Store Systems

St. Louis — Panera Bread Company has secured a five-year $100 million term loan from Bank of America, Wells Fargo and TD Bank. Proceeds from the loan will be used for general corporate purposes, including a range of growth initiatives such as the rollout of the Panera 2.0 in-store technology initiative.

Dallas — Speed Commerce Inc., a vertically integrated, omni-channel platform of e-commerce services, has launched Sara X, a pre-configured, feature-rich accelerator for Oracle Commerce.

Washington, D.C. — The National Retail Federation (NRF) presented its annual Ring of Excellence, Law Enforcement Retail Partnership and Retail Case of the Year awards during the NRF Loss Prevention Conference and Expo on Thursday, June 12.

Indianapolis, Ind. — Simon Property Group has begun a collaboration with elevate DIGITAL, a developer of interactive digital technology, to install digital concierge solutions in a number of Simon’s U.S. retail shopping centers.

Scottsdale, Ariz. — P.F. Chang’s China Bistro Inc. is the latest retailer to investigate a possible data breach.

The retailer emailed has been contacted by banks and law enforcement agencies about online reports that credit card and debit card numbers matching ones used at P.F. Chang’s locations between March and May 2o14 have appeared for sale on underground hacker websites.

Media reports indicate the U.S. Secret Service is also investigating the potential breach, although the Secret Service has not publicly commented.

By Jules Polonetsky, executive director, Future of Privacy Forum

In mid- May, over 30,000 professionals from the shopping center industry gathered in Las Vegas for the ICSC’s annual RECon event.

In addition to discussing leasing and the state of the retail market, for the first the first time a new topic was on the agenda – consumer privacy.

Mooreseville, N.C. — Lowe’s has launched Lowe’s Innovation Lab, with a goal of creating new technology to solve common consumer frustrations while working alongside start-ups, universities, specialized professionals and other companies. The first concept to come out of the lab is the Lowe's Holoroom, a home improvement simulator that applies 3D and augmented reality technologies to provide homeowners an intuitive, immersive experience in their dream rooms.

Montano Lucino, Italy — Italian hypermarket retailer Bennet has completed the rollout of electronic article surveillance (EAS) loss prevention solutions in its stores in Italy. The solution involves the installation of 1,000 P20 EAS antennas from Checkpoint’s Evolve solutions, as well as radio frequency (RF) tags, Alpha high-theft solutions and point-of-sale deactivators, in addition to the rollout of an RF source-tagging program aimed at increasing on-shelf availability, improving open merchandising while reducing labor costs and inventory shrink.