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How do you take a mall food court brand and future-proof it for a world with fewer malls? For Auntie Anne’s, the answer is modernizing the stores they already have with a new concept designed for the way people snack now. Auntie Anne’s said Monday it would remodel 150 stores this year with a new store concept and a modernized visual identity designed to sell more of its pretzels, drinks, and snacks to millennial and Gen Z consumers at a time of changing habits. With consumers interested in mobile ordering, grab-and-go food, and novel experiences, the updated Auntie Anne’s store concept has a dedicated mobile order pickup area and an open view into the kitchen with a “Now Rolling” sign to draw attention to employees rolling pretzels by hand. [Photo: Auntie Anne’s] “Consumer expectations have shifted, especially around digital convenience, off-premise access, and visual appeal,” Mike Freeman, president of brands at Auntie Anne’s holding company GoTo Foods, tells Fast Company in an email. The redesigned stores were made to meet those expectations. “It reflects how guests want to engage today with speed, transparency, and a space that feels fresh and energetic,” Freeman says. A new blue and yellow “twist” mural pattern gives the store a more modern and colorful look, and an updated Auntie Anne’s logo is simpler and does without the old halo element of the outgoing logo. [Photo: Auntie Anne’s] Founded in the height of the shopping mall era in 1988, today Auntie Anne’s has more than 2,000 locations in shopping malls, outlets, airports, universities, Walmarts, travel plazas, military bases, and food trucks. Its owner, GoTo Foods, operates or franchises more than 6,900 restaurants and cafés for brands including Cinnabon, Jamba, and Schlotzsky’s. Malls and airports are “core to Auntie Anne’s heritage and continue to play a key role in the brand’s footprint,” Freeman says, but expansion is also key. The brand plans for growth that includes street side and co-branded locations, and it’s open to partnerships and cross-branded collabs with Oreo and Hidden Valley Ranch. The rebrand is about selling a nostalgic snack in a more contemporary way. Revitalizing a food court favorite that’s outlived many of the shopping malls it once occupied is no small feat, and updating the store’s look and feel could go a long way in keeping it relevant.
Category:
E-Commerce
With the first family actively engaged in memecoin ventures, speculation about the future of cryptocurrency has never been hotter. Laura Shin, crypto expert and host of the podcast Unchained, reveals the sectors emerging economic, political, and geopolitical implications. Shin also provides context for why stablecoins are growing so fast and how the current administration is shaping the conversation.This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You call yourself a no-hype crypto journalist, so can you give us a short, no-hype overview of where we are right now in cryptos evolution? Yeah, I would say we’re probably on the cusp of more widespread adoption. The number-one biggest reason is simply that the Trump administration is really embracing crypto. That has not been true of previous administrations. In fact, the Biden administration was probably, I want to say, actively hostile. I don’t know if people will love that term, but that’s probably a pretty accurate description. For a long time, there were a lot of entrepreneurs who were cautious about doing things in the U.S. This administration is more, not only open-minded, but even in some regards almost a little bit too embracing of crypto, you could say. I think there’s going to be probably a decent number of crypto IPOs this year, but then on top of it, stablecoins are probably the first major application that has really found what the industry likes to call product-market fit. We’re seeing that stablecoins have a huge amount of uptake, especially in so many other jurisdictions where they don’t trust their local currency. It could be Argentina or Venezuela or Turkey or Nigeria. There are just a lot of places where people don’t actually have a great way to save their money, and they maybe don’t also have really great ways to send money across borders. So, stablecoins are fulfilling that role and Congress is probably on the cusp of finally passing legislation here in the U.S. around stablecoins. For a layperson, someone not engaged in the crypto world, can you just explain what a stablecoin is relative to a memecoin, relative to whatever the portfolio might look like? Yeah, so a stablecoin is any blockchain-based asset that is pegged to the value of some other asset99% of all stablecoins are pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. The way that stablecoins really took off initially was that on a number of crypto exchanges, people wanted to be able to buy and trade using dollars. I wrote this book called The Cryptopians, and it covers 2013 until 2018. Even at that time, people would recite back to me the price of Bitcoin or the price of Ether in dollars. No matter whether they were European or Asian or just wherever they were in the world, they always knew the price in dollars. . . . Here’s a really simple example: Theres a serial entrepreneur in Afghanistan. Her name is Roya Mahboob, and she had this microblogging platform, and I think a lot of the people writing for it were women. They had a hard time paying them, because a lot of women in Afghanistan, they don’t have bank accounts, or if they do, then their male relatives might actually take the money that they earned from them. So [the platform] set them up with Bitcoin wallets and then taught them how to use them. One of the women was in an abusive marriage and saved up the Bitcoin and then used that to eventually divorce her husband, so that gives you some kind of agency. I have some close Turkish friends, and I think it was in 2018, the value of the lira was just going down and down. So it’s like people in those places I think grasp these kinds of things a lot more quickly, like the value of crypto. Having a form of money that isn’t influenced by a central bank, that’s stablecoins. Because the stablecoins are generally linked to the U.S. dollar, it’s a way to sort of have dollars without having dollars, right? Exactly. I mean, you’re getting the stability of that U.S. market, which there’s some irony in that, because of course one of the philosophical ideas around crypto is that it’s not linked to a government, that it’s separate. Now we’re going to get really deep into this. So you’re correct that this is people wanting U.S. dollars, which is a form of currency linked to a specific government, but of course the people who want those dollars are people who don’t otherwise have the privilege of easily accessing them. Bitcoin, of course, existed before stablecoins ever existed. There have been times when the Bitcoin price would go up, and then it would crash for a little while, and then it would go up again and then it would crash, and so that’s kind of when you started to see stablecoins also take off. A lot of people view Bitcoin as a good long-term investment, but on any short-term timescale, you don’t really know where the price is going to be, so if you need the money on a shorter-term timescale, then you would probably rather have something more stable, and so that’s where the interest in stablecoins came about. There’s a reason why 99% of the stablecoins are denominated or pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, and it’s of course because we’re the global reserve currency, so there’s a lot of safety there. Trump seems like he’s done a full 180 on crypto. I mean, he said it was a scam during his first term and then supported it very strongly in his campaign. He’s launched his own Trump coin three days before the inauguration. Do we know how much of Trump’s crypto position is about political opportunity or financial opportunity, or some larger philosophy about markets? I don’t think there’s a larger philosophy. I think most people probably know what Trump’s MO is. But let’s just say he’s president and he took a luxury jetliner from the Qataris, so whatever it is that you think that says about him, it applies to his activities in the crypto world. What I will say though, aside from his personal dealings, which by and large in my opinion, they’re business dealings, things that would help his family or him. He launches this memecoin, which by the way, to make one of these things costs almost no money, so I just want to make that clear, and you’re basically printing money out of thin air, right? But then on top of that, the people who got in very early, they just had some agreement where they had to hold their coins until whatever it was, 90 days or I forget what the number of days was. Now, fortuitously, when that deadline came, [Trump] announced that he was going to have a dinner, and in order to participate in the dinner, you had to be one of the top holders of this coin, so f course the price shot up right at that time when this unlock was happening for those insiders. Just note the timing there and put those two facts together and you can make your own conclusions, but, well, let me put it this way: Trump saw that the Biden administration alienated the crypto community. He realized these people have money and they hate the Democrats. . . . He said, “I’m the crypto candidate,” and he even went to the Bitcoin conference last year. He made all these promises to the crypto community and Bitcoin communities. On top of that, people in his personal orbit, his family, realized this industry is going to get bigger, this industry’s all about money, and so they have been taking advantage. So you will see, and this is very interesting, there were a number of people who were very passionately pro-Trump during the campaign, and then once the memecoin thing happened, because not only Trump, but also Melania launched a memecoin, and they were not happy about what he was doing. It was reported that their company, World Liberty Financial, was doing deals with different token teams where basically they were just exchanging money. “I’ll give you this amount of money if you buy the World Liberty Financial token, and we’ll buy this amount of your token. I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine.” But people in the industry also kind of look down on that, because it’s not organic.
Category:
E-Commerce
Liz Shuler has a tough job. It’s not just tough to do. It’s tough even to define. As the president of the AFL-CIO, a 70-year-old federation of 63 national and international unions representing more than 15 million workers, she is the leader of the American labor movement. But labor is not a monolith. She represents NFL players, government workers, Hollywood writers, hotel janitors. Shuler, who became the first woman to run the AFL-CIO when she was elected in 2021, doesnt negotiate pay rates or mediate disputes between workers and management. Her mandate is much broader: Grow the ranks of unionized workers across industries, lobby policymakers to pass pro-worker guidelines and remove barriers to unionizing, make the labor movement more inclusive to all people, and stand up to powerful anti-union forces at the highest levels of business and government. Shes been busy lately. On January 20, one of the most labor-friendly presidents in U.S. history moved out of the Oval Office and one of the most anti-labor presidents moved back in. Two months later, Trump signed an executive order (EO) that amounted to the bombing of Pearl Harbor against the labor movement, in the words of the labor activist and author Hamilton Nolan. Under the guise of national security, the EO stripped the collective bargaining rights of workers at more than 30 federal agencies. Shuler does not think Nolan was being hyperbolic. Even before Trumps return to power, Shuler and the movement faced an uphill battle. While support in the U.S. for organized labor has never been higher, especially among young people, the percentage of the workforce that actually belongs to a union has been stuck at 10% for years. Shuler has taken some heat for not doing more to grow that number. Nolan, for one, mocked her 2022 announcement that the federation would add at least 1 million members over the next decade as an almost comically unambitious goal, likening it to Austin Powerss pinky-fingered ransom demand for 1 million dollars! Shuler discussed these criticisms, and much more, in a wide-ranging conversation in early April at the AFL-CIOs offices in Washington, D.C., less than two blocks from the White House. This interview has been edited and condensed. Joe Biden did a lot of things to help workers who were already unionized. Still, only about one in 10 Americans holds a union card today, and those numbers didnt move much during his presidency. Why didnt labor make more gains under Biden?I dont think people understand how broken the labor laws are. When [workers] try to form a union, they are universally harassed, discriminated against, and usually fired. That has quite a chilling effect on people. Its very risky for people to stand up for their rights. When you try to form a union, you have to go through a process that then is recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. You have a vote. Usually, if the process goes well, without union busting by the company, it takes a period of time and it takes stamina. [But] in most union elections now, the companies fight you tooth and nail. Ill take Amazon as one example. We had warehouse workers who came together, wanting better conditions. They wanted to form a union, but they were surveilled. They were followed into the bathrooms to make sure they werent talking to each other. They were monitored at traffic lights leaving the facility if a union organizer was trying to talk to them on their way out of work. It was a big intimidation campaign. You can imagine how exhausting that is, how scary that is. And that happens at workplace after workplace throughout this country. It takes an act of heroism to form a union these days. How much of your job do you see as growing the total number of unionized workers versus taking care of the people that are already in your membership? Theres a notion of balance, right? We have the base membership, the industries that have long been part of our movement, which we want to preserve and maintain and continue to grow. But we also have these emerging industries that are largely not unionized. We have our eye on the future. We know technology is affecting work. The needs of the workplace are going to be different, and youre going to have a different demographic in the workforce. We think that the labor movement can be the place to help people figure out whats next. Perhaps youre afraid that youre going to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The labor movement is there to help you not only fight for respect and dignity and a voice but also to plan for whatever transition might come next. We have been the largest provider of training and upskilling, second only to the U.S. military, throughout history. If you add up all the capacity of the labor movement, were like the third-largest university system in the country. The majority of union members backed Kamala Harris in 2024. But blue-collar America is shifting significantly toward Trump. Do you know the number of Trump supporters in your membership? We definitely have membership across the political spectrum. In the last election, union members voted nearly plus-20 for Kamala Harris, as an overall number. Now, within the labor movement, there are unions [across] different industries, and we had our share of membership who voted for Trump. But I would say that our message was an economic message. When we were able to really appeal to our members based on the things they cared about, their ears opened and they heard us and they listened. The problem is we werent reaching enough working people writ large, outside the membership of the unions. If the labor movement was larger, if we had a bigger footprint and were able to talk to more working people, the result [of the presidential election] might have been different. In late March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively stripped the union rights of 700,000 federal workers across 30 agencies. [The EO prompted legal challenges, including from the AFL-CIO, and has been blocked by federal courts as the suits proceed.] What was your personal reaction to this news? It was an absolute gut punch. I think we all knew that attacks would be coming, but the speed and the scale of it was absolutely stunning. When I got the news, it was around 8 oclock at night on that Thursday. The president of AFGE [the American Federation of Government Employees] called me, saying, The ultimate attack has just happened. We went into rapid response mode that very night until the wee hours, standing up calls with our leaders and our lawyers and trying to make sense of what was in the EO and what the impact would be. The next day [we held an] emergency call with all of our union leaders to say, An attack on one is an attack against all. We did a press conference on Capitol Hill. We filed lawsuits. Weve been standing up actions in the streets. Were utilizing all the tools in the toolbox because this is the largest attack against the labor movement in our history. Liz Shuler outside the AFL-CIO offices in Washington, D.C. [Photo: Kyna Uwaeme] A lot of people point back to the air traffic controller strike [when thenPresident Ronald Reagan fired many of its 12,000 members and then decertified the union]. This dwarfs that. It affects everybody. Its not just, Oh, you work for the federal government, too bad for you. No. This will ripple out across the public sector, across the private sector. Were not going to be, you know, revealing our playbook in public [laughs]. Thats probably not wise. But we are working strategically to continue to escalate and ramp up our actions. If you know anything about unions, you know that we go on strike. That is our most powerful tool. We do not deploy it at the drop of a hat, and we dont start there. We work up to it. Theres a lot of Elon Musk on your website. This suggests that you see him as a valuable bogeyman. Do you think that hes generating more energy among your membership than there would have been if it was Trump only who kind of represented a lot of these moves? Absolutely, because nobody elected Elon Musk. He is an unelected billionaire wreaking havoc on our federal government. And this DOGE [she pronounces the name in an elongated and disdainful way]you know, the Department of Government Efficiency. [Laughs.] I like the way you say that. Theres a lot of other ways of pronouncing it [laughs]. We have said that no one disagrees that we can find efficiencies in government, but the way theyre going about it is absolutely irresponsible. It is a fake department that got stood up and has been given free rein to basically go in and cut government services that people rely on, and steal our data, with absolutely no guardrails. And we said, Wait a second. If you can stand up your fake department, were going to stand up our own department, the Department of People Who Work for a Living. Weve been using that platform, DPWL, as a place to really interpret and decode what is going on, because most people are working 12-hour days and two and three jobs and arent necessarily sure how this affects them. When you look out at the legal playing field, what do you see? How confident are you that the courts will have your back? I mean, we still are a country of laws. Common sense dictates we cannot have a lawless society and let this administration just run roughshod over the rule of law. So we still have trust and faith in the legal system, and we do believe the law will catch up to these illegal actions. Weve had some early successes, thank goodness. We filed a lawsuit the day after those probationary workers were fired. Twenty-five thousand [workers] got their rights restored. That was a big victory. Well celebrate that. We also filed a lawsuit when DOGE came after the Department of Labor and tried to access private worker data. These are whistleblowers who have taken risks. These are people who have filed workplace complaints when you have a safety hazard. Its a very vulnerable place to be. So we sued and said, No, we need guardrails. We need to know what youre asking for and have more transparency. We won that lawsuit. Gwynne Wilcox, the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, who is the ultimate traffic cop when it comes to workers who want to form a union and their company fires themwe were able to get Gwynne restored [after the Trump administration fired her]. Now thats been under appeal, of course, and theres some uncertainty there. [As of press time, all three of these cases remain ongoing.] Lets talk about the tech industry, labor, and AI. Theres been a smattering of organizing at some big tech companies, but really, not much. Why do you think the labor movement hasnt gotten more traction there? I still think theres a stereotype of what a union is and who a union represents, and were working really hard to demystify that. Unions are about the workers themselves deciding what their union looks like and what they prioritize. So if you think a union is just for someone who works in a steel mill, think again. We know that some of the developers that weve talked to, especially in the video game industry, work insane hours with little breaks. These are like the modern-day sweatshop in some ways. I think people inherently fear speaking out, especially in an industry where they know there are people lined up behind them to take their job. I think its on us, frankly, to continue to modernize how people see unions and [understand] what we are capable of, particularly in industries that work differently and are evolving and changing and innovating. A year ago or so, you were pretty focused on AI and how it would disrupt labor. A lot of things have changed, namely the administration that weve been talking about. [Laughs.] Exactly. Where is your head on this now? How much time are you able to spend on this question of how AI might replace human labor? AI and technology is the new frontier for the labor movement. AI absolutely is something that we think about every day we wake up. We established our technology institute within the AFL-CIO a few years back because we saw what was on the horizon. We saw things like algorithmic management [of workers], worker privacy, and data security, not to mention just how work is done. When you check into a hotel and you see those kiosks [for checking in] and you look at the desk agents, you can see whats on the horizon. We need to be responsive and bring workers voices and perspectives upstream in the process, not wait until a job is displaced or its too late. We know were not going to stop technology from changing the way we do work. We just think that it shouldnt dehumanize us, it shouldnt make us poor, and we should share in the benefits of all these productivity gains that were going to see in the future. Im a little skeptical that the tech industry is going to really give you a seat at the table. The financial incentives that companies have to lower their overhead and reduce their workforce are just too great. But you struck a deal with Microsoft in 2023 to do just that: give workers a seat at the table as AI evolves. What are your expectations for that partnership? You think you were skeptical! [Laughs.] I absolutely never wouldve dreamed that Id be standing on a stage with [Microsoft vice chair and president] Brad Smith announcing that partnership in 2023. We have a partnership on AI specifically, where we meet with labor leaders twice a year. [Microsoft workers provide the AFL-CIO with feedback on new technologies being developed in the companys labs.] In between those meetings, were working at a staff level to actually get workers who are on the front lines of the healthcare industry, for example, to help inform what tech can or should look like in a hospital. In the transportation industry, bus drivers who are using automated buses[were ensuring that] their voices are being heard and that their expertise is actually being tapped into to make it a responsible use, an informed use that doesnt just land haphazard in a workplace without it being thought through [to assess] how it can best benefit working people. During your time as head of the AFL-CIO, and even before you became president, you prioritized diversifying unions. What do you see as the benefits of a diverse workforce, specifically from an organized labor perspective. How do you react to and contend with the DEI backlash that weve seen in recent years, not just since Trump was elected? In the labor movement, we believe that diversifying our workforce is a strength and we need the perspectives and contributions of all working people to make us strong. Little-known fact: The labor movement is the largest organization of working women in the country. And a lot of people dont see us that way. But weve been fighting for pay equity since our inception. And the best way to get an equal paycheck if youre a woman is to join a union. But now I think its our responsibility to continue to fight back and protect the gains that weve made. It is alarming to see whats happening with these companies who are folding and just canceling their DEI policies without batting an eyelash. Were going to continue to work with allies and partners in the civil and human rights space, allies who are saying, Lets do a buy-in or as I call it, a buy-cott, where were actually giving business to companies that are respecting policies and standing by them so we can leverage our consumer behavior and come together and have a stronger voice. Your first term is up in about a year [June 2026]. What is most important for you to accomplish before that term is up? I think were in a unified moment. The best organizer is a bad boss, and thats the moment were in with this administration. It has brought such solidarity to our movement. We are coming together, supporting each other, fighting together, strategizing together more than ever before. There are very few institutions in this country left standing that can mobilize real working people in every city, in every state, in every workplace, in every industry. And thats the labor movement. My hope is that next year will be an all-of-movement moment, where we are fighting back in unison and deploying strategies that ultimately prevail, and we win for workers. And [that] the country sees us and wakes up, and says, You know what? Their fight is our fight. Oh, and I will be running for reelection in 2026, just to be clear [laughs].
Category:
E-Commerce
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