Cracker Barrel is upgrading three of its most popular dinner offerings while separately using proceeds from a real estate transaction involving 26 company-owned restaurants to reduce debt and support future growth.

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain said Wednesday that it plans to improve the quality of its chicken, hamburger and steak dinners, calling dinner its “biggest opportunity” as it works to improve guest satisfaction.

“We are making investments to improve food quality,” President and CEO Dave Deno said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “Dinner is our biggest opportunity, and we plan to upgrade our chicken, hamburger, and steak offerings.”

Deno said Cracker Barrel wants to ensure its food consistently meets guests’ expectations for “taste, temperature, and quality on every visit.”

NEW CEO INHERITS CRACKER BARREL STILL RECOVERING FROM REBRAND BACKLASH

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain announced that it plans to improve the quality of its chicken, hamburger and steak dinners. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The chief executive said his priorities are centered on food, the guest experience and employees as Cracker Barrel works to build on improving traffic and profitability.

“A big part of my management philosophy is doing fewer things better and concentrating on opportunities that could have the greatest impact,” Deno said. “For restaurants, the formula is pretty straightforward. You must offer great food, provide a great guest experience, and hire and retain excellent employees who deliver both.”

“These are the priorities that we will be focused on: food, experience and people,” he added.

Alongside the menu upgrades, Cracker Barrel said it completed a sale-leaseback transaction involving 26 company-owned restaurants that generated approximately $77 million in net proceeds.

“The sale leaseback transaction generated $77 million in net proceeds, which were used to pay down debt and partially offset the $150 million debt related to the 0.625% convertible senior notes that matured and was repaid in June,” Chief Financial Officer Craig Pommells said. “The quarter ended with total debt of $337.2 million, which was $147.4 million below the prior year.”

CRACKER BARREL CEO JULIE MASINO TO STEP DOWN

Deno said Cracker Barrel continues to see pressure among lower-income consumers, though customer trends have improved. (Richard Beetham for Fox News Digital)

Deno said Cracker Barrel continues to see pressure among lower-income consumers, though customer trends have improved.

“When it comes to us specifically, yes, we do see some pressure with our low-income guests, but our trends, as I said, have gotten better,” Deno said.

Still, Chief Financial Officer Craig Pommells said the chain’s value remains an advantage, noting the average guest check is about $16.

“If you’re feeling pressured from a discretionary income perspective, there are a lot of ways you can still have a great experience at Cracker Barrel,” Pommells said.

The company also said higher freight costs, including fuel surcharges, are already factored into its fiscal 2027 outlook.

“We are seeing fuel surcharges and so on related to freight, both from the perspective of retail, but to a lesser degree on the restaurant side. All of that’s built into our projection with the best information that we have today,” Pommells said.

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Deno took over as CEO in August following the departure of Julie Masino, whose tenure included a rebrand that drew criticism from some longtime customers. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

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Deno took over as CEO in August following the departure of Julie Masino, whose tenure included a rebrand that drew criticism from some longtime customers.

The overhaul, part of a roughly $700 million investment across Cracker Barrel’s restaurants, included updates to store interiors, menu changes and the temporary removal of the chain’s iconic “Old Timer” logo before it was later restored.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.

The fitness company behind high-end exercise classes Barrecore, Boom Cycle, and Kobox has suddenly shut all its studios.

Common Bond emailed customers announcing its locations, all of which are currently in London, were closed “until further notice”.

The firm describes itself as a wellness collective and charges £2,400 for 12 months of unlimited classes. It also runs Reformcore and Triyoga brands and said in August last year it had ten sites.

Its website is no longer publicly accessible. The BBC has contacted Common Bond for comment.

The email sent to customers on Wednesday seen by the BBC said: “We’re sorry to let you know that all Common Bond studios are closed until further notice.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and disruption this may cause . We understand this is frustrating, and we appreciate your patience while we work through this.”

Instructors have told the BBC they were told last week they would not be paid on time and that they only found out about the studios closures from the Wednesday email.

One instructor said she and her colleagues were told their pay would be delayed on the day it was due on 14 August.

She said: “In good faith, I continued to teach my classes without any news on when or if payment would be made. I have heard absolutely nothing since.”

The CEOs of two of the world’s leading AI companies warned the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that rapidly advancing AI could threaten humanity if governments and industry fail to keep it under human control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI has enormous potential but also carries significant risks if it is not developed responsibly.

“If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” Amodei told the 15-member council during a special meeting on AI held alongside the U.N. General Assembly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivered a similar warning, saying AI’s development could move “so fast” that humans no longer have the ability to understand or intervene.

SAM ALTMAN IDENTIFIES TWO BIGGEST RISKS FACING AI’S FUTURE

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 23, 2026. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

“We could lose control of the future to AI,” Altman said. “The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed. This would obviously be terrible.”

The meeting comes as concerns grow over increasingly advanced AI systems.

“For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time,” Amodei said. “No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone.”

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears virtually during a United Nations Security Council meeting at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 23, 2026. (John Lamparski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Altman also urged countries to work together on AI as the technology continues to advance.

“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” he said. “They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments, accountable to the people that they serve. At the international level, this will require cooperation.”

He added, “In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don’t always like each other very much still come together for shared interests and the collective good in the face of a powerful new technology. We believe this must be one of those times.”

TRUMP REBRANDS AI, REJECTS ‘GLOBALIST SCHEME’ TO CONTROL TECH

The debate over how to develop and govern AI has intensified in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Amodei published an essay urging the industry to “slow the pace” of frontier AI development. The essay drew public support from Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The discussion at the U.N. also came a day after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would reject what he described as a “globalist scheme” to control AI, while emphasizing that the U.S. should remain the global leader in the technology.

French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux told Fox News Digital in an interview that France is seeking to bring artificial intelligence to the center of international security discussions, with a special UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday featuring executives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face.

“For a few weeks now, we wanted to bring AI at the center stage,” Confavreux said, explaining that the meeting was the first of its kind to feature briefers at this level from leading AI companies.

He said recent cybersecurity concerns, including a reported hacking incident involving Hugging Face, underscore the need to address AI-related security risks at the international level.

“We need to bring that into the discussions of the global community,” he said.

The meeting was chaired by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, alongside the Security Council’s 14 other members.

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Confavreux also highlighted a separate meeting led by French President Emmanuel Macron focused on protecting young people from the risks associated with AI and the digital age.

“AI is a fantastic accelerator for many things in our daily lives,” he said, adding that protecting young people in the digital age must be addressed globally rather than solely at the national level

FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Reuters contributed to this report.

Revolut has today begun piloting what it describes as the UK’s first in-store facial recognition checkout, with merchants paying 0 per cent processing fees on transactions made through the system. The trial, called Revolut Pay with Smile, runs at three Kiss the Hippo cafés in London until Saturday.

The service runs on Revolut Register, a new point-of-sale system for hospitality businesses. Once a customer has enrolled, the technology checks their face against the selfie identity check they completed when they first signed up to Revolut, then authenticates and processes the payment.

Customers opt in through the Revolut app. Revolut said they will then be able to look at the terminal to pay for a coffee, a meal or a round of drinks without a phone or wallet.

The pilot is open to Revolut customers at the Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho branches of Kiss the Hippo from 24 to 26 September. Guests who pay with a smile can order from a special Revolut menu, with speciality coffees priced at £1, and will earn triple RevPoints, the bank’s loyalty programme, on every transaction.

Revolut, which secured approval to operate as a UK bank earlier this year, published research alongside the launch on the costs independent venues face at the till.

According to Revolut, independent venues spend an average of £875 a month on payment processing and infrastructure, rising to more than £950 a month for pubs and bars. The company said terminal outages cost venues £2,495 a year in direct lost revenue.

Its research also found that two thirds of independent venues face verbal outbursts from customers multiple times a week because of poor checkout experiences. Revolut said more than half of Britons report delays or failures caused by merchants losing their internet signal.

In June, a Worldpay outage knocked out card payments at pubs, shops and restaurants across the UK during an England World Cup match.

Revolut said Revolut Register is a modular, two-screen register designed to bring payments, banking and floor operations together. It has a built-in eSIM backup, which the company said is intended to keep terminals online if a venue’s connection fails during peak hours.

On security, Revolut said transactions are authenticated with end-to-end encryption managed inside the Revolut app and that personal data is never stored by merchants. The Information Commissioner’s Office has published guidance on biometric recognition under UK data protection law.

Revolut Register is available at a 50 per cent discount, at £349.50 plus VAT against a recommended retail price of £699 plus VAT, for merchants signing up for their first terminal until 31 December 2026.

The company said the pilot extends its payments business into facial recognition checkout and opens a new revenue stream. It did not say when, or whether, Pay with Smile would be rolled out beyond the three cafés.

Alex Codina, general manager of merchant payments at Revolut Business, said: “With over half of Brits reporting delays or failures due to merchants dropping internet signals, checkout friction is driving customers out the door. To solve this, we’re deploying Revolut’s full technological ecosystem to reinvent the mechanics of the hospitality industry and give consumers the payments experience they deserve.”

He added: “By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we’ll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points.”

Alex Damgaci, managing director of Kiss the Hippo Coffee, said: “In hospitality, a seamless checkout is no longer a luxury, it’s the bare minimum. Technology that takes the friction out of the payment process and offers payment flexibility gives operators the reliability they need to protect revenue and maintain guest satisfaction.”

He said: “To mark the pilot we’ve put together a special menu for the three days, and we’re looking forward to welcoming guests to pay with a smile at our Bloomsbury, Soho and Chelsea cafés.”

About the author

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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McDonald’s has set a target of expanding its share of the global cooked chicken market by 1.5 percentage points, to about 20 per cent, as part of a growth plan unveiled at an investor day in Chicago yesterday.

The world’s biggest burger chain also outlined an $8.5bn support package for franchisees and a wider rollout of AI-powered drive-thru ordering as it attempts to recapture customers and reverse a sliding share price.

The strategy was met with disappointment by investors. Shares in the company dropped 6 per cent at lunchtime in New York to the lowest level in almost four years, amid concern that a turnaround to reignite growth after several quarters of slowing sales could take longer than expected.

The chicken target covers nuggets, bowls and burgers. According to the company’s investor day announcement, McDonald’s aims to gain the 1.5 percentage points of chicken category share by 2030.

The chain said it is also adapting to changing consumer preferences, including demand from users of GLP-1 weight-loss medication who are seeking higher-protein options and smaller portions.

Skye Anderson, the newly appointed head of the US business, said the company is exploring bowls, grilled chicken and egg bites to expand protein-centred options across breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The strategy focuses on improving food quality, simplifying operations, modernising restaurant designs and expanding the use of ArchIQ, the company’s AI-powered restaurant operating system, which automates tasks such as drive-thru ordering.

McDonald’s said it will deploy a generative AI-enabled version of ArchIQ at scale, which it expects to unlock about 250 basis points of gross restaurant-level efficiency.

The $8.5bn package for franchisees will be delivered through a combination of rent relief and capital support. The company said the total runs through 2036, with about $5bn of it committed through 2030.

It was accompanied by a new target for restaurant operating margins, which McDonald’s said it expects to reach the low-to-mid 50 per cent range by 2030.

Chris Kempczinski, chairman and chief executive, and Ian Borden, global chief financial officer, also presented at the event, which set out further detail on the growth strategy McDonald’s first announced in June.

“While there’s so much our customers love, we are falling short when it comes to consistent execution,” Anderson said. “We’re tackling that challenge head-on.”

The investor day followed second-quarter results in August, when McDonald’s missed estimates for US sales growth. The company admitted then that efforts to win back lower-income consumers who had cut back on dining out had yet to pay off.

Anderson’s comments on consistent execution came as the company set out its plans to address slowing sales through food quality, simpler operations and restaurant design.

The pressure on restaurant operators is not confined to the US. In Britain, profits at the 100 largest restaurant groups fell 44 per cent to £204m, despite revenues rising to £13.3bn, as higher employment costs and ingredient prices squeezed margins.

McDonald’s UK business has made its own changes this year, including the launch of 2,500 paid work experience placements aimed at young people not in education, employment or training. It has also seen a round of senior departures, including that of chief restaurant officer Zoe Hamburger, who left to lead the Netherlands business.

About the author

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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Groupia brands including StagWeb and GoHen are operating again following the deal

A Bath tour operator that fell into administration in June after 24 years of trading has been rescued by a Cheshire firm. Groupia, which specialises in stag and hen parties, has been acquired by events company Funktion Leisure.

Under the deal, all of Groupia’s brands, including stag and hen businesses StagWeb and GoHen, are now operating again under the new ownership.

Funktion Leisure, the company behind Funktion Events – an ABTA-bonded UK event specialist founded in 2007 – have also retained several of Groupia’s staff to help with the revival.

Funktion Events managing director Jay Broughton said: “We acquired GoHen and StagWeb out of administration because they’re two of the strongest names in UK hen and stag travel, with more than 750,000 customers between them since 2002.

“Both are back open and taking bookings, and early demand since the relaunch has been really encouraging, which tells us the appetite for these brands never went away.

“Our focus now is stability: looking after customers, delivering the experience people expect from GoHen and StagWeb, and building on it under an established, ABTA-bonded events group.”

Funktion Events has been running group events since 2007, arranging more than 55,000 hen parties and 12,000 stag weekends, alongside thousands of corporate and team building events. GoHen and StagWeb are now part of that group.

A statement on the company’s website added: “Good news: Groupia and its brands are now part of Funktion Leisure Ltd, and bookings are open again right across the group. For now it is business as usual, with every brand live and taking bookings.

“Over the coming months we will be investing in the sites and the service, keeping what customers already value and improving the rest. We will share more as those plans take shape.”

Businesses are also seeing wider knock-on effects. Hairdresser Emma Crossley said customers were waiting longer between appointments than they had previously.

She said: “Since the fuel prices went up I have noticed a difference in how often people have their hair done. About five years ago it would have been about six or seven weeks – it’s more like 10 to 12 weeks now.”

Tourism operators have also noticed a change. Pauline Ellis of the Mad Hatter bed and breakfast, said some visitors had cancelled trips because travel costs had become too expensive.

She said: “We are a long way down here and I think it has made an impact on whether people can afford to come this far down, with the prices as they are.”

At Down the Line Surf Shop, owner Justin Lapskas said the higher fuel costs affected the import and transportation of products.

“We bring in products from around the world, so for us, the increase in fuel prices has an effect and something that we’ve kind of got to deal with moving forward,” he said.

“So yeah, I’d say fuel has an impact across the board for us.”

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Shares of Nebius (NBIS) rose more than 4% on Sept. 17 after a leaked pricing update reported that customers will soon pay much more for computing power. Valued at a market capitalization of $58.9 billion, Nebius is an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company.

NBIS stock has more than doubled over the past 12 months, rising 122%, while shares have also climbed an impressive 182% on a year-to-date (YTD) basis. Is Nebius a good stock to own right now despite its lofty valuation in September 2026? Let’s take a closer look.

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The Bull Case for Nebius Stock

Nebius has spent the past year building out data centers packed with Nvidia (NVDA) chips, renting out computing power to AI companies that need it to train and run their models. It is a capital-intensive business, and until recently, Wall Street was not entirely sold on whether Nebius could turn all of that spending into real profit.

The company’s second-quarter letter to shareholders, released on Aug. 12, made a strong case that it can. Nebius posted Q2 revenue of $582.3 million, up 454% from a year earlier. The core Nebius AI cloud business grew even faster, with revenue up 514% year-over-year (YOY) to $574.9 million, with annualized run-rate revenue (ARR) reaching $3 billion.

Notably, the company said its AI cloud business delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 50% in Q2, signaling the business is becoming more efficient as it scales. Nebius also closed four landmark deals in the quarter worth more than $1 billion each in total contract value, including agreements with AI companies Reflection and Cohere.

Founder and CEO Arkady Volozh summed up the quarter in the letter, saying the company closed the largest AI cloud deal on its “strongest terms to date, at prices that represent a step-change in the economics of [the] business.”

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Nebius Stock Surges on New Pricing News

According to Seeking Alpha, a customer communication making the rounds online reportedly shows that Nebius plans to raise prices on several on-demand GPU services starting Oct. 1. The changes reportedly affect pricing on Nvidia’s H100, H200, B200, and B300 chips, some of the most sought-after processors for training AI models.

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The price hikes are not limited to GPUs. AMD (AMD) EPYC Genoa CPU rates are also set to climb 25% to $0.015 per vCPU hour. Memory pricing tied to those same Genoa chips is expected to rise about 41% to $0.0045 per GiB hour.

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For investors, higher compute service prices signal that demand for AI infrastructure remains extremely tight. When a company can raise prices without losing customers, it usually means supply cannot keep up with demand, which supports widening margins going forward.

Nebius told shareholders in August that 2026 base annual contract value (ACV) per megawatt was around $12 million, but new capacity deals signed in Q2 were already commanding more than $20 million per MW.

A New Partner Adds to the Bullish Case

On Sept. 8, Nebius and data analytics firm Palantir Technologies (PLTR) announced a strategic partnership. Under the deal, Palantir named Nebius as its preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner. Once the two companies finish integrating their systems, eligible Palantir customers will be able to access Nebius compute and inference infrastructure directly inside Palantir’s enterprise environment.

Basically, Palantir clients could soon train and run their own AI models on Nebius hardware while keeping tighter control over their data, a feature increasingly in demand among large enterprises and government agencies.

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Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp said in the statement that Nebius’ compute infrastructure, paired with Palantir’s software, will support the level of control organizations are demanding over their own AI systems. Volozh echoed that sentiment, saying the partnership lets commercial clients “run their optimized open models on trusted infrastructure.”

The Palantir deal adds a new, high-profile customer channel on top of an already strong quarter of bookings for Nebius. Combined with the recent pricing news, it helps explain why investors are willing to pay up for NBIS stock right now.

None of this means that the stock’s climb is risk-free. Nebius remains a company spending billions of dollars each quarter on GPUs and data centers, and its profitability still depends on customers actually using all that capacity at the new, higher prices. But for a stock defined by growth expectations, the recent news gave investors two fresh reasons to believe those expectations are becoming reality.

Overall, Nebius has a consensus “Moderate Buy” rating on Wall Street. Out of the 19 analysts covering NBIS stock, 11 analysts recommend a “Strong Buy” rating, seven recommend a “Hold” rating, and one has a “Strong Sell” rating. The average price target of $280.69 represents potential upside of about 18% from current levels.

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On the date of publication, Aditya Raghunath did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com