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Once the king of the chicken sandwich, Popeyes faces a lot of competition for the crown these days. Ascendant fried chicken hotspot Raising Canes exploded in growth last year, knocking off KFC to become the third most-popular fast food chicken chain in the U.S. behind Chick-fil-A and Popeyes. Meanwhile, upstarts like Daves Hot Chicken and Hangry Joes Hot Chicken & Wings are growing fast and eyeing a similar trajectory. Popeyes once inspired feverish hordes and all-day lines for its top-selling chicken sandwich, but its been a rocky ride as of late. Popeyes parent company Restaurant Brands International (RBI) just reported its quarterly earnings, and In the last quarter, the chicken chains U.S. sales were down nearly 5%its fourth consecutive quarterly slide. Other fast food brands under RBIs umbrella saw sales tick up during the same time period. Beyond Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, RBI also owns Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Firehouse Subs. With almost 20,000 locations, Burger King is RBIs biggest chain, dwarfing the 5,000 Popeyes locations around the globe. Weve had weaker performance than wed like over the last few quarters, and thats why you saw us make the change in leadership, RBI CEO Josh Kobza said on the companys earnings call. He noted the companys decision to bring former Burger King COO Peter Perdue in as Popeyes U.S. and Canada president. Popeyes also plans to triage its lowest-performing locations with targeted support, coaching visits and experience rallies for Popeyes restaurant general managers across the U.S. Kobza said that Popeyes plans to double down on operations and narrow the focus back to chicken on the marketing and product side. We know Popeyes is capable of much more and we’re taking decisive action to put the brand back on the right path while supporting our franchisees to deliver stronger results at the restaurant level, Kobza said. Reviving Popeyes In January, almost 20 Popeyes locations in George and Florida closed their doors after one of the chicken chains major operators declared bankruptcy. While Popeyes says that the majority of the 100-plus locations operated by franchisee Sailormen Inc. were profitable, borrowing rates, high inflation, and dwindling foot traffic contributed to the closures. Popeyes insists that the closures dont reflect the broader brand, which is owned by quick-service restaurant conglomerate RBI. Perdue reportedly reassured other franchisees that Sailormens bankruptcy does not reflect the healthy unit economics that you are experiencing in your restaurants. For Popeyes, the problem clearly isnt chicken. Persistent inflation continues to take a toll on the restaurant industry, but Americans are still opting for poultry on the go at Popeyes competitors like Raising Canes and Daves Hot Chicken. Traffic is down at fast food joints broadly too, but chicken restaurants lapped their lagging peers last year. For Popeyes, the problem is Popeyessomething the company seems well aware of right now. Our performance this year reinforces a clear reality, Kobza said in the earnings report, noting the intense level of competition in the quick-service chicken game. At its core, the chicken business is a service business and winning requires consistent speed, accuracy and reliability in every restaurant every day.
Category:
E-Commerce
Advertising in generative AI systems has become a fault line. Last month, OpenAI released that it would start running ads in ChatGPT. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAIs chief financial officer defended the introduction of ads inside ChatGPT, arguing that it is a way to democratize access to artificial intelligence, and that this decision is aligned with its mission: AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the benefit of humanity who can pay.” Within days, Anthropic fired back in a Super Bowl commercial, ridiculing the idea that ads belong inside systems people trust for advice, therapy, and decision-making. In some way, this is a spat about how each company is marketing itself. In another way, this debate echoes the debates about the early internet, but with far higher stakes. The big question The underlying question is not whether advertising generates revenue. It clearly does. But rather: is advertising the only viable way to fund AI at scale. And whether, if adopted, it will quietly dictate what these systems optimize for. History offers a cautionary answer. The last several decades of online advertising has proven that when profit is decoupled from user value, incentives drift toward harvesting data and maximizing engagementthe variables that can be most easily measured and monetized. That trade-off shaped everything in the internet economy. As advertising scaled, so did the incentives it created. Attention became a scarce resource. Personal information became currency. What Google taught us Googles founders themselves acknowledged this risk at the dawn of the modern web. In their 1998 Stanford paper, Sergey Brin and Larry Page warned that ad-funded search engines create inherent conflicts of interest, writing that such systems are biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers, and that advertising incentives can encourage lower-quality results. Despite this warning, the system optimized for what could be measured, targeted, and monetized at the expense of privacy, transparency, and long-term trust. These outcomes were not inevitable. They flowed from early design choices about how advertising worked, data moved, and influence was disclosed. A pivotal moment Artificial intelligence now finds itself at a similar pivotal moment, but under far greater economic pressure and with far higher stakes. It is worth noting, artificial intelligence is not cheap to run. OpenAI projected that it will burn through $115 billion by 2029. Like internet users, AI users are unwilling to pay for access, and advertising has historically allowed the internet, and businesses depending on it, to scale beyond paying users. If advertising is going to fund AI, personal data cannot be the fuel that powers it. If conversations on an AI platform leak into targeting data, users will stop trusting it and will start viewing it as a surveillance tool. Furthermore, once personal data becomes currency, the system inevitably optimizes for extraction. That does not mean future advertisers on these AI platforms would have to operate in the dark. Brands will still need to know that their spending delivers results, and that their messages target users aligned with their values. Its justifiable that brands need outcome measurement and contextual assurance. The real problem The irony in Anthropics critique is instructive. A Super Bowl commercial is itself a testament to advertisings enduring power as a form of communication and cultural signaling. Advertising is not the problem. Invisible incentives are. The way to satisfy both consumer trust and business growth is to build the advertising ecosystem on open, inspectable systems so that influence can be seen, measured, and governed without requiring the collection or exploitation of personal data. Standards such as the Ad Context Protocol sets out to do exactly this. This is the window in which profit can still be aligned with value. At stake is the difference between advertising as manipulation and advertising as sustainable and enduring market infrastructure. The ad-funded internet failed users not because it was free, but because its incentives were invisible. AI has the chance to do better. The choice is ours to make.
Category:
E-Commerce
Public transit could be on the verge of getting a whole lot more efficient. The Bay Area city of San Jose says it has improved public transportation by implementing an AI transit signal priority (TSP) system that makes its bus routes 20% faster and shortens ride times for passengers. An urban planning win, it also broadens the strategies available to other cities looking to improve their public transport. TSP systems are programs that make traffic lights responsive and adaptable to public transportation in real time. They can extend a green light to give buses an extra second to make it through an intersection or shorten a red light so they don’t have to wait as long. It’s similar to the higher-urgency emergency vehicle preemption (EVP) system for first responders. While EVP systems for ambulances, fire engines, and police cars can immediately change signals, TSP systems for buses or trains can only nudge them. The extra moments from those lower-priority nudges, though, can still make a meaningful difference in keeping buses operating on schedule. “By helping buses move more efficiently through intersections, the technology reduces delays, improves on-time performance, and shortens wait times for riders,” a statement from the city read. Cities have found other ways to reduce wait times for riders. AI lane enforcement that tickets vehicles driving in or blocking the bus lane cuts the number of illegally parked cars in a hurry. In London, buses have switched to contactless boarding, which led to improved boarding times. A passenger boards a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus. [Photo: VTA] San Jose becomes one of several test cities San Joses TSP was developed by Lyt, a Northern California transit software company. Its software interacts with a transit agency’s traffic manager center via a computer called Maestro. Lyt’s system was piloted in San Jose beginning on just two Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) bus routes in 2023; now it’s used for 24 routes. Federal and state funds paid for a majority of the project. Lyt provided TSP software for buses in Portland, Oregon, in 2022 that reduced delays by 69%. Last September the company announced it would pilot its tech on four bus routes in Baltimore. Lyt did not respond to a request for comment. Lyt’s TSP technology uses criteria like routing information, traffic conditions, and vehicle location to predictively keep buses running on time. The company pitches its system as better and more cost effective than the analog prioritization method of dash-mounted strobes on buses that beam infrared or optical lights to traffic pole equipment. “Our cloud-based transit priority system takes the global picture of a route into account and uses machine learning to predict the optimal time to grant the green light to transit vehicles at just the right time,” Lyt founder and CEO Tim Menard said in a statement about the system when it expanded across more San Jose routes in 2023. Public transit garners new public interest City bus speeds have grown from being strictly transportation and infrastructure issues to something that resonates more broadly after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won last year’s election in part on a campaign promise to make city buses faster and free to ride. Its a promise Mamdani’s office says he intends to keep, even after the federal Department of Transportation developed a proposal to stop its transit funding for any city that provides free bus service, according to Politicowhich represents a direct threat to the Mayors ambitious plans. Nevertheless, smarter systems that give buses a few extra seconds to make it through an intersection could be the edge that makes public transportation in cities across the country faster and more reliable.
Category:
E-Commerce
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