Paul Sakuma/AP Images
Costco's rotisserie chickens have cost $4.99 since 2009. Costco's management says it's happy to eat the cost to keep prices down for customers. But there's a clever business strategy behind the decision.
Costco would rather take a hit to its profits than raise the price of its $4.99 rotisserie chicken — but it isn't a terrible business decision.
The rotisserie-chicken boom started in the 1990s and hasn't slowed. Last year, consumers bought 625 million rotisserie chickens in US supermarkets, according to Costco and the market-research firm Nielsen. Costco sold 87 million in fiscal 2017, an increase of 36 million over fiscal 2010.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
Read more: feedproxy.google.com
Starship Technologies
Tech companies are known for showering their employees with sweet perks like free food. The thinking is: If employees can grab lunch on campus, they get back to work at their desks sooner.
Now, tiny self-driving robots have started delivering lunches and other supplies to tech workers in Silicon Valley's office parks, bringing convenience and flexibility to already-spoiled employees.
Starship Technologies, a robotics startup with headquarters in London, just announced its first large-scale deployment of autonomous delivery robots on corporate and academic campuses across the US and Europe. Robots have already started ferrying items from food to office supplies at Intuit in Mountain View, and the company plans to roll out 1,000 vehicles by the end of 2018.
Last year, we followed one of Starship's robots on its delivery shift. Here's how it works:
This is the delivery guy (or autonomous vehicle) of the future. Melia Robinson/Business Insider Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, cofounders of Starship Technologies and Skype before that, cut their teeth working on a robot that could collect rock samples on Mars and the moon. NASA/JPL-Caltech They later used the same technology to develop an autonomous delivery robot. The startup raised $17 million in a funding round led by Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler in 2016. Melia Robinson/Business Insider
Source: Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider