Culver's is giving away free chicken sandwiches today. Here's how to get one
Culver's chicken sandwiches are getting a refresh, and fans can try them for free.
On Monday, June 16, customers can score a free chicken sandwich of their choice at participating Culver's restaurants nationwide, according to the Wisconsin-based burger chain.
No purchase is required.
The restaurant said it plans to give away more than 100,000 free chicken sandwiches as it debuts its 'new and improved' sandwich lineup. The first 100 customers in line can choose from three options:
Crispy chicken sandwichSpicy crispy chicken sandwichGrilled chicken sandwich
'Every little detail is improved — from the juiciness of the chicken to the soft, new brioche bun it sits on,' Kasey McDonald, head of culinary at Culver's, said in a news release. 'We took our time to make sure we got these perfect.'
The new chicken sandwiches will be part of Culver's permanent menu, joining its original chicken tenders and other fan favorites.
The one-day giveaway is valid on dine-in, to-go or drive-thru orders only, the restaurant said. Additional information wasn't immediately available.
Find your nearest Culver's here.
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Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Dick's Sporting Goods seeks village financial support for Orland Square House of Sports concept store
Dick's Sporting Goods is providing more details about its proposed House of Sports concept store it wants to build in Orland Park, and is telling villlage officials it will need financial help from them to make it work. The chain has a store in the village and is looking to convert the former Sears anchor space at Orland Square shopping center. The House of Sports store, which the chain has opened elsewhere around the country, would be at least twice the size of its existing store in the village. It would feature 'experiential' attractions such as a fenced-in outdoor field, indoor climbing wall and batting cages, a Dick's executive told Orland Park officials. The 200,000-square-foot Sears store, which was an anchor since the mall opened in 1976, closed in spring 2018. Other options, including a multi-screen theater, have been proposed in the past. 'We're really interested in really upping our game here so to speak,' Vincent Corno, senior vice president of real estate for the chain, recently told village trustees. He called House of Sports the chain's 'latest and greatest prototype,' and said the Pittsburgh-based company now has 22 such stores and expects 35 in total by the end of this year. He said the goal is 75 by the end of 2027. 'We're growing fast,' he told trustees. Corno didn't say how much the company would need as far as financial support by Orland Park, although the village is studying creating a tax increment financing district that could aid the project. Corno leads the strategic direction for Dick's real estate and facilities functions across all business lines, including its Golf Galaxy subsidiary. This includes everything from future market development planning to site and lease negotiations, according to the company's website. A typical Dick's location is about 50,000 square feet while House of Sports stores can typically be about 120,000 square feet. The company looks to convert big, empty mall anchors, and has worked with Simon Property Group, Orland Square's owner, on different House of Sports projects, Corno said. House of Sports stores not only boost sales compared with Dick's regular stores, based on square footage, but also support in-line stores in a mall and can attract new tenants to a mall, Corno said. 'These are not inexpensive outlays,' Corno said. He called it a transformational investment and said with purchasing the property and building out the space, a typical House of Sports can cost $40 million or $50 million to complete. While not a new retail concept, experiential shopping has gripped the industry. Things such as a 17,000-square-foot fenced-in field that could be used for soccer and baseball in the spring and summer and hockey in the winter would be planned, Corno said. Inside, a climbing wall and golf driving bays would let customers try out new equipment. Having a House of Sports benefits other tenants in the mall, and attracts new ones, Corno said. He said their customers patronize other mall stores, and the influx of new revenue ultimately flows to the mall's operator. 'All boats are rising with this type of investment,' Corno said. He said the wing of Orland Square where Sears was based has seen tenant vacancies rise since the anchor closed. 'Those mall wings suffer when the anchor is dark,' Corno said. Dick's plans to buy the entire property, including the two-level building which sits on 16 acres, and a vast parking lot. He said the company is working on whether it wants to use both floors or keep House of Sports on the upper level and lease space on the lower level to other tenants. He said it's possible Dick's could use the loading dock and parking lot space on the lower level of the building's east side for the fenced field. 'We're in the very early stage of figuring out what goes where,' Corno said. Dick's looked at trying to reconfigure its store in the Orland Park Place shopping center on La Grange Road south of the mall, but that site didn't work, Corno said. The company also looked at buying land in the village on the south side of 159th Street west of La Grange Road, near Costco, he said. Corno said 'land values were crazy' and that 'we couldn't justify that acquisition.' He said the company, however, wants to see if there is a commitment from the village to help financially before it moves ahead with the House of Sports project. Corno said if the village didn't help financially, Dick's would continue to operate it existing store. He said that should it go ahead with House of Sports, the operator of Orland Park Place would easily be able to fill that space. Trustees said they were supportive of the company's expansion plans. 'This would be a great addition' to the village, Trustee Michael Milani said. 'It looks like a great concept.' 'Experiential retail is where people are heading,' Milani said. Trustee Dina Lawrence called the proposal 'a very compelling business plan.' Orland Park officials are studying the potential creation of a tax increment financing district as an incentive tool for filling the long-vacant Sears store. Trustees passed a resolution in March to allow TIF funds to be used to redevelop the space, at the southeast corner of the mall. TIF money can be used to pay for public improvements as well as incentives for developers. Orland Park is also spending up to $30,000 for adviser SB Friedman to study whether the property, including the adjacent large parking lot, qualifies as a TIF. Factors such as blighted conditions, including declining property values, are considered in determining whether a property or multiple properties qualify as a TIF under Illinois law. The village has said part of the large parking lot hugging the Sears space would need to be used to provide additional stormwater storage for the mall and surrounding properties. TIF funds could be used to pay for that. 'We are at capacity with what we have' now around the mall perimeter, Village Manager George Koczwara, village said at the committee meeting. While Simon owns the in-line store space and common areas, mall anchors own what are called their own pads, including parking. California-based Cubework owns the Sears property, and at one point announced plans to convert the store into a 'co-working mall.' Corno said that Dick's has a tentative handshake deal with Cubework to buy the site. Before Cubework's ownership, plans had been proposed for a 10-screen 45,000-square-foot AMC Theatre along with retailers and restaurant tenants on the upper level of the Sears space. That came before the announcement of the store's closing, and theater plans never came to fruition, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cubework had looked at using the interior space to rent kiosks and pop-up spaces to small businesses, offering short-term leases.
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Pet hotel dubbed Ritz-Carlton for dogs to open in Deerfield
A luxury hotel is coming to Deerfield and its guests may be among the most exclusive on the North Shore. To start with, they'll need four paws and a tail, and perhaps a well-heeled owner. K9 Resorts, a national pet hotel chain which bills itself as the Ritz-Carlton for dogs, is opening its first Illinois location Monday in Deerfield. The facility features individual suites with high-definition TVs tuned 24/7 to DogTV and Animal Planet, premium shampoos in its bathing salons, antimicrobial play areas, an air purification system and of course, room service. 'We believe in elevating pet care to almost human-grade hospitality, hotel quality,' said Nehme Abouzeid, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Luxury Pet Hotel Investments, a K9 Resorts investor and franchisee launching the Deerfield location. 'We like to say that we're a hotel, and our guests just happen to be dogs.' Located in a former Mexican restaurant on a Home Depot outlot by the Metra station along Lake Cook Road, the Deerfield K9 Resorts underwent a four-month, multimillion dollar buildout to transform into a luxury pet hotel. Out went the kitchens and in went high-end accommodations for hounds that at first glance, might beckon their human companions to check in as well. It has a glitzy lobby adorned with chandeliers, ornate columns, tasteful artwork and a regal front desk. The inviting hotel rooms are numbered, set off by wall sconces, giving the ambience of a high-end resort for people, who of course, are paying the tab for their furry family members. 'I think that the attention to detail that we put into each resort is so obvious that it makes the customer, the two-legged customer, feel good,' said Jason Parker, 38, co-founder and co-CEO of New Jersey-based K9 Resorts. 'The dogs are very happy customers, because they're in a five-star hotel.' Started as teenagers in 2005 by brothers Steven and Jason Parker, K9 Resorts has grown to 45 locations in 28 states, including the new Deerfield pet hotel. Five locations are corporate-owned with the rest franchised. The dog hotel magnates have certainly elevated the traditional boarding experience, from cage-free lodging options and air purification systems to prevent kennel cough to offering individual or group play sessions coordinated by a trained staff of dog concierges and attendants. K9 Resorts doesn't offer potentially stressful activities such as grooming, focusing on amenities that dogs enjoy during their staycations. Allowing them to wind down at the end of the day with a TV in their own rooms is part of the luxury treatment. 'When they're relaxing after a day of doggy day care, and there's nothing better to have them on a very premium dog mattress, relaxing, having their own private space and watching some television,' Parker said. While the privately held K9 Resorts doesn't disclose systemwide revenue, each location generates between $2 million to $3 million per year, Parker told the Tribune. Meanwhile, the chain is poised for significant growth through franchising, driven in large part by Luxury Pet Hotel Investments, a group with extensive human hospitality experience. Last year, Luxury Pet Hotel Investments invested $10 million in K9 Resorts and secured exclusive regional development rights in Illinois and beyond. The investment group is headed by longtime hospitality executive Alan Leibman, former CEO of Kerzner International, which developed the Atlantis resorts. LPHI has raised $53 million in equity and currently operates eight pet hotels, with plans to build 50 more, including up to 11 in Southern California, 13 in Florida and eight in the Chicago area by 2029. Most recently, LPHI opened a K9 Resort near the Los Angeles International Airport in March. Choosing Deerfield for the first Illinois location, the investment group obtained a 10-year lease on the former El Tradicional Mexican Restaurant in July 2024, converting the 6,200-square-foot building to a luxury pet hotel after getting special use approval from the village. The location has housed a succession of restaurants, starting with a Bennigan's at the dawn of the new millennium. Other buildings on the sprawling Home Depot outlot include a Curaleaf cannabis dispensary and an empty McAlister's Deli, which closed its Deerfield location in April. Accommodations at the pet hotel run from $59 a night in the compartment wing of the hotel, bilevel crates with memory foam beds. The executive rooms run $89 per night for 4-by-6-foot enclosures and the top-of-the-line luxury suites are $109 per night. The 8-by-8-foot luxury suites include a premium couch or Kuranda bed. There is no mini-fridge or Wi-Fi, but each of the six luxury suites has its own 32-inch TV for the dog's viewing pleasure. 'We do put on DogTV and Animal Planet for a calming presence,' said Zack Nisbet, executive vice president in charge of the Chicago region for the investment group. In addition to extensive work within the building, the Deerfield K9 Resorts features a walled-in, 2,300-square-foot outdoor play area with artificial antimicrobial grass where diners once sipped margaritas on the restaurant's patio as trains rumbled by on the nearby tracks. While the Home Depot outlot has not necessarily proved fertile ground for restaurants, Nisbet said the high-traffic location should help drive business to the pet hotel. The pet hotel offers both day care and overnight stays, and can accommodate up to 150 dogs, with family multidog stays. It's located just west of a competing facility, The Dog Stop, which is on the other side of the tracks from K9 Resorts. 'The Dog Stop being across the street, actually excited us,' Nisbet said. 'That's proof of demand, proof that there's a lot of dogs in the area. We knew we could provide an upgrade to the region.' Chicago is a key expansion market for K9 Resorts and the investment group, which is currently scouting out potential locations in a number of areas, including Palatine, Libertyville and the city itself, Nisbet said. Nationwide, the luxury pet hotels have opened up in everything from a former Wells Fargo bank branch to a converted CVS pharmacy. One is even housed in a former Old County Buffet, the now defunct all-you-can-eat restaurant chain which closed its last Illinois restaurant five years ago. While most dogs probably would have been very content to stay at an Old Country Buffet without the renovation, after a lengthy multimillion dollar redevelopment in Deerfield, Nisbet said turning a restaurant into a luxury pet hotel would not be his first choice for the second Chicago-area location. 'This definitely was a fixer-upper,' Nisbet said. 'We had to auction off all the old restaurant equipment. I don't know what our best former use would be, but I wouldn't say it's a restaurant.'
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
This AI security tech alerts store staff if it thinks you're trying to steal something
One of the best ways to deal with shoplifting is to prevent it from happening in the first place. That's the goal of Paris-based AI startup Veesion, which has developed an algorithm that can recognize gestures to predict potential retail theft incidents. "I happen to have an uncle in Paris that runs and operates three supermarkets, so I exactly know what shoplifting represents for retailers," cofounder Benoît Koenig told Business Insider. Veesion said its tech is deployed in 5,000 stores across Europe, Canada, and the US. The startup recently raised a $43 million Series B funding round to further its expansion into the US. The alarm over shoplifting has subsided somewhat over the past year as retailers and law enforcement have gotten a better grip on the problem. Earnings call mentions of the term "shrink," the industry term for missing inventory, have come down significantly among the major retailers Business Insider tracks, according to data from AlphaSense, an AI research platform. But even though shoplifting is making fewer headlines (especially compared to retail's splashy new AI capabilities), Koenig said the problem remains a compelling one to tackle with machine learning. "It's not glamorous, but the ROI is quite direct," he said. "You're going to arrest shoplifters, recover inventory, and save money." One key difference between Veesion's tech and some other visual security approaches is that it says it doesn't rely on individual tracking or physical characteristics that could raise concerns about bias or personal privacy. "The algorithm doesn't care about what people look like. It just cares about how your body parts move over time," Koenig said. The system analyzes footage from the existing security camera network to detect humans in the picture, identify their movements, and recognize various objects, such as merchandise, carts, baskets, or bags. If a movement is deemed suspicious, a video clip is flagged and sent to store security personnel, who can then investigate or intervene. Security teams can update the app with additional details about whether the alert was necessary, whether a theft was stopped, or how much a stolen item was worth. Koenig said more than 85% of alerts are marked as relevant for the store operators using the Veesion said one US client was able to cut their losses from the health and beauty section in half in the first three months of implementation. Many US retailers have responded to the shoplifting problem by locking up items or limiting the ways people can shop, but that approach increasingly appears to be backfiring in the form of declining sales and worsening customer experiences. "Retailers have implemented a number of security measures — many to the detriment of the shopping experience — to protect merchandise from theft and to keep their employees and customers safe," the National Retail Federation said in a December report on retail crime. By layering onto a store's existing security camera infrastructure and alerting staff to specific risky behavior, Veesion says its tech can help create a more pleasant shopping trip. Koenig said the tech can also help reduce employee theft, which industry groups estimate costs retailers as much as shoplifting does. "It has an internal deterrent effect," Koenig said. "They know there is an AI in the cameras, so they're going to be careful with what they do." There are further retail use-cases that Veesion is exploring too, including improper scans at self-checkout to slip-and-fall detection. For now, Koenig said the tech is not just effective at detecting and disrupting would-be shoplifters — it also deters them from coming back. "This is much more than just recovering a few bucks," he said.
