When Nick Stone, a former professional AFL football player, opened his first location of Melbourne, Australia-inspired premium coffee chain Bluestone Lane in New York City in the summer of 2013, he said he “didn’t really have ambitions to grow to this scale.”

Now, 10 years in, the chain has 55 US locations and counting, a nationwide partnership with Hilton Hotels, and Stone will be on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars this week judging other coffee chain start-ups.

Bluestone Lane—which offers classic coffee bevs along with Aussie favorites like a hot milo (malted chocolate with steamed milk) and food like its popular avocado smash—emphasizes community and hospitality, Stone said, making consumers feel “like a local, not a customer,” so much so that he refers to customers as locals.

“I have no background in coffee…I was a consumer,” Stone, who is also the company’s CEO, told Retail Brew. “For me, getting coffee was not just getting a product; it was about being part of a community.”

While the company shuttered all but 14 of its locations during the pandemic, it now serves 80,000 “locals” a week, with more café openings to come. That growth required some strategic moves and “hard decisions” over the last few years, and Stone shared some of the more notable ones that have paved the way for Bluestone Lane’s success.

Keep reading here.—EC

With Q3 upon us, it’s time to review the year (so far) in retail. Set yourself up for success in the back half of 2023 and beef up your industry knowledge with these resources from Placer.ai.

Here are three reports you don’t want to miss:

• The Q2 2023 Quarterly Index shows how the Fitness, Car Wash, Discount & Dollar Store, Grocery, Dining, Superstore, and Mall categories performed in Q2 2023.
• Uncovering Behaviors and Characteristics of Today’s Consumer is where Placer.ai explores changing in-store shopping habits, reactions to rising prices, and other insights to help retailers cater to their core customers.
• Retail at the Halfway Point is your 2023 guidebook. Reflect on how shoppers have changed, which retail sectors made the most impact, and how to prep for the end of the year.

Amazon may be going through a rough patch, but it can still count on Prime Day to deliver big bucks.

The two-day shopping event last week brought in $12.7 billion in sales, a 6.1% YoY climb and a new record for Prime Day, according to Adobe Analytics. But the big winner of this year’s event may well have been buy now, pay later, which accounted for 6.5% of orders, or $927 million in revenue—a 20% YoY bump. It’s evidence that deal-hungry consumers are still feeling the effects of inflation and will continue to lean on the service moving forward, according to Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.

“For months, consumers have felt the effects of persistent inflation and an uncertain economic environment, and it has pushed shoppers to embrace more flexible ways to manage their spending around the Prime Day event,” Pandya said in a statement. “The revenue growth attributed to buy now, pay later is a preview of what we can expect in the months ahead, especially as we near the holiday shopping season.”

Keep reading here.—KM

Leaps and bounds in AI capabilities in recent months are making their mark up and down supply chains, from manufacturing to warehousing.

When it comes to product design, AI is bringing streamlined processes and even advancements in sustainability. But standing between product design and an AI automation takeover is a data problem.

Dirk Hartmann, head of technology innovation at Siemens Digital Industries Software, explained that product design requires an immense number of inputs, including materials, shapes, and the exact internal mechanisms. That means that algorithms need more data to learn from than if they were just asked to create, say, an image. And a lot of that data is protected intellectual property.

Keep reading here on Tech Brew.—MA

Today’s top retail reads.

Economic gown-turn: How David’s Bridal went from being the largest bridal retailer in the US to a bankruptcy filing—its second in five years. (Insider)

Sad face: Facial-recognition technology used by retailers in the UK is, ahem, facing blowback from a human-rights group. (CNN)

Toe the line: Barefoot sneakers, even a new brand with the five-toe style, are having a resurgence. (Fast Company)

A roundup of our favorite retail multimedia content from across platforms this week—from TikTok to Twitter. We’re keeping you hip, and you’re welcome.

Flying Coach: Melissa Gonzalez, who’s known for her cutting-edge retail designs, interviews Giovanni Zaccariello, senior VP of global visual experience at Coach, about such immersive experiential promotions by Coach as transforming an actual airplane into a retail concept store and café. (Retail Refined with Melissa Gonzalez on Apple Podcasts)

Throwing shades: In this 3D digital billboard in Times Square for Ray-Ban’s Reverse collection, giant sunglasses seem to burst out of the billboard and hover overhead. (Live Walking NYC on YouTube)

Pucker up: The “lipstick effect”—the counterinflationary measure where consumers splurge on small, pampering indulgences while belt-tightening just about everywhere else—is alive and well, with a Placer.ai chart showing spending for the first half of 2023 down in most categories but way up for beauty products. (Placer.ai on Twitter)

Lash but not least: In a video to promote Sky High Mascara, giant eyelashes top both a London subway car and a double-decker bus, and both pass under overhead brushes that graze them like a mascara brush—but it reportedly turns out to be CGI. (Maybelline on Instagram)