Donatos Pizza and its sister company, smart kitchen technology developer Agape Automation, are partnering with robotic food tech provider Appetronix to open the pizza chain’s first robot-operated restaurant in its headquarters city. The new fully automated Donatos Pizza restaurant will debut before security in front of Concourse B at the John Glenn Columbus International Airport in June 2025 and will be operated by franchisee HMS Host. The autonomous restaurant will operate 24/7, leveraging robotics and data science technologies to streamline the customer experience from placing orders to receiving their pizza while they watch it being freshly prepared in real time. The new automated restaurant is part of a larger four-point strategy Donatos Pizza launched in March 2025, which includes innovating for the future, staying relevant, driving sustainable growth and leading with vision. Other high-tech efforts Donatos is undertaking include implementing a new voice AI-based ordering system from Revmo AI that will automate its phone orders. Rollout to all 174 Donatos restaurants across multiple states is expected to be completed by May 2025. The company anticipates that Revmo’s AI-based voice ordering technology will enhance the customer experience and increase order conversions, ultimately driving revenue across its locations nationwide. According to Donatos, this technology has the potential to transform food service in airports, hospitals, college campuses, industrial environments, and other location where a traditional kitchen may not be feasible.
Pizza Hut launches app for its summer reading program to motivate young readers to sharpen literacy skills and earn a free Pizza in rewards
Pizza Hut has launched an app for its longstanding Book It! program, first launched in 1984, designed to motivate young readers to achieve literacy goals by rewarding their accomplishments with a free, one-topping Personal Pan Pizza from participating Pizza Hut locations. The Book It! app is part of Pizza Hut’s revitalized summer reading program named, “Book It! Summer of Stories,” which officially launches June 1. The initiative encourages parents to stay engaged with their child’s reading journey and sharpen their literacy skills throughout the summer months when learning tends to decline. Parents can set monthly reading goals specifically designed to support children from pre-K through 6th grade and cater toward their child’s abilities while monitoring their progress. Young readers can earn one free Personal Pan Pizza each month in June, July and August by reaching the reading goals parents set for each month. “With the launch of the Book It! app, we’re making it even easier for parents to connect with their kids, set meaningful reading goals and inspire plenty of fun pizza-filled memories with their families. This new platform will help keep reading goals top of mind this summer — and turn progress into pizza.”
Sam’s Club to deliver pizzas for online orders with an option to combine them with other items that are eligible for <3 hours express delivery
Warehouse club retailer Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart, is now delivering hot Member’s Mark baked pizzas for online orders at most stores across the U.S. and will have the offering available from all stores by the end of May 2025. The pizzas cost $8.98 and come in pepperoni, cheese and four-meat flavors. Online pizza orders can be combined with other items and are eligible for express delivery, arriving less than three hours after an order is placed. Pizzas are also still available for in-store or curbside orders. According to Sam’s Club, the launch of pizza delivery is the latest step in a bigger shift to providing shoppers digital ease in ways that save time, add value and deepen customer connections, such as its new digital-first store format. “When we talk about innovation, it’s not just about what’s new — it’s about what makes life easier for our members,” said Kurt Hess, group director, operations and implementation at Sam’s Club. “Pizza delivery is a perfect example.”
Tesco’s VAR-style tech at self-checkout tills uses camera that records customers’ actions and detects when items may not have been properly scanned to combat shoplifting
Tesco has introduced VAR-style replay technology at its self-checkout tills to combat shoplifting. The technology uses artificial intelligence to detect when items may not have been properly scanned. If a shopper fails to scan the items correctly, they are warned to remove from the bagging area and try again. Retail experts believe this visual evidence makes shoplifters more likely to pay for items rather than risk being caught. The technology could lead to the removal of security measures from everyday products. Shoplifting has reached record levels in the UK, costing retailers £2bn annually, and staff facing increasing violence and abuse.
Crypto-native firm FalconX closes its first Bitcoin-backed financing facility from investment bank Cantor, indicating rising demand for trusted, institutional-grade credit infrastructure for digital assets
FalconX has closed its first Bitcoin-backed financing facility from Cantor, a premier global investment bank. This transaction represents the first step in a broader credit framework that FalconX intends to scale beyond $100 million with Cantor. The transaction marks a pivotal milestone in institutional digital asset adoption, underscoring the growing convergence of traditional finance and crypto infrastructure. Cantor’s Bitcoin Financing Business, which expects to make available up to $2 billion of financing in its initial phase, provides leverage to institutional investors who hold Bitcoin, bringing scale, structure, and sophistication to the digital asset industry. “Over the past two years, we’ve seen institutional demand for credit grow dramatically, driven by the need for capital-efficient trading, hedging, and liquidity strategies,” said Josh Barkhordar, Head of U.S. Sales at FalconX. “Digital assets have lacked the institutional-grade credit infrastructure that’s essential to well-functioning capital markets. This collaboration between Cantor and a crypto-native firm represents a significant step toward building that framework, enabling digital assets to function with the same depth and reliability as traditional markets.” As institutions increasingly demand high-trust counterparties to access digital asset markets, FalconX looks to expand its role in bridging traditional and digital finance through secure, scalable credit infrastructure.
Ulta Beauty’s use of centralized first-party data to build unified customer profiles based on preferences and transactions across different channels and AI-driven personalized recommendations in real-time drives a 95% repurchase rate
Ulta Beauty centralized scattered customer data to build unified profiles, by looking at preferences and transactions across different channels. Ulta deployed advanced AI and ML models to understand the customer, predict what they’re likely to do next and send them personalized recommendations. The messages can change in near real time based on new customer actions. Ulta also measures the results. This new capability helps Ulta build stronger relationships and drive growth. The retailer said that nearly all its customers come back. This personalization has led to 95% of customers repurchasing products at Ulta, according to CMO Kelly Mahoney. But there’s another benefit to this approach, too. Using AI for print campaigns — those aimed at magazines, for example — has reduced costs without hurting effectiveness, the retailer claimed. Ulta’s loyalty program, Ulta Beauty Rewards, is central to its data-driven personalization. Each interaction — whether it’s a product review, app click or in-store visit — feeds the retailer’s marketing engine.
D2C jewelry brand Wanderlust + Co sets up first US brick and mortar store to offer city-specific and personalization services driven by success of high-converting pop-ups together with curated community meets
Viral female-founded jewelry brand Wanderlust + Co is expanding Stateside. The playful and accessibly priced label has chosen New York City and Philadelphia for its first U.S. brick and mortar locations—on Bleecker Street and the King of Prussia Mall respectively. While Malayia based Wanderlust + Co has its roots as a digital-first brand, it has already established five locations across Asia in Malaysia and Singapore and is stocked with some 400 retailers worldwide. The U.S. region, however, accounts for 40% of global website traffic and conversions together with a 20-25% repeat purchase rate among U.S. shoppers. According to CEO and founder Jenn Low, these permanent spaces were also a response to insights gathered from a series of high-performing U.S. pop-ups together with intimate media dinners and one-on-one meetings. They demonstrated significantly increased conversion when people could physically engage with the product. The offering of these stores tap into broader spectrum market trends such as city specific products and personalisation services which are key when it comes to drawing customers in-store and and building a local community. While appealing in particular to a Gen-Z consumer, personalisation and storytelling amplify the emotional resonance of jewelry. The New York and Philadelphia stores both offer on-site piercing alongside personalisation services such as welding, engraving and a jewelry adjacent ‘patch bar’ where customers can personalise canvas key-chains, choosing from a series of iron-on designs—”allowing customers to bring their stories to life, making each piece uniquely theirs.”
FICO partners with AWS to accelerate the adoption of AI-driven, automated decision workflows in its platform and simplify procurement for customers through its availability on AWS Marketplace
FICO has signed a new strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bring more organizations worldwide the power of AI-driven, automated decision workflows with FICO Platform, which runs on AWS, and FICO will broaden its participation in AWS partner programs to accelerate client adoption of FICO Platform. FICO solutions will also be available through AWS Marketplace Private Offers. The first of these solutions, FICO Decision Modeler, is now available in AWS Marketplace. FICO Decision Modeler is the advanced decision management system that powers greater flexibility, ease of use and decision accuracy, and is at the core of FICO Platform. Many financial institutions are already using FICO Platform on AWS to drive successful business initiatives, such as Westpac NZ, one of New Zealand’s largest retail banks. “With FICO Platform, which supports transformation at scale on AWS, we’ve been able to shift from focusing on individual decisions we make on a customer’s account, to thinking strategically about how we manage customers across all of their accounts and throughout their lifetime with the bank,” said Regan Goble, Risk Analytics senior manager at Westpac NZ. “FICO’s decision management solutions provide customers with powerful tools for making data-driven financial decisions,” said Scott Mullins, managing director, Worldwide Financial Services at AWS. “Making these solutions available in AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement for our customers while providing the security, scalability, and performance benefits of AWS.
Spotify to begin recommending podcasts on its Home page and provide a Following feed for staying up-to-date with the latest episodes of user’s favorite shows
Spotify announced a handful of new features designed to give podcasts a more prominent position in its app as it battles with Apple and YouTube to become users’ preferred podcast streaming destination. The company will begin recommending podcasts on its Home page and provide a Following feed for staying up-to-date with the latest episodes of your favorite shows. Soon, Spotify will also roll out new tools for podcast creators to recommend content and better engage with their fans in comments. Spotify has also invested in video podcasts, allowing all creators to upload video and incentivizing them with payments for successful shows through its Partner Program. Early feedback suggests it’s led to more users engaging with podcasts, saving, and liking shows. In addition, Spotify is introducing a Following feed that will serve as a dedicated spot where you can see all the latest episodes released by the podcasts you follow, instead of having to search across the app. Podcast creators will soon gain access to a new feature that lets them point to other content they mention in their podcast episode that can also be found on Spotify. In a smaller tweak, creators who participate in the comments of their podcast pages on the app will be able to use emoji reactions to respond to fans. The company notes that creators are still able to control when comments appear or opt out of showing them on their shows or episode pages via their Spotify for Creators account.
Cisco’s research expects Agentic AI to handle 68% of customer service by 2028 but customers want to retain human interaction when required
Cisco latest global research report highlights the potential of agentic AI to revolutionize the way technology vendors deliver services and support to customers. 88% report they feel confident that the agentic AI-led customer experience provided by technology partners will help their organization achieve its goals. Respondents also predict that 68% of their customer experience interactions with technology partners will be handled using agentic AI within the next three years. And, they expect 56% of interactions to be through agentic AI within the next 12 months, representing a significant increase and heaping pressure onto those vendors who are still only in the early stages of thinking about agentic. The research highlights the urgent need for technology vendors, many of whom are still only exploring the potential for agentic AI deployment within customer experience, to accelerate their strategies. Key Findings: Accelerated demand for customer experience: As levels of IT complexity increase, organizations are leaning on technology vendors more than ever before. 92% of respondents state that the support and services provided by vendors are becoming more critical in the AI era. Use cases across the technology lifecycle: more than 80% of respondents point to potential benefits of agentic AI-led customer experience at every stage of the technology lifecycle, with customer and technical support, technology strategy and planning, and operations viewed as the greatest opportunities. Game-changing benefits: customers expect agentic AI to drive improvements in IT productivity, time savings, and cost savings, as well as opportunities to improve data analytics, troubleshooting, and alignment of technology investment with digital transformation goals. Human connection is irreplaceable: customers want to retain human interaction when engaging with support and services, with 96% stating that human relationships are very important when interacting with B2B technology partners. Robust governance is non-negotiable: 99% of respondents state that it’s important for technology partners to demonstrate robust governance arrangements to deliver ethical use of agentic AI, and 81% feel that vendors need to share their vision for AI-led customer experience to bring customers along on the journey.