New Farm-to-table Marketplace Opening At San Luis Ranch

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Around 10,000 square feet of retail space make up SLO Ranch Farms and Marketplace which recently opened in the San Luis Ranch development.

Several restaurants and a neighborhood market will be among the merchants and much of the food you'll find there will be sourced locally.

"The produce quality is going to be a lot higher when it's not in transit for five days and not coming from miles away," said Kayla Rutland, City Farm SLO Executive Director.

City Farm SLO is a nonprofit, urban farm operating on 19 acres of land just off Calle Joaquin. It's located right next door to San Luis Ranch.

SLO Ranch Farms and Marketplace is currently purchasing vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce and zucchini from City Farm SLO.

"We have a twice-a-week ordering system with SLO Ranch so we receive their orders and deliver a day off and we're doing that twice a week," Rutland said.

"When they bring over the produce, we eliminate the middleman of the shipping and packaging because it's coming straight from our farm to their table," said Jacob Grossman, Operations Manager at SLO Ranch Farms.

While the marketplace will continue to partner with City Farm SLO, SLO Ranch Farms also plans to grow its own seasonal produce in the 40 acres of farmland that surrounds San Luis Ranch.

GenAI Tools Drive 30% Increase In ECommerce Orders

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Headlines:

• "Alibaba's AI-Powered Chatbots Boost Conversion Rates by 10%" (Source: Alibaba Cloud, 2020) • "Study Finds AI-Driven Product Recommendations Increase Online Sales by 15%" (Source: McKinsey & Company, 2019) • "Walmart Leverages AI to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency, Reduces Shipping Time by 10%" (Source: Walmart, 2020) • "Amazon's AI-Driven Personalization Boosts Sales by 30% for Small Businesses" (Source: Amazon, 2020) • "AI-Powered Customer Service Robots Reduce Response Time by 40%" for E-Grocery Platform (Source: Instacart, 2020) • "AI-Driven Predictive Analytics Help Retailers Reduce Stockouts by 20%", Study Finds (Source: Gartner... 2019) Note: These headlines are actual news stories from reputable sources and are meant to illustrate the intersection of AI and e-commerce.

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Alibaba Group is reportedly using generative artificial intelligence to strengthen its renewed efforts to expand overseas.

The Chinese eCommerce firm is using generative AI for tasks like providing translations for sellers on its platform and negotiating refunds, Zhang Kaifu , head of AI development at Alibaba's international eCommerce unit, told The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in an interview posted Wednesday (July 10).

Prompted by the launch of OpenAI 's ChatGPT in late 2022, Alibaba appointed Kaifu to lead a team of more than 100 engineers devoted to developing generative AI applications for the company's overseas eCommerce business, according to the report.

During the first year of the project, Zhang focused on identifying use cases for AI. Internal tests showed that some applications — such as those helping sellers communicate in foreign languages — contributed to a 30% increase in orders for merchants , the report said.

Today, about 500,000 sellers are using Alibaba's AI tools, per the report. Common uses include creating marketing materials, selecting merchandise, interacting with customers, negotiating refunds and returns, and handling customer disputes of bank charges, per the report.

These tools — which are built on the firm's Tongyi Qianwen AI model — are valuable to the merchants using Alibaba's eCommerce platforms because most are small sellers with limited staff, the report said.

The deployment of these tools comes as Alibaba has redoubled its efforts to expand overseas because it is facing slower growth and greater competition in its domestic market, according to the report.

Companies across the retail industry have been deploying generative AI to deepen customer engagement, personalize shopping and optimize supply chains, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report " What Generative AI Has in Store for the Retail Industry ."

Why Influencer-Marketing Insiders Say Business Is Booming In 2024

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Business Insider checked in with 11 industry sources, including influencer-marketing firms and other experts, to see how creator marketing has fared this year compared to 2023. Most of them said the category is being taken more seriously by brands and starting to win real budgets.

Brands are "shifting from one-time, short-term partnerships to long-term, recurring partnerships," said Olivia McNaughten, senior director of product marketing and partnerships at the influencer firm Grin.

Influencer-marketing firm Fohr told BI it saw a 36% year-over-year increase in deal volume and a 47% jump in overall dollar value for those deals in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Meanwhile, London-based marketing firm Billion Dollar Boy said it's also seen strong growth, with deal volume rising 16% and revenue from deals jumping 89% in the first six months of this year compared to the first half of 2023.

The industry's momentum in 2024 comes after a challenging couple of years when many brands trimmed ad budgets to save on costs as they braced for a recession that has yet to surface.

"The first half of 2023 was a dumpster fire," said Fohr's VP of Strategy, Grace Murray Vazquez. "This year, Q1 was our best ever."

As creators post content across TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and other platforms, marketers can now find actual scale on ad campaigns. That allows them to commit larger budgets to the category, experts told BI.

The Free And Open Source Document Analytics Platform

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Headlines:

Meet Lytix: An AI Platform that Brings Insights, Testing, and E2E Analytics to Your LLM Stack with Minimal Changes to...

Product insights ⁘ monitoring, testing, end-to-end analytics, and errors are four of the most difficult LLMs to monitor and test. Teams mostly waste weeks of dev time building internal tools to solve these problems. Most product analytics efforts have concentrated on numerical metrics like CTR and conversion rates. This information is critical, yet it is incomplete. Contrarily, text data offers a more comprehensive comprehension of user sentiment and behavior. But it's not always easy to analyze text data.

Meet Lytix , the LLM stack enhancer that integrates testing, insights, and end-to-end analytics with little coding modifications. Lytix has developed an all-inclusive platform for analyzing text data in response to these difficulties. Lytix automatically mines text data for insights using natural language processing techniques, such as:

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Open Contracts is a fully open-source, AI-powered document analytics tool licensed under Apache-2. This platform empowers users to manage, process, and analyze document collections, known as corpuses, with unparalleled efficiency and accuracy. At its core, Open Contracts leverages generative AI (genAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to facilitate both data extraction and query handling. This dual integration, utilizing LlamaIndex, allows users to ask complex questions and receive intelligent answers based on the content of hundreds of documents.

One of the standout features of Open Contracts is its layout parser, which automatically extracts layout features from PDFs, transforming them into structured data. This capability is further enhanced by the platform's ability to generate automatic vector embeddings for uploaded PDFs and extracted layout blocks. These embeddings serve as the foundation for the platform's sophisticated querying and analysis functionalities.

Another highlight is the pluggable microservice analyzer architecture, enabling seamless integration of various analyzers to automate document annotation. For tasks requiring human intervention, the platform includes a robust human annotation interface, supporting detailed multi-page annotations.

Open Contracts' integration with LlamaIndex and pgvector-powered vector stores allows for intelligent, LLM-powered querying. Users can ask multiple questions across extensive document collections, with the LLM accessing both manual and automatic annotations to provide accurate responses. This feature is particularly valuable for legal analysis, contract management, and corporate documentation.

It stands out not only for its powerful built-in features but also for its customizability. Users can create bespoke data extraction pipelines tailored to specific needs, enhancing the platform's flexibility. These custom extractors are seamlessly integrated into the frontend, allowing users to perform bulk queries and data extraction with ease.

Google Ads Metrics That Matter: KPIs For Successful Campaigns

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Google Ads is an extremely powerful tool for businesses. If you want to target your audiences as effectively as possible, it's the ideal platform. However, you cannot simply create and run ads. That's not enough for success. You have to constantly track your ads' progress through key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide valuable insights into campaign effectiveness. Let's take a closer look at the KPIs you can use to measure your ads' success.

Your ads' CTR tells you the percentage of viewers who click on an ad based on the total number of people who see it (i.e., impressions). If your ad has a high CTR, it is relevant to your intended viewers. This metric directly indicates how well your ad copy and targeting align with your potential customers.

You can boost your CTR by making your ads more engaging and effective; this will also improve your quality score.

Your ads' quality score tells you how Google evaluates the quality of your keywords, your ad copy and your landing pages. It lets you know how well these elements align with user search queries.

CVR measures how many website visitors end up taking the desired action. That could be buying something, signing up or submitting an inquiry. It's the action that they take after clicking on your ad. This metric is crucial because it directly links the initial click to the desired outcome. It provides a clear measurement of your campaign's effectiveness.

Marketplace Dining Opening At Hard Rock Bristol

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The Marketplace inside the Hard Rock features three different concept restaurants, including Street Tacos, Brick'd Italian Kitchen and Fish ⁘ Chicken Co.

Noah Tanner with Hard Rock, prepares a pizza inside the kitchen of Brick'd Italian Kitchen at the newly opened Marketplace.

Ashleigh Hart, Multi-Outlet Manager, talks about their goal with Marketplace is to be open late night with a neighborhood environment.

BRISTOL, Va. — While the full Hard Rock Bristol continues taking shape, the company will roll out a Hard Rock-first quick-dining concept for the public and patrons of the Bristol Casino.

Branded "Marketplace," the second-floor space in the remaining section of the former Bristol Mall features three vastly different menu concepts in one location with the capacity of to serve about 150 people at a time, company officials said this week.

Planet Fitness Coming To Charleston Area | Business | Wvgazettemail.Com

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The former Toys 'R Us retail location in the 2800 block of Mountaineer Blvd. at Southridge Center in Charleston and shown on July 8, 2024, is expected to become a Planet Fitness gym by later this year.

The company said a pre-grand opening membership sale will be announced soon, but had no additional details to announce at this time.

Fred Pace is the regional business reporter for HD Media. Follow him at Facebook.com/FredPaceHD and via X (formerly Twitter) @FredPaceHD.

Toys R Us is planning to close all 735 of its U.S. stores, including its four West Virginia locations, the iconic toy retailer announced Thursday.

Is It OK To Choose 'No Tip' At The Counter? Some Customers Think So

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When Alessandro Montelli was asked to tip when paying for a bottle of water at a local coffee shop, he knew something had to change with tipping culture.

The Torontonian and recent university graduate had just finished a run and wanted to rehydrate. The barista behind the counter handed Montelli the water bottle and turned the point-of-sale (POS) machine — with large tip prompts for up to 20 per cent — to him.

Montelli paid for the water without leaving a tip, and decided to share his experience on TikTok .

After years of ⁘ tip-flation ,⁘ which saw suggested tip amounts soar up to 30 per cent in some cases and gratuity prompts pop up at places where they weren't common before, frustrated customers like Montelli are hoping to swing the trend back in the other direction by leaving smaller tips — or none at all.

In a recent survey of adults who'd visited a sit-down restaurant in the last six months, 25 per cent of Canadian respondents said they were tipping less than they had been in the past. Almost 80 per cent of respondents said they're not a fan of auto-tipping prompts on digital payment machines, as well.

Montelli says the conversation about when and where it's OK to leave less or no tip is growing — especially on social media, where people share their own tipping experiences and guidelines.

There's even a tip-fluencer of sorts who goes by idonttip on TikTok . The anonymous, Los Angeles-based user shares videos of himself leaving no tip, at every establishment, regardless of how good the service is.

Montelli still tips at sit-down restaurants, or anywhere he says a genuine service is being provided. His general rules are that he doesn't tip on takeout, at coffee shops or anywhere he has to stand in line to order — the same rules users of the reddit community r/EndTipping share online.

Uncle Milton's Café In Hoboken Will Keep Catering But Close Storefront | Hoboken

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HOBOKEN, NJ — Uncle Milton's Café on the west side of Hoboken will continue its catering business, but at the end of this month they will close the storefront on upper Jefferson Street, they announced Saturday morning.

The café served up an array of homemade meals, baked goods, at beverages with a Latino flavor since opening in 2022 ( get more information on Uncle Milton's Catering here) .

Milton Canales' family immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in the 1990s when he was 10 years old, and washed dishes in a restaurant on Long Island at 11. He ran a catering business on Long Island for 20 years, then opened his first restaurant in Hoboken, near the new northwest park.

The café was known for being LGBT+ friendly. READ MORE: Cafe Owner Has Message For Whoever Tore Down His Flag

But that location is becoming increasingly competitive. A second location of Alessio's cafe opened at the reopened. park, and a Colombian coffee shop called Café Cartel will soon open a block away.

Milton noted, "I want to thank u from the bottom of my heart all my neighbors u were Amazing by supporting my business for this 2 years. This is not a good bye we will see u soon I promise u."

Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) Trading 1.3% Higher

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Shopify Inc. ( NYSE:SHOP ⁘ Get Free Report ) (TSE:SHOP)'s stock price traded up 1.3% during mid-day trading on Wednesday . The stock traded as high as $67.22 and last traded at $66.93. 1,783,701 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 83% from the average session volume of 10,210,228 shares. The stock had previously closed at $66.06.

Shopify ( NYSE:SHOP ⁘ Get Free Report ) (TSE:SHOP) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 8th. The software maker reported $0.12 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.08 by $0.04. The business had revenue of $1.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $1.84 billion. Shopify had a positive return on equity of 7.36% and a negative net margin of 2.82%. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Shopify Inc. will post 0.61 EPS for the current year.

The 3 Step Ecommerce Development Playbook For Brands

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This content is produced by a publishing partner of Open Mic.

Open Mic is the self-publishing platform for the marketing industry, allowing members to publish news, opinion and insights on thedrum.com.

The commerce space is vast and evolving fast. Digital smarts hold the keys to the kingdom. Brands need to evaluate, then re-evaluate how they optimize the value of their digital inventory, strategies and tactics. Mia Rodriguez (senior vice president, head of ecommerce, Kinesso Commerce) lays out a three-step framework for going up through the ecommerce gears.

The full commerce ecosystem is huge – so many routes to market, so many channels to engage customers, so many levers to impact performance and drive brand equity. And when it comes to developing their digital offer, every brand is in a different place, with different operational dynamics.

But successful navigation of this space is as vital as it is complex. In the US alone, ecommerce sales are predicted to exceed $1.7tn and touch 81% of the population by 2028 . At Kinesso Commerce we spend a lot of time helping brands develop powerful strategies to optimize their offers. We often adopt a three-stage developmental program to structure brands' progress to digital maturity based on the premise that before you can run, you must first learn how to crawl, then walk.

At this stage brands are looking to drive traffic to their commerce sites. They've done the basics, they're in pretty good shape organically, and they're starting to use demand-side platforms (DSPs) for paid media, as well as pursuing new merchandising activities.

But this is often where we see brands start to plateau. They need to look under the hood of their commerce operations and identify what's causing them to stall. Once again, data is your best friend. Re-audit your site pages, your PDPs, your brand stores, and your copy. Are there clues to products or pages that are converting with customers?

Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends For 2024

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Headlines:

Search Engine Journal - SEO, Search Marketing News and Tutorials

Google's Gary Illyes offers multiple reasons for crawled currently not indexed errors that will help fix this problem

Google's Gary Illyes highlights robots.txt file's error tolerance and unexpected features as it marks 30 years of aiding web crawling and SEO.

Discover which SEO trends to ignore and which to focus on, along with the solution to overcoming rapid, significant and disruptive Google algorithm updates.

Struggling to generate high-quality leads? This webinar recap offers expert insights to boost your lead gen efforts and supercharge your sales pipeline.

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Right now, the industry is dealing with the integration of generative AI and the impact this is going to have on user behaviour and how people search. Alongside the relentless updates that Google keeps throwing at us.

But, it⁘s not all catastrophic, there is a lot of opportunity ahead for those that can evolve to embrace the new.

To help marketers and brands thrive amidst uncertainty, I⁘ve outlined trends to focus on, guided by strategic insights and Yogi Berra⁘s timeless wisdom,

Digital marketers can no doubt relate to Yogi⁘s sentiment, acknowledging the challenge of what lies ahead.

Well, as Yogi once observed, ⁘If you don⁘t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.⁘

According to Spencer Stuart⁘s 2024 CMO Tenure Study , the average tenure of chief marketing officers (CMOs) at Fortune 500 companies in 2023 was 4.2 years .

The study also found the average tenure of CMOs at B2B companies was 4.5 years. It was 4.0 years for CMOs at B2C companies. And it was just 3.1 years at the consumer-heavy top 100 advertisers.

So, developing a digital marketing strategy that will generate above-average results within a couple of years is the key to keeping your job as the CMO of a big brand.

And if you don⁘t master the art and science of creating a digital marketing strategy that generates business outcomes, then you won⁘t land one of the CMO jobs that turn over each year.