 |
|
|
|||||
Amazon and Grubhub are entering the second year of a five-year commercial agreement that gives Amazon Prime members access to the food delivery platform’s subscription program at no extra cost. As part of the deal, Grubhubs ordering tab was integrated directly into the Amazon app and website, allowing users to order burritos while shopping for face wash or streaming a show. That seamless experience appears to be paying off, say company executives. “Amazon Prime customers are a very engaged customer cohort,” says Jamil Ghani, Amazon’s worldwide vice president of Prime. More than nine out of 10 orders on Amazon.com or in the app are coming from Prime members returning to the order experience, the company says. Amazon plans to add food delivery through its Alexa+ service later this year, Ghani says. THIRD PARTY BOOST The collaboration arrives at a time when many companies are enhancing their subscription offerings. Amazon is competing with loyalty programs from Walmart and Target, hoping that added perks like Grubhub+ increase the appeal of its $139-a-year Prime membership. Amazon reported better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter of this year, though it is one of the many retailers caught up in President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs. Shares of the company were up almost 11% from this time a year ago, though they’ve decreased 7.8% year to date. “The main benefit to Amazon of the Grubhub partnership is that it helps underscore the value of Prime outside all the benefits Amazon offers via its own services,” GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders tells Fast Company. “Grubhub is a very complimentary service as meal delivery and pickup is not something Amazon does itself.” Grubhub operates in the same competitive space as Uber Eats and DoorDashboth of which also have loyalty programs bolstered by third-party deals, with companies like Delta and Chase, respectively. Although Grubhubs market share has declined steadily since 2021, integration with Amazon has introduced the platform to new users and increased awareness of Grubhub+. A Grubhub+ membership otherwise costs $120 a year and gives users $0 delivery fees and lower service fees. The companies claim that Prime members who use the service “save an average of $300 per year.” Amazon declined to share specific numbers on signups, but the company said there’s a more than 50% year-over-year increase in Grubhub+ signups since it integrated the platform “For Grubhub, the partnership expands the audience and the number or orders it fulfills,” Saunders says. “Amazon has a huge reach and Grubhub has been able to tap into this.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Hinge Health Inc, the digital physical therapy health startup that is expected to make its market debut on Thursday, in a closely watched initial public offering (IPO) that will test the market’s interest for a new digital health offering, after what has been a challenging few years for the sector. Recently, there have been fewer tech IPOs, but they could be making a comeback, according to CNBC. The San Francisco-based company priced shares at $32 on Wednesday, the higher end of its expected range, in an offering led by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and BofA Securities. The stock will list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the HNGE ticker symbol. Based on its IPO share price, HNGE has an approximate valuation worth about $2.6 billion, though it could be higher on a fully diluted basis; and is much lower than its October 2021 valuation of $6.2 billion, according to CNBC. What does Hinge Health do? Hinge Health leverages software, including artificial intelligence (AI), to largely automate care for joint and muscle health, to improve outcomes, and cost reductions for its clients via a digital platform. That platform is designed to address a broad spectrum of musculoskeletal health needs (MSK) carefrom acute injury, to chronic pain, to post-surgical rehabilitationand aims It aims to reduce pain, improve function, and decrease the necessity for surgeries; while promoting health equity because it allows members to engage in their exercise therapy sessions from any location. The company was founded in 2014 by Daniel Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg after both experienced MSK injuries, and both had to undergo surgery and physical therapy, enduring a frustrating recovery process.
Category:
E-Commerce
Hurricane season officially begins in 10 days. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that the U.S. is likely to see an above-average number of hurricanes this year, with 1319 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes, and three to five major hurricanes. It’s not just hurricane season, but disaster season in general. Recent tornadoes have killed dozens of people. As the summer progresses, there’s a bigger risk of both extreme heat and wildfires. (The nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists calls May through October “danger season,” and points out that the risk of major hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and fires keeps getting significantly worse because of climate change.) We’re not ready for the next big disaster. At NOAA, which collects crucial data and makes forecasts, more than 1,000 employees have been fired or took retirement offers because of DOGE. The administration also wants to cut NOAAs budget by around 30%. At FEMA, an internal memo last week said that the agencys normal process to prepare had been derailed by other activities like staffing and contracts. At least 2,000 of the agencys roughly 6,000 full-time employees have left or plan to leave. I think Americans are going to start seeing after a major disaster that the response they normally see from FEMA is just not there, says Joel Scata, a senior attorney at the nonprofit NRDC. Theyre going to be left fending for themselves. Theyre going to be left wondering where FEMA staff are because FEMA doesnt have the capacity to address it right now. Some changes are already apparent. In St. Louis, a historic 23-mile-long tornado killed five people, injured 38, and caused more than $1.6 billion in damages on May 19. Despite the scale of the disaster, FEMA was slow to arrive. Republican lawmaker Josh Hawley had to beg for help. In Mississippi, the state is still waiting for approval of a disaster declaration for tornadoes that happened two months ago. Tornado damage in Tylertown, Mississippi, March 2025. [Photo: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images] Trump suggested maybe getting rid of FEMA, shortly after taking office, and Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in March that she wanted to eliminate FEMA. Project 2025, the policy blueprint that the Trump administration is closely following, calls for moving the responsibility for disasters to states. Trump has echoed that idea. But states arent ready to fill the gap. Right now, states depend on support from FEMA, including through grants for emergency management and preparedness. Those grants have been put on pause, says Scata. Other grants that would really help states prepare and shoulder some more of the burden that the Trump administration keeps pushing them to do have also been cut. So they’re kind of putting states in a position where they’re saying, You need to take on more responsibility, but also undercutting their ability to take on more responsibility. FEMAs newly appointed head, David Richardson, reportedly admitted this month that the agency didnt yet have a plan for hurricane season. Richardson, who doesn’t have a background in emergency management, also seemed unfamiliar with what his job entailed. I feel a little bit like Bubba from Forrest Gump, he said in a recent video viewed by the Wall Street Journal. Weve got hurricanes, weve got fires, weve got mudslides, weve got flash floods, weve got tornadoes, weve got droughts, weve got heat waves and now weve got volcanoes to worry about. At NOAA, DOGEs push to cut employees and funding could potentially impact forecasting. Weather balloons record data, such as wind speeds, used in forecasts. But the National Weather Service has started reducing balloon launches. Ocean buoys measure temperature, a key factor in forecasting hurricanes. They require regular maintenance, which will be more challenging with fewer employees. (At a press conference today, however, NOAA said that it’s continuing to roll out more accurate models for forecasting, and emphasized that it believes it’s fully prepared for the upcoming hurricane season.) The Trump administration is also pushing to shut down a research division that includes hurricane hunters who fly into oncoming storms to gather more data to predict a hurricanes path and strength. Proposed budget cuts would also gut research on climate change and models to improve future forecasting. Grants to help communities become more resilient to disasters have also been cut. Some National Weather Service field offices are now severely short staffed and scrambling to try to find more employees, including offices in Texas and Louisiana. At the moment, some dont have regular overnight coverage. At the offices, meteorologists take warnings from the National Hurricane Center and localize the information, predicting where flooding and other impacts may hit hardest, and working with local emergency managers to plan evacuations. While other offices can provide remote support, and employees can work extra shifts if a severe storm is predicted, the shortages will strain the remaining staff. Brian LaMarre, who recently accepted an early retirement offer at the Tampa Weather Forecast Office, says he still expects the National Hurricane Center to provide excellent data. But if staff shortages continue in local offices, the people who need to provide critical cverage in emergencies could quickly burn out. We make it work, but is it sustainable? Probably not, LaMarre says. Because the more active the weather becomes, you can only do that so many times before burning people out, and morale gets impacted. That’s why hiring needs to start and there needs to be real strong congressional and public support for the National Weather Service. It’s a public safety mission. The weather knows no bias when it comes to politics. The weather impacts everyone the same. In a statement, a National Weather Service spokesperson said, “The National Weather Service continues to meet its core mission of providing life-saving forecasts, warnings, and decision support services to the public, our partners and stakeholders. In the near term, NWS has updated the service level standards for its weather forecast offices to manage impacts due to shifting personnel resources.” The spokesperson didn’t comment on whether the agency had an exemption from a current federal hiring freeze. NOAA was short-staffed even before DOGE began aggressively trying to push more people out. NWS staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services, all five former National Weather Service directors wrote in a recent open letter about the DOGE cuts and proposed budget cuts. Some forecast offices will be so short-staffed that they may be forced to go to part-time services. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||