The new Suites solution allows suite owners to make changes to their food and beverage pre-orders up until a pre-selected time via a desktop or mobile app, giving them control over their event-day experience and eliminating the need for last-minute calls, the company said in a Tuesday (Aug. 27) press release.

The solution updates automatically for the concession provider, so suite attendants, kitchens and other venue staff can prepare in advance, according to the release. The solution eliminates the need for manual data entry by suite attendants and allows venue staff to focus on customer service.

It is available as a standalone product or integrated with Cantaloupe’s venue or event management platform, Cheq, per the release.

“This feature, combined with the Cheq platform’s user-friendly interface, makes it easier than ever for venues to deliver a premium experience that provides opportunity for revenue growth,” Jake Stone, vice president of partnerships at Cantaloupe, said in the release.

Cantaloupe, a global technology firm powering self-service commerce for businesses of all sizes, expanded into the sports, entertainment and restaurant sectors in February with its acquisition of Cheq Lifestyle Technology.

When announcing the acquisition, Cantaloupe said Cheq’s technology helps customers streamline venue operations, increase efficiency and boost revenue by using mobile ordering, socially connected payments, real-time reporting and remote support. It also increases food and beverage sales, speeds up transaction times, and drives new customer traffic and engagement.

“There is tremendous synergy between both of our product lines and solutions that will grow our footprint across our combined customer base,” Cantaloupe CEO Ravi Venkatesan said in a Feb. 1 press release.

Venkatesan became CEO of Cantaloupe in October 2022, moving from his previous role as chief operating officer of the company after launching new product offerings and aiming to lead the company as it expanded internationally and into adjacent markets.

“The self-service economy is still at an early stage, and I am very excited about Cantaloupe’s capabilities and our leadership position to allow us to capitalize on secular long-term growth trends,” Venkatesan said at the time.

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In an interview with PYMNTS, Evan Bregman, general manager of streaming at food and lifestyle media company Tastemade, described the way the company is seizing on this trend to drive purchasing via its new shoppable TV partnership with Shopsense AI.

“In general, I’m of the belief that there’s really no such thing as a lean-back experience anymore. Even when you are sitting and watching the largest screen, you’re interacting with your second screen,” Bregman said. “You’re interacting with the thing in front of you, even if you’re just talking to the people next to you about it. And so, the opportunity to be able to increase that interactivity seamlessly is something that’s always been interesting to us.”

Certainly, connected devices are creating new ways to multitask, as highlighted by PYMNTS Intelligence’s report, “How We Will Pay Report: How Connected Devices Enable Multitasking Among Digital-First Consumers.” This study, which surveyed over 4,600 U.S. consumers, revealed that 76% of them had used connected devices while partaking in leisure activities over the past month.

Additionally, many consumers are receptive to shoppable media. The same report showed that among the 95% of consumers who own connected devices, one-third are interested in an internet-connected shopping experience wherein, while watching a live-streamed series on an iPad or mobile device, they could touch the screen to purchase clothing or jewelry worn by an actor, directly navigating to the product page to complete the purchase.

Tastemade, for its part, has the advantage of specializing in media that is especially well suited to drive commerce, having always focused on informative content that is within reach for at-home viewers rather than on shows that have the glossiest look.

“A big way that we [increase interactivity] day to day is by including recipes,” Bregman said. “Basically, for every single cooking show that airs on Tastemade, their viewers can use a QR code to link to the recipe that you’re watching right now.”

Indeed, recipes have historically been a point of inspiration for shoppers, proving to be fertile ground for innovation in contextual commerce.

Tastemade’s partnership with Shopsense AI focuses on homeware, however, rather than food, centering on the launch of the new series, “Kitchen Glow Up.” Each episode of features shoppable content related to products for kitchens and pantries, and new items are added weekly. The move comes as businesses race to integrate commerce into more parts of consumers’ day-to-day routines, adding shoppability to everything from their social media apps to their appliances.

“This is largely an extension of a content strategy that already existed. We aim for inspiration. A lot of our competitors don’t. They do very well aiming for competition and pageantry, for aspiration — things that are a little less tangible to an average consumer,” Bregman said. “We’ve always been about having our having our consumers try to make stuff with their hands, and so this [shoppable streaming launch] is really a natural thing.”

More like this: Paramount Integrates Commerce as Media Giants Compete With TikTok Shop

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Kellogg Company, which owns the chip brand, announced Tuesday (Sept. 19) that Pringles is partnering with The Caviar Company to launch the “Crisps and Caviar Collection.” The collaboration was inspired by a TikTok trend of pairing the snack with caviar, which has garnered over 10 billion views.   

This collaboration includes a $49 kit featuring Sour Cream & Onion chips and Smoked Trout Roe, a $110 option that includes original-flavor Pringles and Classic White Sturgeon Caviar, or a $140 set that includes both of the former. All kits also come with crème fraiche and a themed serving tray.

“Our partnership with The Caviar Co. not only embraces the trending snacking behavior in an approachable manner, but expertly curates our beloved crisp flavors with this seafood delicacy for a Pringles tasting experience unlike one you’ve ever had before,” Mauricio Jenkins, U.S. marketing lead for Pringles, said in a statement.

The news comes as food brands take note of how consumers are interacting with their products on social media. The PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media Edition,” created in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, which draws from a census-balanced panel of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers, reveals that, among those who made purchases via TikTok, 1 in 3 had bought food and beverage products. Plus, a similar share of those who had made purchases on any social media platform bought food and beverage items.

Many consumers use these platforms for inspiration, even among those not making purchases directly through social media. The same study found that 43% of consumers browse social media to find goods and services.

Indeed, the question of how to leverage social media to boost performance is a key one for many food and beverage brands. At a Digital Food & Beverage Conference keynote panel in June, executives from PepsiCo and General Mills, among others, discussed the subject of “Preparing for the Next Wave of Social Commerce.”

Smaller brands, too, are looking to social media trends to garner their followings. In an interview with PYMNTS, David Kovalevski, founder and CEO of premium instant coffee brand Waka Coffee, noted how the company gained popularity with Gen Z amid the viral TikTok craze of people making dalgona coffee, also known as whipped coffee, during quarantine.

“We recognized the trend really early on,” said Kovalevski. “We created content — videos, blog posts, tutorials — and we were actually first on Google for ‘dalgona coffee’ and ‘whipped coffee’ when the trend first started.”

In a conversation with PYMNTS, Jason Young, then president of digital advertising platform Chicory, laid out the advantage that food and beverage brands and retailers have in contextual commerce.

“Recipe content has always been incredibly shoppable. What’s happening is, we now have the pipes all connected so that you can go very directly from content like recipes into transactional moments,” Young explained. “But if you look at recipes historically, they’ve always been a point of inspiration, a point of kicking off the food shopping process.”

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The new Square Go looks to offer convenience to consumers, allowing them to easily search, discover and schedule their beauty and personal care service appointments, the company said in a Tuesday (Aug. 8) press release.

Square Go offers highly-rated independent service providers for consumers to choose from, giving them personalized recommendations based on their own booking patterns, according to the press release. Consumers can receive appointment notifications and manage bookings through the app, as well as confirm, reschedule or cancel appointments.

App Store user CaraCaraNYC said in a review, per the release, “As someone who is constantly managing different appointments, I love having all my appointment info in one place! It was really easy to reschedule an appointment I had for a facial at the last minute when I was out and about. Plus, the design is really cute and super simple to use.”

Square Go is designed to be not just attractive to consumers, but to businesses as well, according to the press release. Square is offering them a professional look with a business profile that can be personalized with relevant information for customers to attract more customers.

Justin Lavalle, owner of J Lava Salon, said in the release that the app has helped increase the visibility of his business, which, in turn, has helped it financially. “Square Go has helped me reach another level of clientele I didn’t know I could,” said Lavalle.

Square Go also solicits verified reviews and feedback following any appointment, the release said. The app has also seen that 30% of consumers are rebooking after seeing a suggestion to do so within the app, and that there has been a 55% decrease in no-shows among Square Go users.

“This launch marks a significant milestone for Square sellers and their customers as we continue investing in software that equips businesses with powerful omnichannel tools,” Square CEO Alyssa Henry said in the release.

Soon, Square Go will expand into additional industries to enable even more sellers and their customers, Henry added.

PYMNTS research has found that the beauty industry is seeing new shifts in how consumers purchase and interact with both service and product offerings.

Online booking, in particular, is now a must, according to “The Digital Transformation of Beauty and Wellness Services,” a PYMNTS and American Express collaboration.

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That’s what a group of these do-it-yourselfers aim to do, according to a report Saturday (July 22) by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

According to the report, these businesses are putting together vehicle fleets to rent out via car-sharing companies like Turo and Getaround.

However, their efforts aren’t without challenges. One owner told the WSJ he had to travel to Canada to recover a stolen and abandoned car. Another rented a car involved in a shooting, and another had a Maserati totaled when a customer collided with a wall. 

“It can be tough if you don’t know what you’re doing,” said Jerome Mends-Cole, who rents out more than a dozen Teslas via Turo and his own website. “People look at it as a get rich quick thing, or a set it and forget it.”

It can easily become a money-losing venture, per the report, as the cost of parking, repairing, maintaining, financing and insuring vehicles can quickly swallow up revenues.

According to the report, around 70% of Getaround’s active cars are rented out by “power hosts” — people who own three cars or more. Many of those rent out hundreds, and at least one has more than a thousand.

PYMNTS spoke with Getaround founder and CEO Sam Zaid last month, soon after his company acquired fellow car-sharing company Hyrecar.

He said the rise of the sharing economy and increased trust and familiarity with marketplace models could help monetize cars when they aren’t in use.

Marketplaces “do really well” in areas where assets are indeed underutilized, Zaid said, using Airbnb as an example. And with the price of cars reaching levels of relative unaffordability not seen in decades, there’s a growing trend not to buy autos — but to share them.

Roughly a quarter of people who share their car end up becoming entrepreneurs on the marketplace, he added, building up small fleets of cars — beginning with a couple and eventually owning and sharing as many as 10 or more vehicles across the platform.

“It becomes what they do full-time,” said Zaid, as some owners can make several thousands of dollars each year per vehicle.

Zaid added that Getaround’s ultimate mission is to let users earn additional income and free themselves from car ownership’s burdens while positively impacting the environment.

Beyond letting consumers book cars for their personal use, he said, Getaround also has an integrated partnership in place with Uber, where a driver can rent an Uber-eligible car on the Getaround platform that’s synchronized with the Uber app and start driving for Uber within minutes rather than having to use their own cars.

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In the meantime, the U.S. consumer keeps spending. 

Economic data released over the past few days underpinned gains in the CE 100 Stock Index, which rallied 4.1% last week, bringing its year-to-date positive return to 24.4%.

This might be expected amid the reports that showed an unanticipated May 0.3% boost in retail sales, with increases nearly across the board.  

And for our CE 100 pantheon, shopping-related names led the pack, up 7.6%, as all pillars gained ground. 

As in past weeks, Vroom made a notable showing up 22.3%, followed by Ocado, which leapt 21.8%. Though there were no company-specific headlines this past week, in the case of Vroom, we note that auto dealers saw sales up 1.5% month over month. A more benign interest rate environment may be enough to cause consumers to rethink what they are buying — and possibly spur them to buy more automobiles. The online platforms (Vroom among them), in the meantime, have been making strides to right-size inventory through the past several quarters.    

WeWork shares staged a significant rally, surging 32.4%. As reported Friday via  Securities and Exchange Commission filings, shareholders have approved a reverse split of the company’s stock. The range for the reverse split lies 1-for-10 and 1-for-40. The board will decide the final ratio.

iRobot Surges on Amazon Deal Approval 

iRobot stock powered ahead 27.1%. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority gave a thumbs-up for Amazon’s $1.7 billion purchase of the company, stating that there would not be a “substantial” impact on competition in the U.K. Per an Amazon statement provided to CNBC, the eCommerce giant said that: “We’re pleased with the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s decision and are committed to supporting regulatory bodies in their work. We look forward to similar decisions from other regulators soon.”  

PYMNTS reported earlier in the month that our research into the evolution of the connected economy showed that 21 million more consumers participated in activities involving some type of smart home device than in 2022 — a 31% jump. We found that the share of consumers using smart home devices in their everyday routines increased sharply in 2023. 15% used technology to control home conditions, up from 10%, respectively, in 2022.

In the relatively weakest segment, the Be Well group, which was up 1.7%, saw gains blunted by Aetna/CVS, which lost 5.6% and UnitedHealth, which lost 7.1%.  

UnitedHealth executives warned this past week at a Goldman Sachs conference that demand is on the rise for surgeries, especially among older patients in Medicare programs. The rise in surgeries — where activity had pulled back during the pandemic — means that the insurers themselves are spending more on care, which in turn may impact margins.  

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The streaming service announced Wednesday (June 14) the launch of Netflix Bites, set to open in Los Angeles on June 30, offering meals from celebrity chefs featured in series on the streaming platform.

“Netflix is already a destination for beloved food programming, from documentaries to competition shows,” Josh Simon, VP, Consumer Products at Netflix, said in a statement. “From episode to entrée, with NETFLIX BITES we are creating an in-person experience where fans can immerse themselves in their favorite food shows.”

The move to create immersive, in-person experiences could be part of an effort to reestablish customer affinity for the brand, after the streaming service’s move to crack down on password sharing may have succeeded in driving subscriptions, but (as even a cursory search of social media platforms reveals) left many consumers frustrated with the brand.

Launching a full-service restaurant could be especially effective in creating positive sentiment now, as consumers yearn for the hospitality that used to be the norm across the restaurant industry. Research from a PYMNTS survey of nearly 2,500 U.S. consumers reveals that 63% of diners believe restaurants are becoming increasingly understaffed, and 39% said that they are becoming less and less personal. The same survey revealed that 77% of diners say staff friendliness is the most important feature a restaurant needs to provide.

Netflix is not the only brand leveraging pop-up restaurants to drive positive connections with consumers. Mattel, for instance, is feeding into (as it were) enthusiasm for the Barbie brand timed with the upcoming film by launching a pop-up Malibu Barbie Café in partnership with events platform Bucket Listers. The pop-up opened its doors in Chicago this month and in New York last month, and both are running through mid-September.

Back in 2021, dating app Bumble opened its Bumble Brew café and wine bar, which was not meant to be a pop-up, but which ultimately shut down in 2022 after a burst pipe.

PepsiCo, for its part, ran pop-up virtual restaurant Pep’s Place, also in 2021, in an effort both to encourage consumers to add more beverages to their typical restaurant delivery orders and to learn about the virtual brand space.

“Pep’s place for us was really our first experience with the world of virtual brands [and was] an opportunity for us to learn firsthand,” André Moraes, senior director of marketing at PepsiCo Foodservice and head of PepsiCo Foodservice’s Digital Lab, told PYMNTS in an interview. “We learned [that] communicating what’s special about the menu — but in a familiar format — is really important in guiding the consumer experience to be a pleasant experience to be one that’s not one of questions or uncertainty but one of excitement.”

Some brands have even made restaurant offerings an ongoing part of how they connect with consumers in the physical world. For instance, Japanese entertainment company Sanrio launched a Hello Kitty food truck back in 2014, and the brand continues to hold truck events across the United States in addition to its static Hello Kitty Grand Café in Irvine, California.

Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren’s Ralph’s Coffee café chain has become an icon in its own right, with 16 locations across five states in addition to a line of dozens of branded products that consumers can order online.

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This past week’s performance brought the Index to a positive 14.2% return as measured year to date.

C3.ai shares soared 30%, leading the Enablers segment up 4.4%.

The company released preliminary results that showed expectations that the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in April, would see revenues of a bit more than $72 million, exceeding company guidance.  

The company noted in the release that the “overall business environment for enterprise AI is more active than we have seen since the company’s inception and seems to be accelerating.” During the quarter, the company said, it closed 43 deals, including 19 pilots that were initiated during the quarter that just ended.

Communications Names Lead the Pack 

The Communications pillar soared 7.8%, led by Snap, which gained 13%. Snap, of course, also has been riding a wave of positive sentiment over AI. Last month, the company said that it opened up Snapchat’s AI chatbot to users for free. My AI had initially been launched in February as a premium offering.

Also within that segment, Zoom shares were up 8.9%. Zoom is on tap to report earnings on Monday, and per financial media sites such as Yahoo Finance, consensus estimates expect revenue growth in constant currency to be around 3%. According to reports, top-line growth is expected to be buoyed by demand for Zoom Video Webinars, Zoom Rooms and Zoom Phones.

Affirm gained 14%, leading the Pay and Be Paid segment up 3.4%. 

Affirm’s shares rebounded in the wake of earnings earlier this month that showed a pullback in discretionary spending. The company’s results showed overall double-digit gains in gross merchandise value (GMV) but a decline in some areas like home/lifestyle, where the GMV in that vertical declined 10% year over year. In contrast, it had grown 2% year over year in the fiscal second quarter.

Active merchant count grew 19% year over year to 246,000 merchants overall, and merchants with greater than $1,000 in trailing 12-month GMV grew 29% year over year to 92,000.

In the Banking segment, which gathered a 4.4% positive return, shares of Ally Bank were 5.4% higher, followed by J.P. Morgan, which gained 3.8%. 

J.P. Morgan shares were up on the heels of reports that that it is “unlikely” — in the words of CEO Jamie Dimon — the financial services giant would acquire another struggling bank. That commentary, of course, comes after the company began May with its acquisition of First Republic Bank, which had, in turn, been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Shares of WeWork plunged 44.7%, taking the Work pillar down 0.4% for the week. The company said last week that Sandeep Mathrani is stepping down as CEO effective May 26 — and is taking a role as director with Sycamore Partners to head its real estate activity. Board member David Tolley has been named to serve as interim CEO. The company’s earnings results announced earlier in May noted revenue growth of 13% in constant currency to $976 million in the first quarter. The company’s real estate portfolio had 73% physical occupancy and an increase in physical memberships of 6% year over year.

 Vodafone shares dipped 7%; alongside earnings results, the telecommunications firm said that it would cut 11,000 jobs — roughly 10% of its global headcount — through the next three years in a bid to, as CEO Margherita Della Valle said, “simplify” operations. The company, as noted in presentation materials in its latest earnings report, “must change” amid an environment where service revenue growth was 1.9% in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, where that metric had been up 2.5% at the beginning of the year.  

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Announcing the new Subscriptions offering in a Thursday (April 13) tweet, Elon Musk said users could tap on “Monetization” in the settings on the platform and apply to offer their followers subscriptions of material like long-form text and video.

“For the next 12 months, Twitter will keep none of the money,” Musk said in another tweet. “You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on web (could be better, depending on payment processor.”

“After first year, iOS & Android fees drop to 15% and we will add a small amount on top of that, depending on volume,” Musk added in the tweet.

With the new Subscriptions feature, Twitter users can earn money by offering their followers access to bonus content and badges that make it easier to chat and connect, according to the Subscriptions page found under Monetization on the platform.

More features will be added to help create and share content with subscribers, the page said.

The Subscriptions offering is being launched for a small group of people, and Twitter users are invited to check their eligibility on the Subscriptions page. The current eligibility requirements include being at least 18 years old, having 25 tweets in the past 30 days and having 500 followers, according to the Subscriptions page.

“Our goal is to maximize creator prosperity,” Musk said in a tweet. “At any point, you can leave our platform and take your work with you. Easy in, easy out.”

This news comes on the same day as an announcement that Twitter has teamed with social investment platform eToro to let users trade financial assets.

The feature, which debuted Thursday on the Twitter app, lets users check on the markets and buy and sell stocks, cryptocurrencies and other assets.

The new offerings also come about two weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk aims to make Twitter a major part of users’ financial lives and thereby boost the company’s value from its current $20 billion to $250 billion.

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In an interview with PYMNTS, Kevin Yu, CEO of connected recipes company SideChef, which earlier this month announced a $6 million Series B fundraise, said there is so much more to be done in terms of embedding commerce into consumers’ food-focused online routines.

“We have, as well as other companies, done a great job of making recipes online shoppable, but for us, that was never the goal,” Yu said. “That’s great that you a recipe and there’s a button that lets you add all that to your cart. But the reality is, I don’t just make one recipe when I cook or when I buy my ingredients. That’s not even efficient.”

He argued that shoppability features are just the engine, but the car is still being built. For instance, the company’s meal plans, which adjust serving sizes according to the amounts of ingredients consumers are buying, have tripled conversion rates relative to single-recipe shoppable content. Now the company is building out its “Zero Waste” option that gets even more granular, offering recipes to use up all the ingredients and calculating price per serving.

The company also offers an app that teaches people how to cook step by step and now is looking into ways to integrate its features into kitchen appliances such as smart ovens, with a goal to have a hand in every part of the cooking process.

“Imagine an oven that you can place a pizza into,” Yu said. “The oven will automatically know what it is and then be able to just turn on and do what it needs to do to get you to your personalized preferences.”

Certainly, if the company has a role in everything from inspiration to purchasing to the appliances themselves, there are opportunities to drive loyalty as well as to open up new streams of advertising revenue.

Now, as Yu sees it, the greatest challenge facing the company is adoption. He said that just as music streaming took more than a decade to become an integral part of consumers’ daily lives, it will take time for consumers to become comfortable with the options that online grocery poses that could change the way they get their meal needs met.

“How do we allow people to have something totally different?” Yu said. “I think we are still at the earliest stages of this, and shoppable recipes are just one piece of that puzzle.”

In fact, nearly half of all U.S. consumers get at least some of the items they once got at the supermarket via eCommerce channels, but few rely exclusively on digital shopping. Research from PYMNTS’ new study “Changes in Grocery Shopping Habits and Perception,” which draws from a December survey of more than 2,400 U.S. consumers, finds that 45% now shop for groceries online at least some of the time, but only 7% do so all the time.

Looking ahead to next year, Yu predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) will be having a transformative effect on how consumers plan and prepare meals.

“Take image recognition,” he said. “Gosh, I don’t know what to do with these ingredients in my fridge. I just want to take a picture. Tell me what I can make. You know, what am I missing? OK, and send it to me. How long is it going to take? 30 minutes? OK. It’s going to cost this much? Great. Decision done.”

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