Starbarks, a dog daycare facility in Illinois is feeling the legal heat from coffee colossus Starbucks, which doesn’t see much humor in the smaller business’s name or logo. [More]
Food & Personal Care
Is CVS Pressuring Pharmacists To Refill Prescriptions Automatically?
By 10.9.12
While a lot of medications are intended to be taken on a regular, predictable basis, a number of drugs are only taken when needed, which means customers are getting refills less regularly. But recently uncovered e-mails seem to indicate that at least some CVS pharmacists are being pressured to automatically refill prescriptions in order to cash in on insurance payments. [More]
Pepsi Vending Machine Thinks You’ll Be More Popular If You Can Hand Out Drinks To Pals
By 10.9.12
Pepsi knows you’ve been struggling to convince your friends that you care about them after selfishly taking the last wing during last week’s game of whichever sport you were watching. And if you happen to live within visiting distance of five malls in the U.S. you’ll be able to not only play a game on a vending machine to win a free drink, but you can then send a code to your pal and surprise him or her with a soda. [More]
10 Examples Of Why Companies Should Just Avoid Twitter Altogether
By 10.8.12
People talk about the risk posed by the immediacy of the Internet. Items can be posted with little thought about consequences, or made public by accident, and no matter how much deleting or editing you might do, the truth — as the kids say — is out there. Nowhere is this danger more evident than the Twittersphere. [More]
Little Caesar’s Employee Chases Me Down To Give Me Free Pizza
By 10.8.12
Sometimes local franchisees of national chains don’t bother with customer service, hoping to coast on brand recognition and adequacy. Then there are franchisees like the Little Caesar’s restaurant near reader John’s bus stop. They didn’t have any pizza ready during the few minutes he had before his bus came, so he left to catch his bus. Someone from the Little Caesar’s chased him down and delivered a pizza to him at the bus stop. We can hardly believe it either. [More]
Coke & Pepsi Vending Machines Will Get Calorie Counts, Push Low-Calorie Drinks
By 10.8.12
Even though soda cans and bottles now feature large, clear calorie counts, the makers of the biggest brands of fizzy drinks have decided to go ahead and put calorie information on some of their vending machines starting in 2013. [More]
Healthy Shmealthy: Business Is Hopping At Taco Bell Located Inside Brooklyn Hospital
By 10.8.12
Hospitals always bring to mind bastions of health, where the unwell go to get well and we’re sure everyone is getting the appropriate amount of calories in their cups of Jell-O. And then there’s the hospital in Brooklyn — right smack in the middle of health advocate Mayor Bloomberg’s territory — that dashes that image right to pieces with the existence of a Taco Bell located in the building. [More]
Try Not To Freak Out, But A Shortage Of Syrup Might Foil Your Plans For A Pumpkin Spiced Latte
By 10.5.12
Call it caffeinated crack, call it a seasonal beverage that drives otherwise sane people to the brink of madness when they can no longer get it, but the Pumpkin Spiced Latte is a very popular item at Starbucks locations around the country every fall. So when stores run out of the syrup needed to concoct this beloved beverage, people are bound to be bummed/irate. [More]
Study: Burger King Has The Slowest Drive-Thrus, But Does A Really Good Job Of Hiding The Dumpsters
By 10.5.12
We’ve written any number of stories over the years of fights starting because a customer had to wait too long in a fast-food drive-thru lane. So according the results of a new study, impatient and easy-to-anger consumers might want to take a few deep breaths before picking up some Burger King. [More]
Starbucks To Add Tipping Function To Mobile Payment App
By 10.4.12
One of the knocks against Starbucks’ mobile payment app is that it doesn’t have a way for the customer to add a tip if they want to. But the coffee colossus has apparently realized the error of its ways and is working on a way to allow for tipping. [More]
Survey: NYC Subway Riders Can Actually Hear Announcements Instead Of “Grrblt, Shknamzbffft”
By 10.4.12
Anyone who’s ever found themselves speeding past their stop on New York’s subway system after a train has just unexpectedly gone express knows how infuriating it is to try and decipher conductors’ announcements. “Flllrtlelt brebrtltelt, gershafawq West 4th Sturble ka burble. Shlomf.” But finally, those garbled announcements are getting better, according to a new survey released today. [More]
Fancy New Taco Bells Hope To Go Upscale With Eatery’s Image
By 10.3.12
While Taco Bell might have had a huge hit by appealing to its basest (and yummiest) instincts with the Doritos Locos Tacos, the chain is simultaneously thinking about distancing itself from the cheap stucco faux mission-style buildings with which it is associated. [More]
Tainted Smoked Salmon Blamed For Salmonella Outbreak In U.S. & The Netherlands
By 10.2.12
I remember asking my mom when I was little after being warned not to eat raw eggs, “But how can I get salmonella if I’m not even eating salmon?” The answer back then didn’t make sense, but now my 7-year-old self would nod at the inevitability of salmon actually being linked to salmonella. In this case, it’s smoked salmon that’s reportedly sickening hundreds in the Netherlands and the U.S. [More]
Chinese Restaurant Closed Because Roadkill Wasn’t On The Menu
By 10.2.12
It’s one thing for a restaurant to serve up a nice plate of venison that comes from a legally hunted deer that’s been dressed and butchered properly. It’s another to simply chop up some roadkill in the kitchen and pass it off to your customers, and that is why a Chinese food restaurant in Kentucky is now closed. [More]
How I Made The CVS Robocalls Stop – For Now
By 10.2.12
Vivi gets her prescriptions at CVS, and this meant that she recently began getting robocalls from CVS. You can’t blame her for thinking that an announcement telling her that the chain had “important information” for her meant that the phone call contained important information. Not advertising. The store’s robots were calling her up with ads, though, not recall information or anything else urent actually concerning her prescription. [More]
Canadians Apparently So Desperate For Cheap Cheese They’re Smuggling It In From U.S.
By 9.26.12
There are crazy things happening in the world of delicious food lately. We’re all trembling in the shadow of an impending pork shortage, while thieves are targeting maple syrup reserves. The most recent case of coveted food hails from Canada, where pizzerias are reporting that smugglers have been offering them contraband cheese. Stealing cheese!? Have you no hearts at all? [More]
Great Peanut Butter Recall Of 2012 Began With Trader Joe’s, Now Includes 17 Brands
By 9.26.12
The Great Peanut Butter Recall of 2012 started relatively small, with Valencia peanut butter sold at Trader Joe’s. Thirty individuals in nineteen different states became ill from salmonellosis, and the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified that product as the likely source of the infections. Sunland, the company that actually manufactures peanut butter sold under the Trader Joe’s label, took the precaution of recalling other products manufactured on the same product line during the same period. That includes products sold under Sunland’s own label, as well as 15 other store and niche brands. [More]
Enough People Take Surveys For Us To Know That Five Guys Burgers Are Better Than McDonald's
By 9.19.12
Whether you personally are sick of taking surveys or not, we can thank the people who were asked about their burger preferences for filling us all in on which chains we like best. Relative newcomer Five Guys Burgers and Fries won the day in every region, coming in at No. 1 out of 16 restaurants. Not so shocking, as the chain has been pleasing customers and critics alike for awhile now. [More]
