to Monitor Demand

Demand for e-commerce shopping and fast shipping continues to be high, which puts additional pressure on retailers to fulfill consumers’ needs. As smaller, independent retailers look at how they can handle the upcoming surge, now is the time to utilize cloud-based communication tools like Twilio to keep customers satisfied.

LBMA: Supermarket Uses In-Store Data to Drive Programmatic DOOH Ads

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Life360 acquiring Tile, Albert Heijn using in-store data to inform programmatic DOOH ads, Mondelez Vietnam using AI in a mooncake marketing campaign, and WaitTime bringing load-balancing tech to retail with a Mall of America pilot.

How Younger Platforms Are Chipping Away at Facebook’s Dominance in Social

There’s a lot of talk in the martech/adtech ecosystem about Facebook and Instagram’s gradual loss of sway in social advertising, especially relative to video-first apps popular among young people such as Snapchat and TikTok. But how much are things really changing, and why?

Is Shopify Plus Worth It? Here’s What You Need to Know

So, what version of Shopify do you really need? Shopify Plus is the top-tier option and the priciest, but it offers exclusive features and capabilities designed to skyrocket growth and sales. Learn more about what Shopify Plus has to offer and see if it’s the best choice for your business.

How D2C Brands Are Capitalizing on Physical Stores and Shifting Metrics of Success

Now, digital-first brands are embracing brick-and-mortar. In doing so they are upending the way we measure success in physical retail spaces and rewriting the retail playbook in the process.

Digital Advertising Has a Promising 2022 in Store — for Those Who Get Ready for It

The industry is moving away from third-party cookies, toward VR/AR experiences, and into a rebounding economy. We’ll see more things transform in 2022 — and here are some trends that I see accelerating, which advertisers, agencies, and publishers need to watch.

Street Fight’s December Theme: Predictions

Street Fight will be focusing on 2022 predictions as we plan our December reporting and consider contributor op-eds. Of course, contributors are welcome to pitch us on other topics in e-commerce, martech, etc., but we encourage submissions making bold predictions about how martech and ad tech, retail tech, location intelligence, and consumer data will evolve in 2022.

A Third of Marketing Leaders Say They’re Not Ready for Third-Party Cookies’ Demise

The death of the third-party cookie on Chrome in 2023 dominated the martech discussion in 2021, but a third of marketing leaders say they are still not ready for the effect it will have on marketing. That’s according to a Lytics survey conducted by Sapio Research in October that polled 256 marketing leaders to assess the future of data-driven marketing.

food

LBMA: Google Maps Goes Head to Head with Instacart

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers SPREE Interactive taking its VR platform global, a Robot mixologist serving drinks and collecting data, Google Maps going head to head with Instacart, and Square launching a Photo Studio app.