News

San Francisco -- Digital payments company Square announced that it has acquired Caviar, a start-up that specializes in food deliveries from high-end restaurants.

“Caviar’s curated, seamless delivery experience is exactly the kind of service we want to provide to buyers and sellers,” said Square cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey. “By making delivery such a fast, friendly, and easy process, Caviar gives time back to restaurants so they can focus on what they do best — cooking great food for their customers.”

New York -- Epson, a leading supplier of value-added point-of-sale (POS) solutions, and Mobivity Holdings Corp., a provider of retail customer engagement and marketing technologies, have entered into a partnership to transform receipts from transactional to actionable.
 

Wallingford, Conn. -- Edible Arrangements announced the acquisition of the FruitFlowers brand, including two company stores, all e-commerce operations and a portfolio of trademarks that includes Incredibly Edible Delites, FruitFlowers  and Fruitflowers.com.

St. Louis -- Panera Bread Company announced that Roger Matthews, executive VP and CFO, has resigned his position to pursue other opportunities.

Effective Aug. 6, Bill Moreton, executive vice chairman of Panera Bread, will serve as interim CFO as the company conducts a search for a full-time replacement. Moreton has previously held the positions of CEO, co-chief executive officer and CFO of Panera Bread. Matthews will transition his remaining duties through the end of August.

Seattle - Attribution analytics company Tune has acquired MobileDevHQ (MDHQ), provider of a SaaS solution for mobile marketers. The MDHQ solution includes app store visibility, search rankings, and competitive intelligence.

Combined with MobileDevHQ, Tune will provide more clarity into the impact and influence of app stores and other organic efforts on paid user acquisition and re-engagement. Existing MDHQ customers will continue to login as before, view their existing data, and otherwise continue using the current MDHQ product during the transition.

While some retailers and brands are now conducting actual e-commerce from their Facebook pages, the “buy” button holds the potential to substantially increase Facebook’s potential as a platform for executing omnichannel transactions. Smart retailers will offer, and even encourage, buy online-pick-up-in-store functionality through the buy button. Many consumers prefer the immediacy of picking up an item in a nearby store to waiting for a delivery, and retailers benefit from the resulting increase in store traffic and secondary purchases.

Target Corp. is running a Q&A with its new chairman and CEO, Brian Cornell, on its in-house, behind-the-scenes blog, A Bullseye View. The interview was conducted by the Bullseye View team.

You are the first CEO who has been hired from outside of Target. What are the benefits of coming in from the outside? What will be some of the challenges?

Sandra Gudat, President & CEO, Customer Communications Group

Retailers often have trouble balancing their overall promotions plan with offers and discounts for their loyalty program. In fact, it may be enough of an issue that they keep loyalty as an independent P&L entity, or even steer clear of loyalty altogether to avoid the problem. After all, every retail business is about profit, and adding another layer of promotional discounts into the mix could be seen as a threat to the bottom line.

Parsippany, N.J. - Facebook and RB, a provider of health and hygiene products, have entered into a multi-year, nine-figure global partnership. The two companies have committed to integrating members of their global sales, marketing and creative teams to connect RB brands like Lysol, Mucinex, MegaRed and Air Wick with consumers on Facebook.

Lakeland, Fla. – Net earnings at Publix Super Markets slightly increased to $404.1 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2014 from $400.1 million in the year-ago period.

Net sales rose about 7% to $7.5 billion from $7 billion, aided by the shift of the Easter holiday to the second quarter of the current fiscal year from the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. Same-store sales rose 6.3%.