Quote:World's last Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour closes

Anne Valdespino, Orange County RegisterPublished 6:36 p.m. PT June 12, 2019

The last Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour has closed in Brea, and that is apparently the end of the chain for now.
The Buena Park store closed in December even after an attempt by Marcus Lemonis to save it failed to turn a profit. The host of CNBC’S reality business show “The Profit” spent months shooting there in 2016. The Brea store was privately owned by a group of investors.


This was the Farrell's in Buena Park. (Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK FILE PHOTO)

The scoop-heavy treats, singing waiters, train whistles and faux Tiffany lamps seemed completely dated in the age of liquid nitrogen and gourmet vegan ice cream but Farrell’s had its fans to the end.
Farewell comments began appearing on Facebook on Saturday. They ranged from “Farrell’s in Brea is closed. So sad … It was so much fun. It is going to be missed. Tonight I drove by all the lights are out. People were standing at the door trying to see in, I think they were hoping for some of their favorite Ice Cream” to “I still have a coupon to use … darn it!”
Although the website and Facebook page say nothing about the closure, phone calls to the restaurant were unanswered and attempts to leave messages were met with a “mailbox full” recorded message.
According to its website, Farrell’s was founded by Robert Farrell in Portland, Oregon, in 1963 and by 1970 he operated more than 50 restaurants in the West. Acquired by Marriott Corporation in 1971, it grew to more than 130 locations nationwide. It was sold to a San Francisco investment group in 1988, but most locations had closed by 1990.

For some, Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour was once a legendary spot for ice cream. (Photo: Facebook)

In 2009, Lake Forest-based Parlour Enterprises Inc. revived the company and operated seven shops, mostly in Southern California with locations in Mission Viejo, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, and one in Sacramento, hoping to expand nationally. Buena Park’s Farrell’s was owned by Parlour Enterprises when Lemonis initially attempted to rescue it.
Lemonis still owns the brand and concept. In a January interview on the closure of the Buena Park store, he said he might retool the brand when the time is right. “I’ll hold onto it until I find another opportunity, even a smaller concept like a quick serve, and trademark it,” he said. “I’ll put it on the shelf and wait for the right window.”
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

Quote:42,248 views|Jul 18, 2019,9:02 am
Toys 'R' Us Is Back. Meet The $40 Million-Backed Startup That Made It Possible
Alexandra WilsonForbes Staff



Phillip Raub, Vibhu Norby and William Mintun are the cofounders of B8ta, a San Francisco-based company that has already raised $40 million from investors.B8TA
In September 2017 Toys ‘R’ Us filed for bankruptcy, seeking relief from over $5 billion in debt. Within a year, the 70-year-old brand had closed the doors of over 800 stores. But today the storied company announced that it will return to the US market in time for the holidays, with retail locations in Houston and Paramus, New Jersey.


When its doors reopen this November, Geoffrey the Giraffe will still be there to greet customers but not much else will be the same. That’s because Tru Kids, the parent company that owns the Toys ‘R’ Us brand, has entered into a joint venture with B8ta, a San Francisco-based experiential retailer that has already helped reinvigorate the in-store experience for traditional behemoths like Macy’s and Lowe’s.
The company’s 31-year-old CEO Vibhu Norby – a philosophy major who was fired from his first Silicon Valley engineering job – envisions the future of retail looking a lot like an Apple Store. Gone are the 40,000-square-foot emporiums lined with shelves stacked high with toys. In their place will be 5,000-square-foot toyshops with simple stations where kids (and their parents) can interact with the latest crazes, under the watchful eye of sensors and trained product specialists analyzing customer interactions.



B8ta’s Houston locationB8TA
“We’re based in San Francisco and when we went out to raise money for the first time we were talking to a bunch of technology VCs who had already written off physical retail a long time ago,” says Norby, who went on to raise $40 million from investors like Khosla and Sound Ventures. “But now a lot of big retailers are also adopting this model.”


Norby first cut his teeth in business founding Y Combinator-backed social media platform Origami Labs, which was quickly acquired by Nest. When Google acquired that company a few months later, he started turning his attention to retail. Putting his philosophy training to use, he studied why people were no longer buying hardware at places like BestBuy. 
In 2015, alongside Phillip Raub and William Mintun he left to found B8ta, a retail-as-a-service platform that curates in-store experiences where customers can interact with the latest products from Google and Dolby, as well as from niche brands like Onewheel and Ekster. 
The result is a meticulously studied retailer completely decluttered except for simple tables with devices to test out and employees specializing in those products. There’s no commission or wholesale deals between B8ta and brands. Instead, they pay a subscription for real estate in the store and directly train the employees that oversee their products. Companies receive the revenue from all sales and analytics on customer interactions informed by both sensors and the humans monitoring them.
“The focus of our company is the offline experience,” says Norby. “Companies have a growing appetite for data to adjust their product, pricing and merchandising.”
This is the model B8ta hopes to use to reinvigorate Toys ‘R’ Us. As with B8ta’s other stores, almost all of the new Toys ‘R’ Us’ company’s revenue will come from selling subscriptions to brands that will pay for in-store and online real estate. Though the company declined to name names as to who is on board, they claim to have “significant commitments at this point.”


To emphasize the importance of this Toys ‘R’ Us ventures, Tru Kids opted to enter into a joint partnership with both companies owning 50 percent. For the current international locations (there are over 700 Toys ‘R’ Us locations across 25 countries) Tru Kids often acts as a licenser that only directly intervenes to maintain standards. For the US iteration, Tru Kids CEO Richard Barry will be serving as Interim co-CEO alongside B8ta’s Raub.
“This was such an important market for them that they wanted to be involved as a partner,” explained Raub, who also served as Director of Marketing for Nintendo as the Wii grew to prominence. “The US market really sets the tone for the rest of the global business  and they wanted to bring it back in a special, unique way.”
Despite the uphill battle of reviving a company that went through the largest bankruptcy of a US retailer since Kmart in 2004, B8ta views the new venture as validation of their model.
“This is truly a wake up call for the industry that has ignored our model to this point,” says Norby. “They’re going to see that our model creates better stores and better experiences that are more resilient.”

Quote:Fry's Electronics stores soon to close, seeing same fate as Toys'R'Us? Sources tell us that Fry's Electronics brick and mortar stores are in trouble and could close within one year
By Rob Squires from 2 days, 18 hours ago

Since 1985, Fry's Electronics, a brick and mortar Silicon Valley headquartered electronics chain, was the go-to place for DIY system builders. The stores founded by John Fry were modeled like grocery retailing, but to sell computer and electronics supplies. Fry's Electronics, like most brick and mortar stores these days is having a tough time due to fierce online retailer competition. It seems that they may be closer than ever to facing the fate of other brick and mortar retail chains, like Toys"R"Us, K-Mart, and Sears.     Over the last two years, we have observed significant gaps in their product stock, and over the last six to twelve months entire product lines missing for extended periods of time. Examples include the OEM versions Microsoft Windows 10, internal hard drives, or motherboards which most stores have not had in stock consistently for the last six months. One thing we have heard across multiple stores from employees is that sales have been struggling. Our own visits to the stores have shown entire isles which used to be well stocked, completely devoid of any products.   Over the last few days, two videos have surfaced which you can watch here and here. These videos show a similar situation of product stock in the Arizona based locations.



The latest we have been hearing from store employees that multiple locations seem to be slated to close within the next year. Locations that we have heard from store employees that are slated to be closing include Fremont (CA), Palo Alto (CA), and Concord (CA) all based in the San Francisco Bay Area. If the lack of stock and current downsizing of stores which can be seen through photos were provided to us from store employees closures of locations does not seem that far off.