Starbucks expands mobile ordering
SEATTLE – Starbucks said Tuesday it’s launching its mobile order program in more than half of the stores it owns in the U.S.
The move follows an initial pilot launched last December in Portland, and expanded three months later to some 600 locations across the Pacific Northwest.
The latest expansion means that an additional 3,400 stores in 21 states, from Texas to Wyoming and Arizona to South Carolina, now have it. So do stores in South and Central California.
The mobile ordering procedure lets a customer place an order online through a smartphone and pick it up at the counter a few minutes later.
The Seattle coffee giant said it plans to deploy the mobile order system in the rest of its company-owned stores in the U.S. later this year.
Toyota air bag recall grows
DETROIT – Toyota is adding nearly 1.4 million cars, trucks and SUVs to a growing recall for air bags that can explode with too much force.
The company said it’s expanding a previous recall after Takata Corp. of Japan agreed in May to double the size of its air bag inflator recall to 33.8 million.
Vehicles added to a passenger air bag inflator recall include the 2003 to 2007 Corolla and Matrix, 2005 and 2006 Tundra pickup, 2005 to 2007 Sequoia SUV and the 2003 to 2007 Lexus SC430 convertible.
The propellant in some Takata inflators can burn too quickly, blowing apart a metal canister and sending shrapnel into the passenger compartment. The problem has been blamed for at least seven deaths and more than 100 injuries.
Nintendo aims to change
LOS ANGELES – Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise turns 30 this year.
“If there’s a secret to the longevity of Nintendo franchises, it’s transformation,” Reggie Fils-Aime, the chief executive of the company’s North American unit, said Tuesday during Nintendo’s presentation hours before the official start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo here.
Nintendo, which has its North American headquarters outside Seattle, is trying to navigate its latest transformation.
The company earlier this year announced an embrace of mobile gaming on smartphone platforms, an area it had ignored in favor of its handheld 3DS console. The company also teased the development of a gaming platform codenamed NX.
Zimbabwe dollars on wane
HARARE, Zimbabwe – Harare resident Alice Mhandara spent a U.S. dollar to take the bus into town to answer the government call to trade in her old Zimbabwe dollars, but she left the bank in disgust when her 90 trillion in old currency wouldn’t even cover the bus ticket home.
Starting this week, Zimbabweans started trading in their stashes of the defunct local dollars for U.S. dollars as part of a process to phase out a currency that hasn’t been used since 2009 and features bills with at least 12 zeros. But few have taken them up on their offer.
At its worst, in 2009, inflation ran 230 million percent and the government was printing a 100 trillion dollar note – that is now worth 40 cents.
Economic decline led to a collapse of the Zimbabwean currency in the 2000s and it finally had to be abandoned in favor of U.S. dollars and South African rand.
The trade is part of a process of phasing out the local currency for good, says the government.