McDonalds launching home delivery service with UberEATS
Fast food chain McDonalds is reportedly set to launch a home delivery service in three Florida cities in January, through a partnership with UberEATS.
Read MoreTag: McDonalds
Google unveils Android Pay
Hot on the heels of its announcement of an imminent “Buy Button”, Google has unveiled details about Android Pay – its counterblast to Apple Pay.
Read MoreBlockbuster tests video-rental kiosks
Blockbuster Inc. has begun testing movie rental kiosks at Papa John’s pizza outlets and Family Dollar stores. Movies at the kiosks will be available for USD 1, substantially less than the cost for rentals at regular Blockbuster stores.
The Blockbuster Express kiosks, which are about the size of a vending machine and hold 250 movies, are in three Papa John’s International Inc. locations and seven Family Dollar Stores Inc. outlets in the Lexington, Ky., area, said Karen Raskopf, a spokeswoman for Blockbuster.
The kiosks may help Blockbuster fend off DVDPlay Inc. and Redbox Automated Retail, jointly owned by McDonald’s Corp. and Coinstar Inc. The two companies have lured customers from Blockbuster and Movie Gallery Inc. movie rental stores by offering USD 1 DVD rentals at supermarkets, drugstores and McDonald’s restaurants.
“It’s a natural affinity,” Papa John’s Chief Executive Nigel Travis said. “You are seeing a consolidation of food and entertainment. It definitely drives traffic.”
Recently released DVDs typically rent for USD 4 for five days at a Blockbuster store. The USD 1 DVD rentals can be returned to any Blockbuster Express kiosk, not just the location where the movie was rented, Raskopf said.
Blockbuster also is testing kiosks in fast-food restaurants and other unspecified stores around the U.S., Raskopf said. Papa John’s, which will have three kiosks in rural towns in another state, said customers would be able to rent the movies when they pick up carryout orders. They can’t get the USD 1 rental when ordering pizza that will be delivered.
Shares of Dallas-based Blockbuster fell 11 cents Wednesday to USD 3.76.
Blockbuster is considering kiosks and vending machines where customers can rent movies or burn copies directly to a DVD, Chief Executive James Keyes has said.
“We think vending is probably the fastest-growing segment right now,” Keyes said in an interview this month. “The next bigger trend is for vending, and we are well positioned to be able to play through an electronic kiosk.”
Papa John’s, based in Louisville, Ky., has linked pizza with DVDs before, with promotions in the last two years with films such as “Spider-Man 3.” The chain wants to see if the kiosks help increase the number of customers, Travis said.
Blockbuster is seeking to boost in-store sales as the number of ways consumers can obtain movies has increased. Customers can rent DVDs online at Netflix Inc. and have them delivered by mail, download TV shows at Amazon.com Inc. or watch video-on-demand through their cable provider.
Read MoreCoinstar, redbox take aim at c-stores
No longer content to place DVD-rental kiosks solely in McDonald’s restaurants and grocery stores, Coinstar and redbox announced plans to deploy more than two dozen DVD-rental kiosks in convenience stores across the United States. Coinstar plans to have 300 of the kiosks in place by the end of 2007, says Ray Taddeo, Coinstar’s regional vice president
Coinstar, which owns half of redbox along with McDonald’s, showcased the DVD-rental kiosk to convenience-store owners, distributors and retailers at the 2007 National Association of Convenience Stores trade show in Atlanta this week.
Taddeo cited high-volume traffic as the main reason Coinstar and other self-service companies are introducing themselves to the c-store industry.
“And we know that many of them are DVD renters,” Taddeo said.
Redbox is the nation’s leader in self-service DVD rentals, growing from 93,000 rentals in 2003 to more than 21 million in 2006. Now the company says it is on pace to reach 40 million rentals this year.
Coinstar, on the other hand, recently introduced a financial-services kiosk, which currently distributes prepaid cards at a handful of c-stores. Future versions of the kiosk will include a bill-payment application and money-transfer capabilities, Taddeo says.
Read MoreAn eye to the future
Environmental initiatives, such as the WEEE Directive, the ongoing growth of the online sector, and rapid technological developments mean predicting what the retail landscape will look like in the years to come is a tricky business.
This year’s Retail Solutions exhibition at the Birmingham NEC allowed retailers to view technology that can benefit their business both now, and in the future. The show, and in particular the Store of the Future exhibit, (see boxout on pg.51) drew the attention of both national and local press. The Magic Mirror, part of the Store of the Future, features both RFID bar code scanning and multimedia functions, and was featured in the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Birmingham Post and other international publications.
The seminar theatres offered delegates the chance to hear some of the industry’s top figures debating pressing issues facing retailers today. Representatives from Tesco, McDonalds, Dixons DSGi, Boots Alliance and Poundstretcher offered their thoughts on PCI:DSS, multi-channel retailing, fraud and loss prevention and international growth strategy.
Read More- 1
- 2
Post & Parcel Magazine
Post & Parcel Magazine is our print publication, released 3 times a year. Packed with original content and thought-provoking features, Post & Parcel Magazine is a must-read for those who want the inside track on the industry.