Photos: Restaurant with robotic kitchen opens in Boston

BOSTON — The world’s first restaurant with a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals has opened. Spyce’s automated kitchen has seven cooking woks able to serve up to 200 meals an hour.The Boston eatery’s menu is based on a half-dozen bowls with flavors t

Source: kpic.com

200 meals an hour is max rate.  Is average restaurant 60 customers and 20 tables. Turnover is 30 minutes?  120 customers?

Private equity bosses took $200m out of Toys R Us and crashed the company, lifetime employees got $0 in severance /

Private equity bosses took $200m out of Toys R Us and crashed the company, lifetime employees got $0 in severance

Source: boingboing.net

Comments:  They deserve it. Toys r Us and toys.com lowballed the US toy market to sub-zero margins. I was doing contract work at the time with M.W. Kasch, the largest toy wholesaler in the USA, and these guys were selling below cost to capture market share. They lowered margins to zero, then died.

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Typical behavior of "category killers" in the pre-Amazon days. They assumed they could corner the market on select categories, not realizing more-efficient online operations would displace them, especially if they operated warehouse-sized stores and were heavily leveraged.

Why Nordstrom Is Betting on High-Touch Tech

No department-store chain has embraced technology more aggressively. But will tech help Nordstrom avoid the slump in higher-end retail?

Source: fortune.com

the 47,000-square-foot emporium is also a sophisticated shopping-tech laboratory—one of several where Nordstrom is urgently experimenting with ways to make upscale, high-touch retail more competitive in an e-commerce-driven era. The mazelike layout, spread over three floors, showcases subtle but important technological enhancements. Some are super-practical—such as self-service bins where shoppers can drop off returns (including online purchases) and get credit almost immediately. Others have a wow factor: In the suits section, customers can see how bespoke jackets would look on life-size avatars of themselves, projected on screens, a digital take on the adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” And yet others pamper you: If you’ve “reserved” a product online to try on before you buy, there’ll be a fitting room waiting for you—with your name on the door.

Walmart drops mobile Scan & Go checkout

Walmart is finding it harder than it may have originally anticipated to convince customers to adopt new tech and engage with the retailer through digital and mobile platforms. While consumers are drawn to convenient shopping experiences, many didn’t see the value of doing more work while browsing when they could easily hand off tasks like bagging and scanning to trained cashiers at checkout.

Source: www.retaildive.com

Walmart is finding it harder than it may have originally anticipated to convince customers to adopt new tech and engage with the retailer through digital and mobile platforms. While consumers are drawn to convenient shopping experiences, many didn’t see the value of doing more work while browsing when they could easily hand off tasks like bagging and scanning to trained cashiers at checkout.

Power Through The Retail Slump With This Brand New Benchmarking Tool

The table below shows five mass market fashion retailers in UK. It also plots the number of items with stripes per retailer according to price point.

 

This comparison shows that Zalando UK sells the greatest number of items with stripes, ranging from £0 to £799.99. Also, the £10 to £49.99 price point is the most popular for Zalando UK, ASOS and Debenhams. We can easily see the most popular price points for striped apparel among these five retailers is £10 to £49.99, followed by £50 to £99.99.

 

Similarly, you can can benefit from Relationship Charts when making decisions on your own assortment and pricing strategies.

Source: www.intelligencenode.com

The rise of the machine: Stores and restaurants turn to self-service kiosks –

Self-service kiosks at McDonalds restaurants are part of a national trend toward automation at stores and restaurants driven by tech-savvy consumers and the ri…

Source: buffalonews.com

Net increase in jobs. US-built machines with US-steel and US-supported. Biggest error is McD likely didnt upgrade kitchen capacity first (or train the workers on new tech). Too many orders too fast equals longer wait time.  This actually increases “human touch” with employees in concierge-mode much like assistants at grocery self-checkout.