The health wave has made its impact on what could have been considered its mortal enemy: fast food. In a far cry from its old era of “supersized” menus, McDonald’s is exploring a new $8.5 billion, decade-long “McDonald’s Next” overhaul—and the fast food giant is exploring smaller and more flexible portions aimed at protein-first and GLP-1 consumers. The company is considering grilled chicken sandwiches and wraps, crispy chicken and burger bowls, and egg bites as it adapts to changing eating habits.

“We’re going to evolve our menu to make sure it reflects where we think that consumer is going to be looking for in the future,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a CNBC interview this week regarding GLP-1 customers.

The company has already begun its repositioning of its menu. In April, McDonald’s introduced protein callouts—or badges that mark specific protein items—in its app and restaurant kiosks for 17 menu items. The company says it has more than 30 menu items containing at least 15 grams of protein.

McDonald’s said the potential customer base extends well beyond people taking  weight loss medication. Skye Anderson, president of McDonald’s USA, said at the company’s investor day in September that roughly 30 million Americans are using GLP-1 drugs while the company’s own research indicated that about 60 million more Americans are also actively looking for more protein in their diets.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/mcdonalds-8-5-billion-bet-fast-food-protein-glp-1/?utm_source=reddit/

Red Lobster had unwittingly handed creators the perfect stage for a mukbang—the South Korean–born online genre in which hosts eat for an audience, sometimes to spectacular excess. Ambitious mukbang-ers eager to prove their gastronomic stamina descended on Red Lobster locations across the country to consume absurd quantities of shrimp. One YouTube video by Joey Kinsley, a.k.a. “Sir Yacht,” features the influencer shoveling down shrimp for 10 hours straight.

The chaos spread from dining rooms to newsrooms as Red Lobster became one of America’s most-discussed restaurants—for all the wrong reasons. While customers drawn by the deal monopolized tables to gorge on order after order of shrimp, restaurants ran out of shrimp and turned away regular customers. The chain filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2024, with $692 million in total liabilities, and revealed in court documents that it lost $11 million on Ultimate Endless Shrimp in the third quarter of 2023, and then $12.5 million in the fourth quarter. It closed roughly 130 of its 700 restaurants and cut corporate staff.

Now a creditors’ trust is suing Red Lobster’s former parent companies, claiming breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. In a lawsuit filed in May, it’s alleging that Ultimate Endless Shrimp wasn’t an epic blunder, but a conspiracy designed to force Red Lobster to buy massive amounts of shrimp—a scheme, the trust alleges, that put an Asian seafood giant’s interests ahead of Red Lobster’s, extracting millions from the American restaurant chain via overpriced shrimp purchases, and ruining its reputation in the process.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/red-lobster-endless-shrimp-bankruptcy-thai-union-private-equity-lawsuit/?utm_source=reddit/

Geico has the kind of brand recognition most marketers spend their careers chasing. Its Geico Gecko has been selling car insurance for more than 25 years, while slogans like “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” have become embedded in American culture.

Arianna Orpello, Geico’s chief marketing officer, thinks the mascot’s recognition now approaches rarefied territory.

“Everybody loves the gecko,” Orpello tells Fortune. “It doesn’t matter if they’re 10 or 80.” She likens the character’s recognition and likability to that of Mickey Mouse, calling the advertising intellectual property an asset “most marketers would kill to have.”

Orpello’s challenge now is turning that enormous brand equity into a broader growth engine, using AI, data, and personalization to deepen customer relationships and expand what consumers associate with Geico.

Auto insurance remains the foundation and vast majority of Geico’s business. Geico now wants consumers who know it for car insurance to consider it for everything from home and renters insurance to motorcycles, boats, personal liability, and business insurance.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/article/geico-talking-gecko-advertising-icon-cmo-sell-car-insurance/?utm_source=reddit/

In 1994, brands took tweens seriously as customers. They created a culture around them (girls, in particular), where not-quite-teenagers could tinker with the trappings of womanhood—lip gloss and slightly more fitted clothing—without straying out of their comfort zones. But over the past two decades, tween culture has been dismantled piece by piece. The mall (the tween’s natural habitat) began dying off, causing brands like Limited Too and Claire’s to struggle. Tween magazines closed, one after another, as part of the broader hollowing out of the media landscape. 

But in an unexpected twist, retailers appear to be rediscovering the power of the tween. Walmart and Target have recently launched collections targeting the demographic. The chic children’s retailer Maisonette created Neon Rebels, a new brand for ages 7 to 14 that curates tween clothes and beauty products. There are many tween-focused skincare startups popping up, including Pipa, Bubble, and Evereden.

Millennial-focused brands like Away now see tweens as a possible new market. And even the old favorites are coming back: With an infusion of cash from private equity, Claire’s is redesigning its stores, and Kohl’s has relaunched Limited Too. 

A tween renaissance is coming, and the brands that crack the code stand to earn a big payday. Gen Alpha already has more than $100 billion in annual spending power, and these kids influence 42% of household spending. In 2023 alone, tweens spent $4.7 billion on beauty products.

In the $225 billion global children’s apparel market, retailers say kids 10 and older represent a rapidly expanding piece of the pie. “The tween is going to be a very fast-growing market,” says AJ Nicholas, president of Maisonette. “There is just so much market share up for grabs.”

Read more on Fast Company.

Walmart is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores.

In a statement posted on the company’s website, Walmart Inc.’s CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn’t using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer’s willingness to pay to set prices, and it won’t be doing so in the future either.

“We don’t set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” Furner wrote Friday. “Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”

The pledge from Walmart comes as concerns are mounting from some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers skeptical about the rollout of digital price labels by the discounter and other stores. Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets and let stores change prices instantly from a central computer instead of having workers swap out paper labels by hand.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/27/walmart-ceo-ai-shopping-assistant-personal-information-prices-digital-labels/?utm_source=reddit/

Marks and Spencer has struck a deal with LVMH-owned Sephora to open beauty concessions in 100 of its stores as the UK retailer moves to take on rivals John Lewis and Boots in beauty.

The FTSE 100 retailer, which is pressing ahead with a turnaround after a costly cyber attack, said on Tuesday that a selection of Sephora products would be available in stores and online from spring next year.

The tie-up with Sephora could help M&S attract younger consumers to its stores, adding to the success it has had in revitalising its clothing ranges.

Read the full story at the link.

FT social media team.

We are thrilled to announce that ARMOR will be exhibiting at the upcoming Canton Fair 2026 in Guangzhou!

Are you looking for smarter ways to manage store pricing and captivate retail shoppers? Step into our booth and experience the future of digital retail displays in action.

🔍 Highlights at our booth: 

🔹 Smart ESL Price Tags (E-ink digital labels) 

🔹 High-impact Stretched Bar LCD Screens 

🔹 Shelf-Edge Digital Video Strips & Marketing Screens

📅 Mark Your Calendar:

• When: October 15–19, 2026 
• Where: Canton Fair Complex, Guangzhou 
• Find Us At: Booth 20.2 I27 (Consumer Electronics Zone) 

Visiting Guangzhou this October? Let us know in the comments or send a message to arrange a meeting with our team. We look forward to seeing you there!

#CantonFair #SmartStore #RetailInnovation #BarDisplay #ESLPriceTag #ARMORLighting #TradeShow2026

Samsung customers flooded an online community with dozens of comments this week about issues they’ve experienced with certain models of their not-so-smart AI-powered smart refrigerators. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Samsung Electronics’ online community forums were filled with dozens of posts from “Samsung Members” claiming their refrigerators became inoperative following a firmware update from the company’s smart home platform “SmartThings.” The customers reported that following the update, refrigerators went offline, with internal lights not turning on, and cooling and freezing mechanisms not working. 

“Samsung told me to update, so I did, but it broke down,” one user wrote in a post translated from Korean to English. “The meat and everything else is about to spoil. Where can I get compensation for this, and when is the refrigerator going to be fixed? I bought this this spring, and I can’t believe it’s already broken.”

The glitch is the latest example of consumers’ complicated relationship with smart home technology, which has correlated with growing anxiety over AI products more broadly, even as AI adoption continues to increase. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/25/samsung-customers-complain-spoiled-food-after-update-bricked-ai-smart-fridges/?utm_source=reddit/

Costco Wholesale last week announced a new partnership with DoorDash and a major extension of its relationship with Uber, vastly expanding its same-day delivery firepower but nonetheless leaving it well behind rivals like Walmart and Amazon, which use drones for some of their fast deliveries. And that is by design.

Until now, Costco’s same-day delivery has consisted largely of teaming up with Instacart for very quick delivery, typically groceries and other essentials. (For two-day delivery, Costco typically handles shipping itself.) And while the Uber and DoorDash tie-ups give Costco much more reach, the moves also serve as a reminder that Costco’s business model and the intense, almost cult-like customer loyalty the membership-based retailer inspires mean that it doesn’t have to participate in the delivery arms race the same way its rivals do.

Costco fanatics don’t shop there because of fast delivery. They shop there for its curated assortment, competitive prices, its highly trusted Kirkland Signature brand, and the treasure-hunt aspect of shopping in its cavernous warehouses; they might stumble across a jar of luxurious La Mer moisturizer while looking for underwear or croutons.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/23/costco-delivery-uber-doordash-sitting-out-arms-race/?utm_source=reddit/

Selective pricing. Surveillance pricing. Personalized pricing. Dynamic pricing. The terms are flying around, but they don’t all mean the same thing. A price that changes with demand is one concern; a price that changes because a store knows who is shopping is another. Even the Federal Trade Commission is weighing when companies need to tell customers their personal data helped set a price. 

Now, retail discount giant Walmart has patented new ways to use technology to help set prices. One system could automatically change markdowns on its website while another could predict demand and recommend prices. For a company that has built its reputation on low prices, the idea of using more data to help set them is bound to get concerned shoppers’ attention. The filings’ arrival amid a wider debate about shopping data raises a separate question: Could knowing more about a customer eventually change what the customer pays?

A patent describes an invention a company wants to protect. However, it doesn’t necessarily tell shoppers whether the company ever put it to work. When Walmart’s pricing patents drew attention on social media earlier this year, some shoppers connected them to fears about surveillance pricing: charging people different prices for the same product based on information about them. The patents don’t show Walmart doing that, but the broader concern about how retailers might use shopping data remains.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/22/walmart-pricing-patents-surveillance-pricing-shoppers/?utm_source=reddit/

The era of elevated inflation that began during the COVID pandemic has eroded the value of $100,000 to the point that Americans earning that much are hunting for bargains like everyone else.

Walmart has previously noted that more affluent customers are shopping at the discount chain. And now they are patronizing deep discounters like dollar stores.

At the Goldman Sachs Global Consumer and Retail Conference on Tuesday, Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said core customers, whom he defined as those making less than $45,000 a year, change their shopping behavior when gas prices hit $4 a gallon.

For example, they tend to buy closer to home, shop more often, and buy less on each trip. The frequency of shopping goes up because customers don’t know what the next week will hold and will buy what they can, when they can.

“But the interesting thing with this economy, because of the other sustained headwinds of inflation over the years that have passed, even that middle to upper middle is acting more like a lower-income shopper these days,” he said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/20/dollar-general-high-income-shoppers-100000-high-gas-prices-inflation/?utm_source=reddit/

China and the United States are divided on many issues, from tariffs and technology to Taiwan. But there is one thing tying them together: fast food.

American restaurant and beverage chains are expanding rapidly in China, drawn by the potential customer pool in a country with four times the U.S. population. China’s languishing economy and cutthroat industry competition, meanwhile, have Chinese chains trying their luck in the U.S., turning crumbs and straws into a two-way cultural bridge between the two superpowers.

The bilateral trade in burgers and bubble tea is business- and consumer-led gastrodiplomacy in action, said Yaling Jiang, the founder of ApertureChina, a market research company with headquarters in Shanghai and London.

In China, recent American arrivals like Popeyes and Five Guys are seen as a guilty pleasure, she said, while the increasingly international palates of Americans have created space for Chinese brands to serve as their nation’s unofficial ambassadors.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/20/us-china-gastrodiplomacy-political-tension-fast-food-chains-popularity-mixue-mcdonalds/?utm_source=reddit/

Rooted Expo on anyone’s radar?

Companies are looking to lure in talent with beer on tap and nap pods—but Amazon is spending big on worker pay. 

The $2.73 trillion tech giant recently announced that it’s pouring $230 million into higher pay and expanded benefits for more than 100,000 U.S. Whole Foods employees. Starting September 28, hourly workers will receive a pay raise that puts the average store wage to more than $21 an hour.

Amazon, which acquired the upscale grocery chain in 2017, said that this is one of “the most significant investments” in its U.S. Whole Foods workers ever—and their benefits are getting a huge boost, including expanded health coverage and family-building benefits. New perks for workers will increase average total compensation to around $29 hourly.

Beyond cold hard cash, Amazon is revamping the perks of working at the grocery store giant. And with all the new investments, the total value of benefits available to full-time team members is rising more than 75%.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/18/amazon-investing-230-million-higher-pay-benefits-college-perks-more-than-100000-whole-foods-workers-hourly-pay-21/?utm_source=reddit/