Strategy

Chicago — Argo Tea has opened a greenhouse-inspired café in Chicago’s newly restored Connors Park. Argo and the city worked together on the park restoration, which includes chamomile and hibiscus tea bushes and native drought-tolerant plant varieties.

Argo Tea opened its first café in Chicago in 2003 and now operates 27. Plans call for 15 new locations over the next 12 months.

San Francisco -- PB Teen, a division of Williams-Sonoma, on July 27 will open its first store in Orange County, Calif., at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

The store will be anchored around a complimentary PBteen Design Lab, where teens and their parents can engage with the brand and its products by digitally creating a personalized room on a computer monitor. Using drag and drop technology, teens can experiment with different room configurations and color combinations and quickly see their designs come to life on a television screen overhead. 

Leading payments processor Vantiv cited strength in its e-commerce business as a key driver of a second quarter performance that saw revenues increase 11% to $519.4 million and profits on an adjusted basis increase 21.6% to $82.7 million, or 40 cents a share. Vantiv said its e-commerce business grew by 38% during the second quarter.

Canton, Mass. -- Dunkin’ Donuts announced  that it has signed its first Southern California multi-unit store development agreements,  with four franchise groups for a total commitment of 45 locations. 

The first restaurants are expected to open in 2015 in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Some non-traditional Dunkin' Donuts locations may open over the next several months. 

By Jake Weatherly, [email protected]

Tractor Supply solidified its positioned as the nation’s leading operator of farm and ranch stores during the second quarter with the opening of 26 stores and a better than expected 7.2% same store sales increase which prompted an increase in full year guidance.

Alameda, Calif. -- MBH Architects has appointed Klas Eklof and Oliver Mellows as principals for the 170-person firm.

Eklof and Mellows, each both employees of MBH for more than a decade, are looking forward to expanding their leadership roles during a time of exciting growth with increasing portfolios and branded projects, expanding opportunities for the firm.

MBH specializes in retail, residential, hospitality, mixed-use, workspace, and healthcare architecture and design. Their portfolio includes many well-known global clients and projects. 

New York -- Walmart’s Silccon Valley hub, called @WalmartLabs, announced on Wednesday it has acquired Torbit, a cloud-based website acceleration company.

Walmart described Torbit as a “front-end optimization innovator that has been focused on making the web a faster and better place.” Torbit is known for developing measurement, analytics and performance improvement tools to help companies identify and enhance their overall site performance.