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Small business owners felt more uncertain about the future in January, as they continue to deal with labor challenges and lingering inflation. According to a monthly poll of small business owners from the National Federation of Independent Business, the uncertainty index in January rose 14 points to 100 the third highest recorded reading, after two months of decline. The NFIB said small business owners are feeling less confident about investing in their business due to uncertain business conditions in the coming months. The response mirrors overall consumer confidence, which plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in more than four years, with inflation seemingly stuck and a trade war under President Donald Trump seen by a growing number of Americans as inevitable. In the NFIB poll, optimism fell by 2.3 points in January to 102.8, but remained high. Optimism surged after the presidential election, and the index still topped the the 51-year average of 98 for the third month in a row. Overall, small business owners remain optimistic regarding future business conditions, but uncertainty is on the rise, said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. Hiring challenges continue to frustrate Main Street owners as they struggle to find qualified workers to fill their many open positions. Meanwhile, fewer plan capital investments as they prepare for the months ahead. Eighteen percent of owners reported that inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business, down two points from December and matching labor quality as the top issue. Labor remains a top headache. A seasonally adjusted 35% of all small business owners reported job openings they could not fill in January, unchanged from December. Of the 52% of owners hiring or trying to hire in January, 90% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill. And fewer small businesses are planning capital investments to expand their business. Twenty percent plan capital outlays in the next six months, down seven percentage points from December. Mae Anderson, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
Dennys is the latest restaurant chain to add a temporary egg surcharge due to the rising cost of eggs caused by a nationwide shortage and the current bird flu outbreak. Last month, Waffle House added an upcharge of 50 cents per egg. Meanwhile, many supermarket chains, including Trader Joe’s, Market Basket, and big-box retailers including Walmart, Costco, and Sam’s Club, have raised prices and limited the number of cartons shoppers can buy. “This pricing decision is market-by-market, and restaurant-by-restaurant due to the regional impacts of the egg shortage,” Dennys told Fast Company in a statement. “We will continue to look for ways to provide options on our menu, including our $2 $4 $6 $8 Value Menu.” The restaurant said it would not specify which of its 1,500 locations would see the surcharge as the situation is “fluid.” Once an inexpensive food staple, eggs have soared in price in recent months. As of last week, a dozen white eggs was $8.07, according to CNBC. Bird flu, or avian influenza, has had a crippling effect on the nation’s egg supply, resulting in the death of 18.9 million birds in just the past 30 days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This is a double whammy for Denny’s, which announced more store closings earlier this month as part of the restaurant chains plan to jumpstart its waning growth. Like many fast-food and casual-dining chains, it has been struggling in recent years due to inflation, changing customer habits, and skyrocketing food prices. “We have taken a close look at every restaurant in our domestic portfolio; and as a result, at the end of last year, we announced the decision to close approximately 150 restaurants by the end of 2025,” Denny’s previously told Fast Company. “We began the closing process last year, and we are continuing to work through our plan. More than half of these locations have already closed.” Denny’s said the closures will enable its franchises to open “upwards of 20 new locations in 2025 . . . and remodel some current locations.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly or worse, mutter shame, shame in Arabic before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola. Chat Cola its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drink’s logo has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at Americas steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pocketbooks. No one wants to be caught drinking Coke, said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker at the bakery-cafe chain Croissant House in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which stopped selling Coke after the war erupted. Everyone drinks Chat now. Its sending a message. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered Israel’s devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supportive of Israel gained momentum across the Middle East, where the usual American corporate targets like McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks saw sales slide last year. Here in the West Bank, the boycott has shuttered two KFC branches in Ramallah. But the most noticeable expression of consumer outrage has been the sudden ubiquity of Chat Cola as shopkeepers relegate Coke cans to the bottom shelf or pull them altogether. When people started to boycott, they became aware that Chat existed, Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola, told The Associated Press from the giant red-painted factory, nestled in the hilly West Bank town of Salfit. I’m proud to have created a product that matches that of a global company.” With the buy local movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40% last year, compared to 2023. While the companies said they had no available statistics on their command of the local market due to the difficulties of data collection in wartime, anecdotal evidence suggests Chat Cola is clawing at some of Coca-Colas market share. Chat used to be a specialty product, but from what weve seen, it dominates the market, said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit that boasts fridges full of the fizzy drinks. But workers at Coca-Cola’s franchise in the West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinian, and a boycott affects them, too, said its general manager, Imad Hindi. He declined to elaborate on the business impact of the boycott, suggesting it can’t be untangled from the effects of the West Bank’s economic free-fall and intensified Israeli security controls that have multiplied shipping times and costs for Palestinian companies during the war. The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to a request for comment. Whether or not the movement brings lasting consequences, it does reflect an upsurge of political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen a boycott to this extent, Hussein said, noting how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their Coke orders. After Oct. 7, everything changed. And after Trump, everything will continue to change. President Donald Trumps call for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, which he rephrased last week as a recommendation, has further inflamed anti-American sentiment around the region. With orders pouring in not only from Lebanon and Yemen but also the United States and Europe, the company has its sights set on the international market, said PR manager Ahmad Hammad. Hired to help Chat Cola cash in on combustible emotions created by the war, Hammad has rebranded what began in 2019 as a niche mom-and-pop operation. We had to take advantage of the opportunity, he said of the company’s new Palestinian taste logo and national flag-hued merchandise. In its scramble to satisfy demand, Chat Cola is opening a second production site in neighboring Jordan. It rolled out new candy-colored flavors, like blueberry, strawberry and green apple. At the steamy plant in Salfit, recent college graduates in lab coats said that they took pains to produce a carbonated beverage that could sell on its taste, not just a customers sense of solidarity with the Palestinians. Quality has been a problem with local Palestinian products before, said Hanna al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for Chat Cola, shouting to be heard over the whir of machines squirting caramel-colored elixir into scores of small cans that then whizzed down assembly lines. If its not good quality, the boycott wont stick.” Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the flavor, which is almost indistinguishable from Cokes just like its packaging. That’s the case for several flavors: Squint at Chat’s lemon-lime soda and you might mistake it for a can of Sprite. In 2020, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in Palestinian court, contending that Chat had imitated Coke’s designs for multiple drinks. The court ultimately sided with Chat Cola, determining there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that it didn’t violate copyright law. In the Salfit warehouse, drivers loaded family size packages of soda into trucks bound not only for the West Bank but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staffers said that Chat soda sales in Israel’s predominantly Arab cities jumped 25% last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chat Cola secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbi’s thorough inspection of the facility. Still, critics of the Palestinians-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, say that its main objective to isolate Israel economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands only exacerbates the conflict. BDS and similar actions drive communities apart,they dont help to bring people together, said Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships in North America for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. The kind of rhetoric being embraced by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really quite dangerous. While Chat Cola goes out of its way to avoid buying from Israel sourcing ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait it can’t avoid the circumstances of Israeli occupation, in which Israel dominates the Palestinian economy, controls borders, imports and more. Deliveries of raw materials to Chat Colas West Bank factory get hit with a 35% import tax half of which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The general manager, Arar, said his company’s success depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist fervor. For nearly a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained Chat’s aluminum shipments from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge Crossing, forcing part of the factory to shut down and costing the company tens of thousands of dollars. Among the local buyers left in the lurch was Croissant House in Ramallah, where, on a recent afternoon, at least one thirsty customer, confronting a nearly empty refrigerator, slipped to the supermarket next-door for a can of Coke. It’s very frustrating, said Asaad, the worker. We want to be self-sufficient. But we’re not. Isabel Debre, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
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