You could think of it as a rebirth. Or maybe it's one of those COVID-era glow-ups that had people emerging from isolation with straighter teeth and cuter clothes. Whatever you want to call it, Edible Arrangements is in the middle of a major transformation. A few years ago, the company that introduced the world to bouquets of skewered fruit was in freefall. Now, after a bunch of new product launches, one hired-and-fired CEO, and a pandemic, the company is boasting record-setting sales numbers and a renewed sense of self. It's even changed its name: The new Edible sells desserts and doodads of all kinds--not just fruit--and aims to be, as the CEO put it, "the Domino's of gifting." But like most extreme makeovers, Edible's has its detractors, specifically within its own ranks.

Mention McDonald's to someone today, and they're more likely to think about Big Mac than Big Data. But that could soon change: The fast-food giant has embraced machine learning, in a fittingly super-sized way. McDonald's is set to announce that it has reached an agreement to acquire Dynamic Yield, a startup based in Tel Aviv that provides retailers with algorithmically driven "decision logic" technology. When you add an item to an online shopping cart, it's the tech that nudges you about what other customers bought as well. Dynamic Yield reportedly had been recently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars; people familiar with the details of the McDonald's offer put it at over $300 million.

Just about every marketer knows the joy of tweaking and testing online ads. At a small scale, it's manageable, but when a company is running dozens of campaigns and hundreds or thousands of ads, it can become an incredible slog through digital minutia. But a digital marketing company in the franchise space is now testing artificial intelligence to plow through that arduous task without human interaction. Vectra Digital Chief Digital Officer Harrison Ambs said he, like everyone, has seen AI and machine learning grow rapidly, but not for everyone. "The Dells and Microsofts and Fords, they can afford this kind of thing," said Ambs. "But what we're finding is that these tools they don't really fit the franchise model."

When McDonald's begins its annual shareholders' meeting at its headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, Thursday morning, it is expected to be targeted by protesters seeking a 15 minimum wage and the right to unionize. In recent months, the American fast food giant and its franchisees have increasingly faced accusations of underpaying workers and wage theft. "McDonald's profits keep growing while their workers struggle. People who work full time should never have to rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families," the Fight For 15 movement, which announced the start of protests in Chicago Tuesday, said in a statement posted on its website. "It's wrong for a company whose stock just hit an all-time high to pay wages so low that its workers have to rely on public assistance to scrape by. McDonald's profits in the first quarter rose 35% -- it's time for the company to share its good fortune with its workers."