News and Analysis
Whole Foods Comes Out a Brand Winner on Super Bowl Sunday
Eagles fans weren’t the only ones cheering about Super Bowl LII on Sunday. Upscale grocery chains like Whole Foods saw increases in foot traffic in the hours before kickoff, even while multi-purpose stores like Walmart saw fewer shoppers than normal, according to newly released data from Simpli.fi.
Commentary
P-U! (That’s PatchU to You, Kid)
When we started our journalism career in the late 1980s we slugged it out with other hungry coeds for the few slots open at the local paper. A better time was never had – headlong into the Romantic World of Newspapering, we were. Assigned lightweight stories, we tried to turn into much more than they were in hopes of getting attention and even a Page 1 position. (We should also mention this was when we first used a modem to transmit text of the college paper to the print shop – a sort of magical event in those days). FF a couple decades and the print side of the news business is the same: filling holes around ever-fewer ads. And they are still looking for free(ish), energetic college kids to not only pick up the scraps but also learn to create a better future of journalism. Enter stage center in a puff of magic smoke: PatchU from Patch.com…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Expands, Square IPO ‘Eventual’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Expands Digital Wallet Offering (Wall Street Journal)… Jack Dorsey: Square IPO Will Happen ‘Eventually’ (Mashable)… With Webvan’s Implosion as Cautionary Tale, Instacart Slowly Begins to Expand, Starting With Chicago (AllThingsD))…
8 Strategies for Selling Cloud-Based POS Systems to SMBs
Cloud-based point-of-sale systems are an easy sell for vendors working with small businesses without existing mechanisms in place for handling transactions, but getting an established merchant who has already invested thousands of dollars in a legacy POS system to consider making the switch to mobile is a trickier proposition. So what is the secret to onboarding more merchants, including those who already have hardware POS systems in place? To find out, we spoke with several experts from the mPOS industry…
ShopKeep CEO: I’ll Bet We Have More Brick-and-Mortar Installs Than Square
Square might have the brand name and billionaire founder, but ShopKeep is making moves of its own. And the company’s chief executive, Jason Richelson, says that while Square dominates the dongle-touting mobile food truck crowd, there are as many, or more, small, brick-and-mortar businesses using the Shopkeep’s tablet point-of-sale system than its widely known competitor’s…
7 Local Logistics and Delivery Platforms for Restaurants
Retailers can get away with one-day or two-day delivery timelines, but restaurants are held to a different standard. Meals need to be easy to order, easy to pay for, and they need to be delivered while they’re still hot. A number of local logistics vendors are stepping in with platforms meant to simplify the delivery process for restaurant owners, providing tools to manage and process orders digitally…
Conference Notebook: For SMBs, Content Marketing May Not Be So Easy
Brands are lauded when they post or tweet the right thing at the right time — and many social media evangelists spread the gospel that in an always-on, interactive consumer culture small businesses need to do the same. But that line of thinking neglects the high costs associated with content creation, and ignores the problematic economics of content marketing for small businesses…
LBMA Podcast: Microsoft’s Nokia Buy, Gucci and Google Maps, and Moasis
On the show: Nymi uses your heartbeat as a password; OnOurRadar enables on-the-ground reporting in emerging economies; Toopher uses location as authentication; Microsoft acquires Nokia but not the juicy parts; Plus our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin on the emerging market for shopper segmentation based on device and special guest Ryan Golden of Moasis…
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