Today's news for the franchise & small biz owner

Stylish, all-suite hotel offers space for travelers to spread out and recharge.

Cambria Landing Inn & Suites, the charming 27-room ocean-front hotel in the quaint town of Cambria, has completed a full property ...

New 11-Story Hotel Located in Heart of Midtown Neighborhood

Looking to get a little something extra out of this year’s summer vacation?  Take a ZOOcation! Stay two consecutive nights at ...

Tom Xavier was appointed General Manager of the newly redesigned Luxe City Center Hotel in April 2013. In this role, Mr. Xavier will oversee all operations of the boutique hotel in the trend-forward district of downtown Los Angeles, including the introduction of a new signature restaurant.

The Subaru Forester small SUV beat the Honda CR-V and other rivals in testing by Consumer Reports, which ranked the model as its top pick in that segment.

Smoothie and juice franchise Robeks is eager to help franchisees take advantage of a market that is primed for small business success and is offering thousands of dollars in discounts to help make it happen.

The growing economy, paired with low commercial rents that haven’t rebounded from the recession, is making 2013 a promising time to start a new business.

To encourage entrepreneurs, Robeks is slashing its initial franchise fee by 50 percent, from $30,000 to $15,000 for a new Robeks owner, or from $52,500 to $30,000 for a new owner who signs on to open three stores.

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The decline in French car orders slowed to 0.5 percent in April, showing signs of stabilization in the auto market, according to a dealership survey by trade publication La Lettre Auto K7.

Chef Vanessa Miller creates seasonal small plates that buck celebrity-restaurant stereotypes Vanessa Miller creates seasonal small plates that buck celebrity restaurant stereotypes

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Pacific Coast Hospitality (PCH) has launched its new service, providing specialized recruiting and job placement services for the restaurant and hospitality industry.

PCH connects top restaurants with top talent for hospitality management and executive positions, including: corporate leadership, multiunit manager, general manager, bar manager, service manager, chef, and sous chef.

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Eight months into a controversial customer-tracking mobile trial, Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) has halted the effort. Although Nordstrom took a lot of criticism for the mostly misunderstood program from consumer media, it's not clear whether the project ended as a result of the criticism or the trial had simply run its course. The trial's purpose was straightforward: to use routine signals coming from shopper's mobile devices to count how many people showed at Nordstrom and, critically, which were repeat visitors (and, if so, how many times they had previously visited, dates they visited and where in the store they went). Nordstrom had maintained that it was only seeing anonymous data, meaning that it didn't know the names of the shoppers being tracked.

The trial was controversial for a reason other than consumers' fears that their privacy was somehow being invaded.The problem is that Euclid was able to see cross-retail transactions. That means that it saw when, for example, a Nordstrom shopper left Nordstrom without visiting POS and then her mobile signal appeared 20 minutes later inside Macy's, where she ended her visit with that always-desired visit to POS. (Note: That was just an example. Other than Nordstrom, we're not identifying which retailers are using Euclid.) The fact that Nordstrom is only receiving anonymous data (or so it says) doesn't mean that its rivals all are similarly limited. This is a key industry problem with many forms of mobile information gathering.

PSA's China joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Corp. said it increased sales 37 percent last month to 45,303 units helped by strong demand for its stretched Citroen C4 and Peugeot 3008 models.

At the 94th annual National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Starbucks Howard Schultz delivered a powerful message to the restaurant industry: profitability and conscience can exist side by side.

In fact, the veteran Starbucks chairman, president, and CEO points to his Seattle-based chain, a quick-service behemoth that topped $13.3 billion in net revenues in fiscal year 2012, as tangible proof that the content of a company’s character propels performance. 

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Image Caption:  Amre Morsy, president of HearTV Zone and Alexandria Rose, a company marketing employee, look at a smartphone with the company’s new app that plays the audio from a restaurant’s televisions.

Strolling down the aisles of food, beverages, equipment, and more at the annual National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show—aka, the NRA Show—most attendees are looking at the booths, often stopping to chat with the exhibitors.

Plenty of others, however, are walking while gazing down at their smartphones, checking on meetings, receiving business updates, messaging, and reading and sending emails.

iPhones, Androids, and other devices seem to be everywhere in America these days. More than 100 million U.S. consumers use them.

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The $7.25 billion interchange settlement between retailers and Visa (NYSE:V) and MasterCard (NYSE:MA) just keeps getting messier. Two cities—Little Rock, Ark., and Oakland, Cal.—filed objections to the settlement last week, according to Reuters. The objections weren't because of public policy considerations—they came because, technically, both cities are merchants under the settlement's very broad umbrella.

Oakland's objection, filed on May 15 with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, said because the city "is not permitted to charge convenience fees, this hidden and regressive tax has fallen equally on those who make so little money that they cannot qualify for a credit card." In Little Rock's case, because the city takes American Express (NYSE:AXP) for payments and AmEx doesn't allow surcharging, that city said it can't benefit from the settlement's terms either.

Global April sales for Fiat-Chrysler show how much the Americas, especially the U.S. and Brazil, are supporting the automaker as deliveries in Europe fall.

Global April sales for Fiat-Chrysler show how much the Americas, especially the U.S. and Brazil, are supporting the automaker as deliveries in Europe fall.

Some Marks & Spencer customers have reported that the U.K. chain's contactless payment terminals have taken money from contactless cards even when those cards were still in purses or wallets a foot or more away—and in at least one case, the grabby POS behavior was repeatable.

The retailer recently rolled out contactless point-of-sale terminals to 644 U.K. stores and reportedly processes more than 230,000 contactless transactions every week. But several customers told the BBC that they had the experience of inserting a chip-and-PIN card in the PINpad's slot, but being issued a receipt for a contactless card that was nowhere near the PINpad. The contactless system isn't supposed to work at distances of more than about two inches.

Sometimes, doing the right thing can mean saying no to what shoppers might think is the right thing. Victoria's Secret (NYSE:LTD) recently found itself in the middle of a challenging issue when the daughter of a breast cancer survivor started campaigning vigorously—including helping to get 120,000 signatures on a petition—to get the apparel retailer to start offering mastectomy bras.

The truth is that Victoria's Secret has been a longtime champion of cancer issues, having donated more than $1.6 million to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society to fund breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment. It’s also donated some $10 million (over two years) to fund cancer research at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. But the company was in the awkward position of knowing that it couldn't do mastectomy bras in the proper way.

Seamless North America LLC and GrubHub Inc. announced the signing of a definitive agreement to merge their services for ordering takeout. The merger aims to drive more orders to restaurants, deliver …

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