With Super Bowl LVI less than a week away, football fans around the country are stocking up on snacks and drinks for Sunday’s big game. In fact, each year Americans eat more than 112 million pounds of snacks during the Super Bowl, with the most popular items being potato chips, pretzels, and tortilla chips. Although these items will be available and affordable as ever this year, economists at Wells Fargo estimate that the cost of fresh items like salsa and Continue reading
With so many different products and services on offer these days, it can be difficult for companies to convince customers to purchase a product more than once. And since repeat business is the lifeblood of any enterprise, many firms have turned to subscription models to ensure that they receive steady sources of revenue. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ stand out as some of the most recognizable subscription services, while brands like Peloton adopted this model for the home fitness Continue reading
When summer came to a close last year, restaurants across the country scrambled to keep diners eating outdoors even as the weather turned cold. This led to improvised setups with shelters and gas heaters that sometimes brought about more problems than they solved. For example, every night Ellen Yin’s restaurant in Philadelphia would burn through more than 10 propane tanks for their heat lamps, with staff often changing the tanks throughout the evening. “A couple of times I went to Continue reading
Since the widespread restaurant shutdowns of 2020, workers have steadily started to leave the food service industry, many for good. Along with the dangers of working in public during a pandemic, employees also found that some customers at reopened restaurants tended to tip less while others responded aggressively to mask rules. As a result, eateries across the country have nearly one million fewer filled positions than they did before the pandemic, amounting to an 8 percent decrease. And in a Continue reading
It’s a scenario that plenty of fast food fans have faced before: they pull up to the drive-thru speaker at McDonald’s and ask for their favorite frozen treat, only to hear the reply, “Sorry, but the machine is broken right now.” Responsible for about 60 percent of the chain’s desserts, the McFlurry machine is a vital asset for Golden Arches franchises across the country, even though their unreliability has become something of a running joke. Along with serving as the Continue reading
In the coming months, regular drinkers of the sugar-free soda brand Coke Zero might notice a slight change in the taste of their favorite beverage. According to company officials, the formula for Coke Zero will be altered in order to “deliver an even more iconic Coke taste.” While this might seem like a relatively harmless change, any alteration to a Coca-Cola product draws plenty of public scrutiny after the company’s disastrous launch of “New Coke” in the 1980s.
Back then, Continue reading