Walk into the Radio Flyer store, which opened in the Woodfield Mall outside Chicago in November, and it’s one of the first things you notice: parked on a bright green circle of astroturf is one of the brand’s signature red wagons, except this one is much bigger, with wheels the size of a sedan’s.

“It’s like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” Robert Pasin, who instead of CEO, calls himself the Chief Wagon Officer of the company, told Retail Brew.

Lori Mukoyama, a principal at Gensler who worked on the store’s design, climbed into the cart for a photo she posted to her Instagram account.

“I’m sitting in this huge wagon, but it automatically makes you feel like even as a full-grown adult, I’m kid-sized again,” Mukoyama told Retail Brew.

“It brings the child out in adults,” Pasin said. “They start laughing, they start smiling.”

It’s the first store for Radio Flyer, founded by Pasin’s grandfather, Antonio, in 1917. But it’s more than just a milestone.

Keep reading here.—AAN

In a digitized world, shoppers aren’t bound by brick-and-mortar stores—they can shop anywhere, anytime (yes, even there).

Why aren’t more brands meeting shoppers where they are? Only one in three brands offer an app, despite online shopping’s high conversion. It’s time for retail to embrace omnichannel strategies, and the new report from NewStore digs into why.

The 2024 Omnichannel Leadership Report analyzes the online, mobile, and in-store shopping experience of 700 brands in 10 countries from the customer’s point of view. Dig into insights about the state of omnichannel retail and how businesses are transforming their digital strategy.

Grab the full report to learn about:

• leading omnichannel brands + how they deliver a seamless experience
• how NewStore assessed each brand’s omnichannel maturity
• customers’ experience across different channels

Dig into the findings.

As hard as it may be to get a reservation on Valentine’s Day, restaurants prepare virtually the same amount of food, increasing the number of dishes they serve on that date by only 1% over the daily average. But while the chefs and dishwashers may not be much busier, the checks the servers drop are heftier, with the dollar value on food alone 34% higher.

The data was prepared (and finished with a drizzle of truffle oil) by Toast, the digital platform used by ~99,000 US restaurant locations. It’s based on February 14, 2023, totals from all full-service restaurants on Toast’s platform in 11 cities, including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Either because diners were ordering more expensive items off the menu than usual, or were more inclined to order pricey daily specials as they were making googly eyes at Smoocheykins, they spent more on individual dishes last Valentine’s Day.

Keep reading here.—AAN

It all started with a bag of lotion.

Or two, actually. When Michael Cera was photographed walking down the street with a bunch of CeraVe skin-care products in hand last month, people immediately asked, “Why?”

That same day, creator Haley Kalil posted a video of Cera at a pharmacy, where he was writing his first name on bottles of CeraVe. (Michael Cera..Ve. Get it?) Then influencers started posting gift boxes with Cera’s face on them, and creator and podcaster Bobbi Althoff interviewed Cera, during which he walked off set when asked whether he was behind the brand.

Last week, a website featuring Cera and the tagline “Human skin is his passion” rolled out, as did a teaser video for what some people correctly predicted to be CeraVe’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial.

Ahead of the game, we spoke with Melanie Vidal, global brand manager for CeraVe at L’Oréal, about the strategy behind the campaign and its faux-organic lead-up.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—KH