Hailey Bieber had heard the horror stories before she ever sat down with e.l.f. Beauty. 

“I’ve heard a lot of stories from founders that had gone through acquisitions and had regrets and were not super happy with where their brand went,” Bieber said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday. “I went into it with a mindset of really wanting to know that Rhode was going to be safe where it was going.”

Bieber and Lauren Ratner launched Rhode in 2022, and three years later e.l.f. Beauty agreed to buy the brand in a deal worth up to $1 billion, one of the buzziest beauty acquisitions in recent years. Bieber has since stayed on to lead creative and product innovation alongside Ratner, Rhode’s cofounder, president, and chief brand officer. 

For Bieber, the deciding factor wasn’t the price. In fact, Bieber said discussions about profit margins hate to see her coming, she told Fortune’s Ellie Austin. When deciding whether to sell the brand she launched, Bieber said she wanted to know that she would still have a major role in the company she helped build. 

Bieber said e.l.f. walked her through, in detail, how it had supported the founders of every brand it had previously acquired.

“They told me, ‘We don’t want to come in, we don’t want to change anything. We really want you to continue operating exactly how you are,’” she said. “You have to trust that, and you have to follow your instinct.”

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/14/hailey-bieber-sold-rhode-e-l-f-beauty-after-she-and-co-founder-lauren-ratner-addressed-their-main-fear-in-an-acquisition/?utm_source=reddit/

If Starbucks bought Chipotle Mexican Grill, a possibility the Financial Times reported this week was being explored by the coffee giant, it would be the largest purchase of one restaurant chain by another ever in the U.S.

It would also almost certainly be one of the biggest missteps, given the limited synergies between the two brands, the size of the deal, and the potential distraction as Starbucks brass works on its turnaround. 

Chipotle investors initially reacted well to the report, with shares rising as much as 8% on Thursday after the report was published. They are now back down to roughly where they were before the article.

It’s easy to understand their enthusiasm: Starbucks’ Brian Niccol is the star CEO who knows Chipotle intimately after turning it around in his six years leading the burrito chain, before leaving in 2024 to fix Starbucks. On his watch, Niccol led Chipotle out of a food safety crisis; improved its restaurants and operations; built a leading app; and ultimately helped Chipotle double annual sales to $10 billion.

Starbucks investors reacted rather differently to the report, sending shares down on fears a transaction like that would be a big distraction, even for a CEO as well regarded as Niccol who is being credited with getting Starbucks out of a long slump and back to growth and in the good graces of its customers. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://www.fortune.com/2026/10/09/chipotle-starbucks-niccol-stock/?utm_source=reddit/

The fast food industry has spent decades trying to make ordering a burger faster. Digital menus, mobile apps, self-service kiosks—you name it. Now, artificial intelligence wants a turn at the drive-thru speaker. But at Chick-fil-A, the familiar “my pleasure” still needs to come from a human.

While McDonald’s is testing AI-powered voice ordering at its drive-thrus, Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy says his restaurants won’t follow suit. The chicken chain isn’t rejecting AI altogether, but it believes some parts of the fast food experience are better left to humans, even if technology could make them more efficient.

McDonald’s is also defending a different kind of algorithm in court. A new lawsuit alleges its pricing-recommendation system helped coordinate higher menu prices—a claim the company denies. The two technologies are separate, but both put a spotlight on how much control restaurants are willing to hand over to AI—and how much responsibility remains with the people using it.

Chick-fil-A calls its approach to technology “human plus.” The company is exploring AI behind the scenes but won’t use it to replace drive-thru order-takers, Cathy told CNBC. 

“We’re not gonna substitute that interaction with technology, because we feel like that hospitality is so important to create that warm environment for consumers,” he said.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://www.fortune.com/2026/10/09/chick-fil-a-mcdonalds-ai-drive-thru-ordering-pricing-lawsuit/?utm_source=reddit/

PepsiCo plans to raise prices on some snacks and drinks and slash corporate costs after a disappointing performance in North America during the third quarter.

The price hikes, which will hit Doritos, Ruffles, SunChips and some sodas, will be in the single-digit percentage range, and prices will still be lower than they were at the start of this year. PepsiCo said Thursday that it must raise prices to recoup rising costs for fuel, aluminum and agricultural commodities.

Many companies, including PepsiCo, have offset rising costs this year by using tariff refunds issued by the U.S. government after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs.

PepsiCo used its $178 million refund to do just that during the most recent quarter, but said that money will not be available in coming quarters.

Yet there are risks for U.S. companies that raise prices in the current economic environment, with so many American households already stretched financially.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/08/pepsico-price-hike-doritos-ruffles-sodas-178-million-tariff-refund/?utm_source=reddit/

The $5 Sausage McMuffin meal didn’t do the trick. Neither did the mix-and-match deal that let customers choose, say, the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets for $6. 

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski has been trying to persuade customers squeezed by inflation or tempted away by competitors’ burgers and chicken sandwiches to return to the Golden Arches. But so far, the company’s barrage of new meal deals and aggressive marketing to promote them have come up short. 

In each quarter this year, McDonald’s U.S. growth has shrunk, and customer visits have reportedly dropped. Wall Street has taken notice: McDonald’s shares are now down 32% from an all-time high in February. 

What’s worse, some of its efforts to repair those downward trends have backfired. Kempczinski conceded in August that too many new menu and deal launches had overwhelmed its restaurants and harmed service. The onslaught irked franchisees, a crucial constituency, just as McDonald’s was asking them to spend $1 million per store on remodels and upgrades. 

The CEO defended his plan this summer, arguing that the strategy was good, and only the execution was bad. But McDonald’s paltry results of late suggest there is more to its malaise than just a few tactical errors. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/07/mcdonalds-earnings-growth-customers-meal-deals/?utm_source=reddit/

Less than a week ago, Neiman Marcus shuttered its original location in Downtown Dallas—a landmark in the city for more than a century. But part of the store's history will live on at another North Texas location.

On Sept. 30, Neiman Marcus officially closed its flagship store at 1618 Main St. in Dallas. Founded in Dallas in 1907, the company has operated from the Main Street location since 1914, after a fire destroyed its original building. Now, Saks Global, Neiman Marcus' parent company, is shifting its focus to its NorthPark Center store, currently under renovation at 8687 North Central Expressway.

Christina Zhu, the head of Walmart’s China business, remembers when Chinese shoppers did not have much choice.

As a child, she watched her parents wake up at 4:30 a.m. on Sundays to go to the wet market. “They had to haggle, and high-quality produce wasn’t always guaranteed,” Zhu, born in 1973, recalled at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau in September.

Today, Chinese shoppers are “probably the group with the most choices [in the world],” and they have become “the most demanding customers,” she said.

Meeting those rising expectations has become the defining challenge for retailers in China, and Walmart has managed it better than most. It entered China in 1996 with a Supercenter and a Sam’s Club in Shenzhen. Three decades later, the U.S. retailer is thriving in the world’s second-largest economy even as other foreign brands struggle.

Walmart has defied the downturn by meeting the dual needs of the discerning Chinese consumer: extreme convenience, in the form of lightning-fast delivery, and an in-person shopping experience so novel that stores have become a holiday destination for shoppers throughout the region.

The big-box membership warehouses are Walmart’s primary growth engine in China. Sam’s Clubs contribute about 70% of Walmart revenue in China, estimates Fitch Ratings senior director Cathy Chao, and the business has expanded from 15 clubs in 2016 to 67 in May.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/05/walmart-china-sams-club-growth-christina-zhu-consumer-slump-fast-delivery/?utm_source=reddit/

The health wave has made its impact on what could have been considered its mortal enemy: fast food. In a far cry from its old era of “supersized” menus, McDonald’s is exploring a new $8.5 billion, decade-long “McDonald’s Next” overhaul—and the fast food giant is exploring smaller and more flexible portions aimed at protein-first and GLP-1 consumers. The company is considering grilled chicken sandwiches and wraps, crispy chicken and burger bowls, and egg bites as it adapts to changing eating habits.

“We’re going to evolve our menu to make sure it reflects where we think that consumer is going to be looking for in the future,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a CNBC interview this week regarding GLP-1 customers.

The company has already begun its repositioning of its menu. In April, McDonald’s introduced protein callouts—or badges that mark specific protein items—in its app and restaurant kiosks for 17 menu items. The company says it has more than 30 menu items containing at least 15 grams of protein.

McDonald’s said the potential customer base extends well beyond people taking  weight loss medication. Skye Anderson, president of McDonald’s USA, said at the company’s investor day in September that roughly 30 million Americans are using GLP-1 drugs while the company’s own research indicated that about 60 million more Americans are also actively looking for more protein in their diets.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/mcdonalds-8-5-billion-bet-fast-food-protein-glp-1/?utm_source=reddit/

Red Lobster had unwittingly handed creators the perfect stage for a mukbang—the South Korean–born online genre in which hosts eat for an audience, sometimes to spectacular excess. Ambitious mukbang-ers eager to prove their gastronomic stamina descended on Red Lobster locations across the country to consume absurd quantities of shrimp. One YouTube video by Joey Kinsley, a.k.a. “Sir Yacht,” features the influencer shoveling down shrimp for 10 hours straight.

The chaos spread from dining rooms to newsrooms as Red Lobster became one of America’s most-discussed restaurants—for all the wrong reasons. While customers drawn by the deal monopolized tables to gorge on order after order of shrimp, restaurants ran out of shrimp and turned away regular customers. The chain filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2024, with $692 million in total liabilities, and revealed in court documents that it lost $11 million on Ultimate Endless Shrimp in the third quarter of 2023, and then $12.5 million in the fourth quarter. It closed roughly 130 of its 700 restaurants and cut corporate staff.

Now a creditors’ trust is suing Red Lobster’s former parent companies, claiming breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. In a lawsuit filed in May, it’s alleging that Ultimate Endless Shrimp wasn’t an epic blunder, but a conspiracy designed to force Red Lobster to buy massive amounts of shrimp—a scheme, the trust alleges, that put an Asian seafood giant’s interests ahead of Red Lobster’s, extracting millions from the American restaurant chain via overpriced shrimp purchases, and ruining its reputation in the process.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/red-lobster-endless-shrimp-bankruptcy-thai-union-private-equity-lawsuit/?utm_source=reddit/

Geico has the kind of brand recognition most marketers spend their careers chasing. Its Geico Gecko has been selling car insurance for more than 25 years, while slogans like “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” have become embedded in American culture.

Arianna Orpello, Geico’s chief marketing officer, thinks the mascot’s recognition now approaches rarefied territory.

“Everybody loves the gecko,” Orpello tells Fortune. “It doesn’t matter if they’re 10 or 80.” She likens the character’s recognition and likability to that of Mickey Mouse, calling the advertising intellectual property an asset “most marketers would kill to have.”

Orpello’s challenge now is turning that enormous brand equity into a broader growth engine, using AI, data, and personalization to deepen customer relationships and expand what consumers associate with Geico.

Auto insurance remains the foundation and vast majority of Geico’s business. Geico now wants consumers who know it for car insurance to consider it for everything from home and renters insurance to motorcycles, boats, personal liability, and business insurance.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/article/geico-talking-gecko-advertising-icon-cmo-sell-car-insurance/?utm_source=reddit/

In 1994, brands took tweens seriously as customers. They created a culture around them (girls, in particular), where not-quite-teenagers could tinker with the trappings of womanhood—lip gloss and slightly more fitted clothing—without straying out of their comfort zones. But over the past two decades, tween culture has been dismantled piece by piece. The mall (the tween’s natural habitat) began dying off, causing brands like Limited Too and Claire’s to struggle. Tween magazines closed, one after another, as part of the broader hollowing out of the media landscape. 

But in an unexpected twist, retailers appear to be rediscovering the power of the tween. Walmart and Target have recently launched collections targeting the demographic. The chic children’s retailer Maisonette created Neon Rebels, a new brand for ages 7 to 14 that curates tween clothes and beauty products. There are many tween-focused skincare startups popping up, including Pipa, Bubble, and Evereden.

Millennial-focused brands like Away now see tweens as a possible new market. And even the old favorites are coming back: With an infusion of cash from private equity, Claire’s is redesigning its stores, and Kohl’s has relaunched Limited Too. 

A tween renaissance is coming, and the brands that crack the code stand to earn a big payday. Gen Alpha already has more than $100 billion in annual spending power, and these kids influence 42% of household spending. In 2023 alone, tweens spent $4.7 billion on beauty products.

In the $225 billion global children’s apparel market, retailers say kids 10 and older represent a rapidly expanding piece of the pie. “The tween is going to be a very fast-growing market,” says AJ Nicholas, president of Maisonette. “There is just so much market share up for grabs.”

Read more on Fast Company.

Walmart is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores.

In a statement posted on the company’s website, Walmart Inc.’s CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn’t using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer’s willingness to pay to set prices, and it won’t be doing so in the future either.

“We don’t set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” Furner wrote Friday. “Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”

The pledge from Walmart comes as concerns are mounting from some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers skeptical about the rollout of digital price labels by the discounter and other stores. Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets and let stores change prices instantly from a central computer instead of having workers swap out paper labels by hand.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/09/27/walmart-ceo-ai-shopping-assistant-personal-information-prices-digital-labels/?utm_source=reddit/

Marks and Spencer has struck a deal with LVMH-owned Sephora to open beauty concessions in 100 of its stores as the UK retailer moves to take on rivals John Lewis and Boots in beauty.

The FTSE 100 retailer, which is pressing ahead with a turnaround after a costly cyber attack, said on Tuesday that a selection of Sephora products would be available in stores and online from spring next year.

The tie-up with Sephora could help M&S attract younger consumers to its stores, adding to the success it has had in revitalising its clothing ranges.

Read the full story at the link.

FT social media team.