Friday, July 31, 2015

The Firm, the Market, and the Law by Coase, R. H.

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Tesla Wants You To Tell Your Rich Friends About Your Fancy Car

Tesla is asking existing owners to refer their friends in exchange for $1,000 toward their next Tesla purchase.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Do you own a Tesla? Do you also have friends who can afford to own a Tesla? Do you have five to ten friends who can afford to own a Tesla? If you answered yes to at least the first two questions, Tesla has an opportunity for you.

Today, Tesla is launching what is perhaps the most high-stakes referral program in recent history to determine whether the company can depend more on word-of-mouth sales than physical stores. To initiate the 90-day experiment, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is asking existing customers to refer the Model S to their friends in exchange for $1,000 toward their next Tesla purchase. Their friends, in turn, will get $1,000 off their current purchase. And if an existing Model S or Roadster owner successfully refers five friends, they have won the proverbial golden ticket — a trip to the chocolate factory.

"If five of your friends order a Model S, you and a guest will receive an invitation to tour the Gigafactory in Nevada – the world's biggest factory by footprint – and attend the grand opening party," the email to current customers reads.

While this may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the actual price of the Model S, which can range from $70,000 to more than $100,000, it's potentially a way to leverage the tight-knit community of owners the company has been able to cultivate into less costly infrastructure for the company.

Though the program is temporary, Musk hopes it will shed light on how much of its resources Tesla has to invest in opening brick-and-mortar stores. The idea is that the more effective word of mouth is, the fewer stores Tesla has to open.

"We're just going to try it out," Musk said during a press call. "If it works out well long- term we'll keep going; otherwise we'll say that was an interesting experiment and move on."

If the experiment is effective and word-of-mouth sales are amplified, it could be great for the automaker, which has notably avoided marketing or advertising its cars and is also facing local regulations in several states that prohibit Tesla representatives from selling vehicles directly in those jurisdictions.

"This is a way for us to sort of have a guerrilla battle with the car dealer association," Musk said during the call. "Tesla representatives are not allowed to sell in certain states so customers who are not salespeople can refer their friends there."

Additionally, Musk said, the experiment's success could also mean that the company applies the same discounts on used Model S sales, but he emphasized that the primary objective is to determine how many stores the company needs to open.

"I do want to be clear we don't have any plans to close down stores and we'll still keep opening stores. It's just about how many future stores we'll open," he said.

As for advertising down the road, Musk says it's a possibility, "but we also need to have a mass market car in order to do mass media advertising. When we do the advertising years down the road, we want to make sure it's entertaining and interesting and has some artistic elements. If you're a reader and you see the ad, you shouldn't regret your time."

Here's the email Elon Musk is sending to customers:

Here's the email Elon Musk is sending to customers:

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What Is An Artificial Ingredient, Anyway?

Food companies are taking artificial additives out of food to suit consumers’ changing tastes. But “natural” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” scientists say.

Matt Rourke / AP

This spring, some of America's biggest fast-food chains proudly announced that their menus were going natural, a change that would ripple through tens of thousands of restaurants nationwide.

Panera committed to removing artificial additives and banned more than 150 ingredients from its menu. Taco Bell and Pizza Hut — both owned by Yum Brands — followed with their own plans to nix artificial ingredients. Subway, the country's biggest chain with 27,200 stores, declared that it too would no longer serve foods with artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. Papa John's jumped in to advertise its long-held policy of using "clean" ingredients. And Chipotle, which helped to pioneer the healthy fast-food movement, announced it would switch to a natural tortilla.

Meanwhile, in supermarkets, giant food manufacturers including General Mills, Nestlé, and Kraft all made their own promises about removing artificial ingredients.

It seemed as if the food industry had reached a turning point in the name of wellness, and consumers largely greeted these changes with relief and support. But what many people don't seem to realize is that removing artificial ingredients isn't likely to have any impact on their health.

Olgna / Getty Images

What is missing from the discussion about ingredients is the fact that "natural and artificial flavors really aren't that different," according to the Environmental Working Group. "The actual chemicals in these two kinds of flavors may be exactly the same: The chemical structures of the individual molecules may be indistinguishable."

The chemical vanillin, for example, is found in vanilla bean extract and is the primary flavor people associate with vanilla. Vanillin can also be synthetically produced as an artificial flavor. It doesn't have the same range of flavors as natural vanilla extract, which contains other chemicals that make the taste more complex, but it does the job at a lower cost. According to Markus Lipp, a senior director of food standards at United States Pharmacopeial Convention, a nonprofit that publishes quality standards for the food industry, "there is no known and accepted study that would prove" it is less healthy than natural vanilla.

It gets even trickier when it comes to whether finished products, rather than the specific ingredients in them, can be labeled "natural." According to the FDA, "It is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth."

Consider for example, the very idea of an all-natural hot dog.

"However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances," Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said. "A food is not healthy because it has fewer industrial additives in it. But we're waking up to the fact that industrial additives are put in without rigorous review."


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Thursday, July 30, 2015

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SoulCycle IPO: Over 300,000 Riders, And "The Experience Is Tribal"

The high-end fitness chain pulled in $112 million in revenue last year by providing an “inspirational, meditative fitness experience.”

Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images

The company had only 12 studios open at the end of 2012 and 36 at the end of last year.

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Zenefits Is An HR “Rocket Ship” — But Some Customers Get Left Behind

Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News

Mike Hawkins's four-month health insurance nightmare began in November, when he started doing business with a Silicon Valley startup called Zenefits.

Hawkins, the founder and CEO of Netizen, a cybersecurity startup in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had heard good things about Zenefits, a health insurance broker that offers free human resources software as a lure for small businesses. Launched in 2013, the San Francisco-based Zenefits is one of the fastest-growing and most talked-about startups of the moment, with more than 10,000 companies using its services, a valuation of $4.5 billion, and a roster of powerful investors.

But for Hawkins, 33, who became a software engineer after serving in the Army, Zenefits was instead a source of one headache after another. A process he thought would take about a month instead dragged on into March, when Hawkins finally gave up.

One of his employees, Max Harris, 37, the chief business development officer, wanted an allergist's opinion about what was ailing his four-year-old daughter, Caley, who had been getting sick with respiratory infections whenever the seasons changed. Harris, a former Army intelligence specialist and Arabic linguist who served in Iraq, hadn't had health insurance since leaving a job in a Wegmans deli to join Netizen in early 2014.

Finally, in late February this year, with coverage supposed to start days later, Zenefits informed Hawkins that it had made a significant mistake, attempting to enroll his employees with an insurance provider that didn't cover the company's region. The insurance wouldn't come through as planned.

"I'm done being patient with you people," Hawkins told Zenefits in an email that he shared with BuzzFeed News. "This is why no one likes Silicon Valley — companies like yours apparently have your heads up your asses. You're growing beyond your means and you'll be bankrupt within a year."

As it rapidly matures into a Silicon Valley giant, vacuuming up customers and burning through a mountain of venture capital, Zenefits has also racked up a number of customer complaints, over issues like software glitches and human error. More than a dozen customers who were interviewed for this article — a small but angry subset of the company's book of business — said Zenefits turned the HR process into an expensive nightmare. In several cases employees like Harris, who had put their trust in Zenefits, were left without health insurance for a month or more after they had expected it.

Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News

According to Zenefits, which is led by CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad, these service failures are rare, and not reflective of the experience of most customers. The company says it keeps 99.2% of its customers every month.

"Zenefits' customer satisfaction (as measured by net promoter score) is exceptional for a software-as-a-service company, especially one with 10,000-plus customers," Kenneth Baer, a Zenefits spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News in a statement. "It's also true that we sometimes make mistakes. This is the exception to the rule, and happens less and less frequently with each passing month. But when we do make a mistake, we work hard to correct it as quickly as possible, and make things right for our clients."

Zenefits claims it has grown more quickly than any other company delivering business software over the internet; it acquired those 10,000-plus customers and hired more than 500 employees in under two years, according to its website.

And unlike other richly valued startups like Uber and Airbnb, whose products are largely luxury items, Zenefits makes much of its money trading in a service that is essential to people's lives. So when Zenefits breaks, or when it makes a mistake, or even when it takes a particularly long time to fulfill a customer's request, the consequences can be serious.

Zenefits’ success and rapid expansion can be partly attributed to the industry it is disrupting. The majority of the insurance brokers who serve businesses are deeply — almost defiantly — old-fashioned, using their powers of persuasion and tolerance for tedium to convince insurance providers to give their clients a good deal. It's a business overflowing with forms and spreadsheets that companies resent having to fill out. Many insurance brokers are local, independent outfits. A few, like Digital Insurance, a subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial, or Wells Fargo, which has an insurance brokerage arm, are major corporations.

The insurance brokerage business is extremely lucrative. After selling insurance policies, brokers are paid commissions by the insurance companies every month, in perpetuity, even if they do nothing. Zenefits has become a broker itself, collecting around 5% of its customers' monthly insurance premiums, in line with the industry standard.

This predictable stream of revenue has made Zenefits very popular among investors. The monthly payments cause Zenefits’ financial statements to resemble those of startups that sell software over the internet on a subscription basis (a widely used business model known as software-as-a-service). Except in Zenefits’ case, the software is free. That tempts customers to use it to organize their employee benefits and payroll, which in turn often encourages them to buy insurance through Zenefits. And the payments from the insurance companies keep flowing in.

"It's a genius business model," said Jonathan Marcus, the CEO and founder of Goodsie, a New York-based startup that provides e-commerce software to businesses, and which is a Zenefits customer. "I'm very jealous I didn't think of it."

Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News

The early success of the business model has some of the world's best venture capitalists enthralled with the prospects for Zenefits. Andreessen Horowitz, which has been an investor in success stories like Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb, now has more of its money invested in Zenefits than in any other company. (Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in BuzzFeed.)

From the beginning, Zenefits took an aggressive approach to entering the market and defending its turf. In the fall of 2013, just months after Zenefits launched, Conrad, the CEO, learned that a group of investors who had provided seed financing to Zenefits had also backed SimplyInsured, a rival insurance broker that used a similar business model. Zenefits and SimplyInsured had been peers in the prestigious Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, completing the program together in early 2013.

Conrad, concerned about a possible conflict, told the investors that he planned to return their money, according to people briefed on the matter and emails obtained by BuzzFeed News. While such a stance wouldn't be surprising for regulating later-stage investments, some experts said it was an unusual way to handle investments made at the seed stage, when a company's place in the marketplace isn't yet established.

The investors, opting to stick with Zenefits, instead sold their stake in SimplyInsured, people briefed on the matter said. Zenefits went on to raise a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. SimplyInsured, focusing more narrowly on health insurance and courting smaller companies, has been left in the dust.

Zenefits is now a juggernaut, raising $500 million of venture capital in May to fuel its expansion. After opening an office in Scottsdale, Arizona, it recently signed a lease on an office in nearby Tempe, which will soon house hundreds of new employees. Late last year, in a sign of its clout, the company hired David Sacks, a founder of Yammer and a former PayPal executive, to be its chief operating officer.

"Just managing something that's growing this fast, it's kind of like building the rocket ship in mid-flight," Sacks said in a recent Zenefits promotional video. "That's an incredibly challenging thing to do."

Setting up health insurance for a small company is a complicated process, with plenty of potential for error, regardless of who the broker is. Brokers, both old-school and new, make mistakes, sometimes forcing employees to go without health insurance for months. "It's kind of like buying a house," said Jessica Miller-Merrell, a human resources expert and blogger who advises tech companies on their HR. "You have a mountain of paperwork you have to complete and sign. If you miss a particular paper, it delays the process."

Zenefits' heavy emphasis on software, Miller-Merrell added, introduces additional risks. "When you use technology to automate the process," she said, "mistakes are likely going to be made. And they're probably big ones."

The Zenefits spokesperson argued that the company's technology actually lowers the potential for mistakes, because it is less reliant on humans.

Many customers interviewed for this article declined to speak on the record; as startup companies often based in Silicon Valley, they were fearful of angering powerful friends of Zenefits, like Andreessen Horowitz or Y Combinator. But their stories showed how even small failures of the Zenefits "rocket ship" can be disastrous for its customers.

When setting up health insurance coverage, Zenefits can be prone to seemingly careless errors, several customers said — like premiums being charged for an employee who had left a company, or a current employee being incorrectly cut off from health insurance.

Several startup executives said administrative errors by Zenefits caused employees to go without health insurance while they were being resolved. In one case, a startup executive said they paid out of pocket for an employee's prescriptions during a month that the employee went without coverage.

Zenefits declined to comment on these examples. Without knowledge of the customers' identities, representatives said they could not determine whether the errors were the fault of Zenefits, an insurance company, or the customer.

Part of the problem may come down to resources. While many Zenefits customers have dedicated account managers, companies with fewer than 25 employees generally don't have one after their initial setup period. "We can't afford to have one person for every two-person company; we wouldn't be in business," a senior Zenefits executive, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, told BuzzFeed News.

Many of the unhappy customers said it seemed to them like Zenefits was growing too quickly to adequately resolve their issues. Several described a churn of customer service representatives — they would start working with one Zenefits representative, and then learn that person had been either fired or promoted to a different job.

"Everybody I talked to got promoted within two weeks, it seemed like," said Hawkins, the Netizen CEO. Marcus, the CEO of the New York-based startup Goodsie, said, "the contacts we had are no longer there."

Zenefits very well "could end up being revolutionary," said Adam Beck, a health insurance professor at the American College, in Bryn Mawr, Penn. But he said Zenefits would have to find a way to balance its reliance on technology with a personal touch.

"There is very much a human element in many aspects of insurance, really outside property and casualty," Beck said. "You do need more human interaction, just because the nature of the financial product is inherently more personal."

Some customers were willing to forgive missteps by Zenefits, especially when they related to software bugs — an issue that any fast-growing technology company has to deal with. But bugs in Zenefits software, which create problems when customers try to perform daily tasks, can be particularly aggravating.

Michael Schneider, a 34-year-old serial entrepreneur in Los Angeles, signed up for Zenefits in June after starting a company called Service, which aims to resolve customer complaints relating to any company. "Overall, I love the idea of Zenefits," Schneider said. "I hate paper, and I hate bullshit, and Zenefits seems to be a really efficient play to solve all those issues."

Schneider wanted to use Zenefits to pay a couple of contractors, but he was stymied when the software wouldn't verify Service's bank account. "They finally acknowledged it as a bug," Schneider said. The senior Zenefits executive said the bug stemmed from a software glitch known as a race condition, which prevented the system from verifying test deposits. Before the issue was fixed, however, Schneider used PayPal to pay his contractors on schedule, incurring almost $300 in fees. He said he was led to believe the fees would be reimbursed by Zenefits.

He never received the reimbursement, though he says he is now a happy customer. The senior Zenefits executive dismissed the notion that Schneider would be paid back, drawing this analogy: "It's like saying there was something I encountered, like a technical snafu or a bug, at Amazon, and so I bought the product at Best Buy for a higher price, and then I came back to Amazon and said, 'I want you to refund me the difference in cost.'"

Since Zenefits relies on insurance companies, some problems are out of the company’s hands. For Marcus, of Goodsie, the process of enrolling in health care for his small company last year was painfully slow, with insurance cards failing to arrive until late in September, the month that coverage was supposed to begin. Zenefits says this delay stemmed from the insurance company, which took a particularly long time.

But Marcus, who switched to Zenefits after becoming fed up with a local insurance broker, also had complaints with Zenefits itself. Despite the free software, he said, he didn't feel the process was much more automated than his previous experience. When an employee recently applied for coverage, for example, Marcus assumed the employee's status would be reflected in the Zenefits software. But Marcus only learned the coverage had been approved, he said, when he happened to call Zenefits to inquire about it.

"I thought there would be a change in the process, but there wasn't really," Marcus told BuzzFeed News. "There's just a lot of manual paperwork required by Zenefits, the same way that would be required by any broker."

"So, I'm left scratching my head," Marcus added. "What are they doing to earn the monthly commission they earn off of us? The answer, as a 10-person company, is nothing, really." Marcus remains a Zenefits customer.

A number of Zenefits customers have complained about their problems through Twitter, including Netizen, the cybersecurity startup in Pennsylvania. Hawkins, the Netizen CEO, said in a tweet in late November that he wasn't able to get his employees set up with insurance. He soon got an email from Matt Epstein, Zenefits's vice president of marketing, who said a gap in a Zenefits database meant Netizen wouldn't have immediate access to price quotes.

Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News

"It looks like we have live quotes for your company zip code, but not your employee zip code," Epstein said in the email. "This happens very rarely, but unfortunately happened to you."

With the automated process having fallen short, Netizen would have to use a manual method, including sending personal information about its employees to Zenefits. The senior Zenefits executive who spoke to BuzzFeed News said Hawkins didn't send this information until late January, delaying the process. Hawkins countered that he was busy and had hoped Zenefits would help him avoid this very type of paperwork.

But then, more than a month after Zenefits had received the paperwork, and with just days remaining before the coverage was supposed to start, a Zenefits representative said in an email that the company had submitted Netizen's application to a local Blue Cross member company that didn't offer insurance in Netizen's county. "There are 4 different versions of Blue Cross that operate in Pennsylvania and the underwriter did not inform us of this until your case was sent to be finalized," the email, sent on February 25, said.

Zenefits said it would have to apply again for the insurance — which would now start a month later, in April.

For Harris, the 37-year-old Army veteran who was Hawkins's first hire, the Zenefits failure came at a particularly stressful time. Harris had recently gone through a divorce. His daughter, Caley, had health insurance only through the Children's Health Insurance Program in Pennsylvania — which wouldn't fully cover a trip to an allergist to treat her seasonal illness. Harris said the problems with Zenefits aggravated his post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I had already reached out to my allergist" to set up an appointment for Caley, Harris told BuzzFeed News. "And then Zenefits was like, 'Oh, oops.'"

"I wanted to throw my computer at the wall," he said. "I was furious."

Zenefits ended up offering Netizen another option, to enroll with a different carrier by mid-March and have the coverage apply retroactively to March 1. Hawkins, frustrated by the lengthy process, dumped Zenefits instead.

He eventually got his employees health insurance through a Zenefits rival, Justworks. Harris is planning to take his daughter to an allergist in August.

“Look, I want to love the platform. It has promise,” Hawkins said in a tweet to Conrad, the Zenefits CEO, on the night Zenefits admitted its mistake. “But it has the appearance of moving too fast to keep up.”


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After Protesting Low Pay, WeWork Cleaners Are Set To Lose Their Jobs

The commercial real estate startup, valued at $10 billion, paid contracted cleaners less than half union-standard wages. Now the cleaners that protested their pay are set to lose their jobs.

MANDEL NGAN / Getty Images

Many of WeWork's New York-based cleaning staff are set to lose their jobs, just weeks after protesting for higher pay and better working conditions at the shared office space provider.

WeWork, which was valued at $10 billion in a funding round last month, currently uses a non-union contractor to provide cleaners for its New York buildings. The contractor pays less than half the standard wage paid to the majority of the city's janitors, who are unionized.

In mid-June, janitors and supporters protested at WeWork's Manhattan headquarters, asking for higher pay and better benefits. A local branch of the Service Employees International Union later filed a complaint alleging WeWork threatened to have cleaners fired if they unionized.

WeWork's contract with the cleaning company, Commercial Building Maintenance, was terminated about a week after the June 18 protest, WeWork said today. Workers say they began hearing that their jobs may not be secure in recent weeks, and were recently notified that the work cleaning WeWork's buildings would end on August 23.

"We hope the workers would get re-hired because they've all been working there in good standing for months or years without any problems," said Rachel Cohen, a representative of the SEIU, which has backed the protests. "It's quite standard with these types of contracts for the cleaners to keep their jobs and just be employed by someone new."

A WeWork spokesperson said in a statement: "CBM terminated their contract with WeWork on June 25. We are currently working to make sure we have uninterrupted cleaning service for our members." CBM did not respond to requests for comment.

While several of the workers contracted through CBM have re-applied for their current jobs directly with WeWork, according to Cohen, others have not interviewed or received information about the future of their jobs.

Because WeWork does not directly employ its cleaners, instead contracting the work through CBM, ending that contract effectively terminates the current workforce of cleaners, without the company firing a single worker. WeWork may have the option of re-hiring the workers in-house, through a contract negotiated with a different company, or not at all.

Once word came of the contract termination, workers began sending letters to the company to apply for their existing positions with whomever the new employer is, according to Cohen. Over the next week, the SEIU is organizing leafletting and other actions at WeWork buildings to inform its tenants about the contract change.


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We Have Wi-Fi At 35,000 Feet — Can We Stop Getting Ripped Off For It?

Gogo lets us send email while hurtling through the sky. If only opting out from its monthly charges were as simple.

PR Newswire

There's an undeniable magic to browsing the web in the sky: sending emails among the clouds, keeping up with happenings on the ground while 35,000 feet in the air.

For the majority of fliers, this service is provided by Gogo, a Nasdaq-listed company that has built up a $1.6 billion valuation by making the once-fantastical prospect of in-flight Wi-Fi a reality on the bulk of U.S. domestic flights. But despite its great technical achievements, there's one thing not included in Gogo's slick infrastructure for signing up and paying for its service: a cancel button.

Due to the high price of a single session, Gogo makes its monthly access option highly lucrative for consumers — on a trip to San Francisco last month, I knew I needed the internet both ways, making a $50 monthly pass cheaper than purchasing two single-day passes for $30 each. There was no middle option.

But then comes the catch: You keep paying that $50 every month, even if you aren't using the service. Gogo doesn't send receipts for monthly charges, and doesn't offer an option for consumers to request receipts. While you can now cancel two days before the next billing date to avoid a charge, it used to be seven days. And to get that cancellation, you need to either call customer service, chat with a representative, or email Gogo. Apparently a "cancel" option on its website just isn't something the company wants to offer.

"It all just feels to me that they intentionally built this system to bill people who aren't using it," said Ken Rutsky, who heads a marketing consultancy in Mountain View, California, and was charged for a month of service he didn't want. "You're just not thinking about Gogo if you're not in the air. I think they know that."


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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

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Free Legal Help Matthew Lesko Andrew Naprawa

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Subway Becomes Largest Restaurant Chain To Offer Mobile Ordering

The footlong sandwich maker will now take orders via app at its 27,000 U.S. stores.

Subway

Subway

Mobile ordering is quickly becoming a standard in fast food, and now Subway, which has more than 27,000 U.S. stores, has become the biggest U.S. chain to roll it out. The company has launched an app that lets customers to order and pay for their meals via their smartphone, and pick them up at stores.

The Subway app allows customers to customize a sandwich with toppings and condiments as they would at a store. In addition to the smartphone app, the chain is also taking desktop orders via its website. Some individual Subway locations have offered mobile ordering in the past, but this is the first app to be rolled out across the entire chain.

For customers, ordering ahead reduces wait times and can feel more convenient, but there are other benefits for the companies. Some chains such as Taco Bell have found that customers are more likely to pay for add ons when they order via app, as it makes it easier for them to explore the menu than a traditional board behind the register. The technology also provides valuable data to chains about their customers and their ordering preferences, allowing them to tailor their marketing.

Subway is the country's largest food chain by restaurant count. The second largest is McDonald's, which has more than 14,000 U.S. stores and says it will be testing mobile ordering in 2016. This October, the company plans to launch a new app nationally, which will initially offer special deals and promotions, but is likely to be upgraded over time.

"McDonald's digital ambition is to provide ways to streamline the entire customer journey," spokesperson Becca Hary told BuzzFeed News. "It's very important to know that everything we're doing is about growing our digital capabilities for the long term."

Starbucks, the country's third-largest chain, has already rolled out mobile ordering to a few thousand of its cafes, and plans to offer mobile ordering at all of its roughly 7,300 company-owned stores (but not its licensed stores) by the holiday season.


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The University Of Phoenix Is Being Investigated By The FTC

A University of Phoenix billboard. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Matt York / AP

The University of Phoenix's parent company, Apollo Education, is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission over potentially "deceptive or unfair" marketing and advertising practices, the company disclosed this morning.

The news comes less than a month after Apollo announced a bold plan to "get the University of Phoenix's reputation back." As part of a bid to stem its sliding enrollments, and protect itself from the looming threat of stricter government regulation, Phoenix said it would cut back on poorly-performing programs and enact unprecedented admissions standards — drastically reducing the size of its student body. Investors reacted poorly, sending the company's stock tumbling 20%.

An exposé earlier this week by the Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS NewsHour found that Phoenix was "sidestepping" an Obama administration order meant to shield veterans from aggressive marketing efforts by for-profit colleges. Phoenix is the country's largest recipient of GI Bill funds.

The FTC's actions are only the latest in a series of government probes into Phoenix's practices. The school is also being investigated by the Education Department's Office of the Inspector General, and by several state attorneys general. It has previously settled whistleblower lawsuits into its practices of paying recruiters based on how many students they enroll.

A similar FTC investigation was conducted last year into the marketing practices of another for-profit college giant, DeVry Inc.


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The Pitfalls of How, When, Where and Why to Hire Lawyers and How to Use A…

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

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Readings in Business Law and the Legal Environment of Business by John W. Gergac

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Twitter Revenue Tops $500 Million In Second Quarter

The company is searching for a new CEO and still struggling to grow its user base as fast as competitors. But its latest results have impressed investors. Twitter’s executives, however, said that the product as it exists now is not going to reach the mass market.

JUSTIN TALLIS / Getty Images

It was a steep jump, but the company's revenue growth rate is declining. In the first quarter, revenue grew 74%.


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America, Meet The McDonald's Self-Service Kiosk

The burger chain is rolling out touch-screen kiosks so customers can place their orders themselves.

Brad Barket / Getty Images

Fast food chains are exploring new ways for customers to order their meals without having to interact with a cashier. Labor costs are rising and consumers are demanding ever faster, more convenient service. At McDonald's, self-service kiosks are popping up in restaurants in the U.S. after the burger chain saw some success with the machines overseas.

McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook told investors on an earnings call last week that all stores in France now have self-order kiosks, and the machines handle more than 40% of orders during busy hours. He said people like having a self-order option and the additional ordering points free up workers and shorten the line at the counter.

Another advantage: Customers order more via kiosk. It's a behavior that other chains, such as Taco Bell, also have noticed when customers place orders themselves via mobile app.

"We see higher average checks," said Easterbrook. "They can browse the menu for a little bit longer, feel a little less pressure and they just tend to spend more."

BuzzFeed News spotted a McDonald's restaurant with self-order kiosks in New York City, and took the service for a test drive this morning. Here's how it worked.

First, tap the screen to start.

First, tap the screen to start.

BuzzFeed

Select your items.

Select your items.

BuzzFeed News


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