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Technology stocks fell on Friday, amid fears of an AI bubble, a further drawn out federal government shutdown, and economic data that suggests consumer sentiment has fallen toward record-low levels. That’s in addition to economic data that showed last month’s layoffs hit their highest level for Octoberin 20 years. That report, from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, also also said hiring slowed to lowest point in 14 years. Despite strong third-quarter earnings reports, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) was down once again, for the second consecutive day, about 1% in afternoon trading on Friday, as big Tech Stocks tumbled, closing out the week as the Index heads toward what could be its worst week since April, when the Trump Administration introduced its Liberation Day tariffs. Chip stock Arm Holdings plc (ARM) was down 4%, while Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) fell 3%, and Al chip designer Nvidia (NVDA) was down 1%, at the time of this writing in afternoon trading, as investors worry about high valuations, and mass layoffs in the name of artificial intelligence (AI). Tesla (TSLA) was also down some 3%. Among those sounding alarm bells is hedge fund investor Michael Burry, who runs Scion Asset Management, and is betting against both betting against both Nvidia and Palantir. According to his Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Scion bought an estimated $187.6 million in puts on Nvidia, and another $912 million on Palantir, as CNN reported. Burry has warned both companies are overvalued. (Burry famously predicted the 2008 housing market collapse, and was made famous by the 2015 film The Big Short.) Last week Burry posted on X, “Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play,” in what some think is his way of saying there is an AI bubble.
Category:
E-Commerce
With Black Friday just about three weeks away, retailers and shoppers have one thing on their mindChristmas, the busiest and most profitable time of the year. And now, with Halloween behind us, Spirit Halloween has pivoted to holiday-themed Spirit Christmas, featuring festive decor, gifts, holiday apparel, and interactive displaysincluding nutcrackers, inflatable lawn Santas, and ugly Christmas sweaters. The retail chain, owned by Spencer Gifts, launched nearly a dozen Spirit Christmas stores throughout the Northeast in 2024. This year, Spirit Christmas is opening 30 store locations in 12 states in the Northeast and Great Lakes area, including its flagship store in Mays Landing, New Jersey. Those stores are in: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (see below for a full list of locations). As for the Spirit Halloween locations, some are making the transition to Christmas themes, while others are closing down till next year. Here are all 30 Spirit Christmas locations, according the store locator: CONNECTICUT Manchester, CT Milford, CT DELAWARE Christiana, DE ILLINOIS Bloomingdale, IL Joliet, IL Naperville, IL INDIANA Fort Wayne, IN Merrillville, IN KENTUCKY Lexington, KY MARYLAND Waldorf, MD MASSACHUSETTS North Attleborough, MA Dartmouth, MA MICHIGAN Grand Rapids, MI Novi, MI NEW HAMPSHIRE Salem, NH NEW JERSEY Cherry Hill, NJ Lawrenceville, NJ Mays Landing, NJ Paramus, NJ Rockaway, NJ Toms River, NJ NEW YORK Amherst, NY Bohemia, NY Poughkeepsie, NY OHIO Mentor, OH North Canton, OH PENNSYLVANIA Bethel Park, PA Erie, PA Pittsburgh, PA Whitehall, PA
Category:
E-Commerce
On November 6, Sweetgreen announced that it was selling Spyce, its division that developed and made its Infinite Kitchen technology to automate the assembly of its bowls and salads. The acquirer is Wonder, the restaurant and mealtime superapp, as Fast Company dubbed it earlier this year. With that, its time to eulogize Sweetgreens star-crossed life as a tech company. No more dreams of AI, blockchain, or robots. Sweetgreen receives $100 million in cash and $86.4 million in Wonder stock, a positive return given that it acquired Spyce in 2021 for a total cost of $70 million. Wonder, which is privately held, was valued north of $7 billion in May after it raised another $600 million. Sweetgreen, which went public four years ago, has a market cap under $750 million. After Sweetgreens disastrous Q2 2025 earnings report, I wrote that Infinite Kitchen represented the first effort by the company to use technology to solve its biggest problemoperationsrather than mere magic dust sprinkles to make the company look like something its not. Now the companys latest earnings are worse, and it doesnt own what had felt like a competitive advantage. A lot of other companies are trying to figure out how to add automation to their experience and are not willing to start over, Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman told the Wall Street Journal in 2023 while showing off his first restaurant equipped with an Infinite Kitchen. Im willing to blow the whole thing up. The question, though, is when did Neman light the fuse thats blown up Sweetgreen? Was it two years ago? Was it just November 6? Or was the bomb planted in the companys earliest days and it finally detonated? Sweetgreens stock is down another 12.5% as of Friday afternoon. (In response to queries, Sweetgreen directed me to Nemans public statements.) In this piece, well explore: What we still dont know about the sale of Infinite Kitchen Whether Neman could have taken a page from Pixar or Tesla to alter Sweetgreens course Why Neman has even harder decisions ahead to make Sweetgreen profitable How Sweetgreens positioning as a tech company ultimately failed it Infinite Kitchen has been working Sweetgreen remains committed to deploying Infinite Kitchen; it opened eight restaurants in Q3 and six included the tech. More are planned for 2026. Rather than be responsible for developing and making the systems, Sweetgreen will buy them from Wonder at cost plus 5%, which Neman said was about $25,000, putting the Infinite Kitchens cost at $500,000. In turn, Sweetgreen promised investors that the sale will shave $8 million annually from its general and administrative expenses. Those G&A costs are high. As the veteran restaurant operator and consultant Rick Vanzura noted on LinkedIn, Sweetgreens overhead was 17.9% of sales compared with Cavas 10.8%. But $8 million is just over 1% of expected 2025 revenues, meager savings for proprietary technology that Neman lauded again this week as having: consistently proven its ability to deliver faster throughput, improved accuracy and consistency, and elevated food quality. In Q3, restaurants with an Infinite Kitchen continue to realize approximately 700 basis points of labor savings and nearly 100 basis points of [cost of goods sold] improvement compared to restaurants of similar age and volume. Why give up control of the tech driving 7% labor savings per quarter and 1% in food costs, while its improving the product itself? Why Sweetgreen sold its big tech bet The Occams Razor explanation appears to be that Sweetgreen really needed the money. Look at its cash on hand: Q3 2025: $130M Q2 2025: $168M Q4 2021: $472M In August, I anticipated that Sweetgreen would soon require fresh capital. I wondered whether the parties providing it would demand company control from Neman and his two co-founders in exchange. This move cleverly sidestepped that possibility (for now) by selling the most valuable thing Sweetgreen owned that it could part with to a private company, buying Neman and company time to turn things around. Neman still likely needs to do a more wrenching corporate restructuring that vastly reduces its overhead (read: major layoffs). The company’s new CFO reported that she’s launched a full review of the company’s restaurant expenses as well as its G&A. Well see if Neman can make some hard decisions to reinvent Sweetgreen. The logic underpinning the Spyce sale may be irrefutable, but theres still a lot we dont know. To wit: Whether Wonder can also license the Infinite Kitchen tech How long Sweetgreens cost-plus deal lasts Whether those terms also apply to future Spyce innovations I don’t expect we’ll get direct answers but this is what investors in particular should be thinking about and monitoring. Sweetgreens Sliding Doors moment No. 1: The Pixar path In 1989, Pixar, six years before the debut of Toy Story, decided to sell its RenderMan technology to other companies. Pixar needed cash, especially if it was going to fulfill its vision of making feature-length computer-generated animated movies. The gambit worked. Pixar retained control of the tech, has enhanced it repeatedly over the years, and major motion pictures from other studios still rely on RenderMan. Could Sweetgreen have decided to license the Infinite Kitchen tech to competitors rather than selling it to one and being the licensee? Doing so could have helped bring down the costs of Infinite Kitchen and spurred further innovation, as Wonder now hopes to do. Given how hot the private markets are for robotics tech, could Sweetgreen have engineered some complex financial deal to get funding for Spyce to scale it without having to sell it? I don’t think that’s too outlandish an idea. Alas, public market investors havent been patient with Neman (the stock is down almost 90% since it went public). This would have been bold and visionary in 2021 after Sweetgreen acquired Spyce, r in 2023 when Neman talked of his willingness to blow the whole thing up and energized investors with the Infinite Kitchens potential. Making that call in late 2025 when consumers appear to be cooling to bowl-based meals (the “slopcession,” or “slopapocalypse,” as it were) would have been risky. But the siren call of those labor and cost savings could have won it some customers and allowed it to control its destiny. Sweetgreens Sliding Doors moment No. 2: The Tesla way In 2014, Elon Musk open sourced Teslas electric vehicle patents. This, too, was a bold move for a still shaky, unprofitable company. Musk did it to accelerate the auto industrys adoption of EVs, which it did. At the time, Teslas market cap was approximately $28 billion. Today its $1.4 trillion. What if Sweetgreen had open sourced Spyces patents? Would it have sparked a wave of innovation in automated restaurant tech? This is less likely than if it merely licensed systems to rivals, as the restaurant industry is far more atomized than the car business. But the move would have been a bravura stroke that at the least would have bolstered Nemans narrative that Sweetgreen is a different kind of company. Live by the tech narrative, die by the tech narrative Not long after Sweetgreen went public in November 2021, Kristen Hawley, a Fast Company contributor, wrote in her food and tech newsletter, Expedite, the uncomfortable truth that salad doesnt scale like software. Now we can confirm that restaurant automation hardware to make salads and bowls doesnt scale like software either. Companies need a story, a vision to sell investors, media, and customers. Its why Tesla backers voted to give Elon Musk his potential $1 trillion pay package this past week. For Sweetgreen, its story has long been that this was a tech companyno, a platformthat sold healthy salads and bowls rather than a restaurant company that used tech like, um, every other restaurant chain. I wanted to find the first instance of Sweetgreen publicly presenting itself as a tech company, and I believe it initially did so on the occasion of its 2011 Sweetlife festival thanks to a planned integration with a then buzzy social app: We look at ourselves less as a restaurant group than a think tank, co-founder Nathaniel Ru told Mashable. Were more of tech startup than a restaurant business. Fourteen years later, Sweetgreen is a restaurant business. Its future success will be determined by continuing to improve its operations, developing new menu items, and marketing itself as a lifestyle brand, as Neman told investors, focused on creating culture through distinct brand moments. Again, like every other restaurant chain. As I understand it, the company still has a tech team, but so does everyone else. The tech dream may die hard at Sweetgreen HQ but die it should. In other words, the troubled companys tech Cinderella story is over. Sweetgreens enchanted digital coach has become a garden variety analog pumpkin.
Category:
E-Commerce
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