• Amazon is making a big push into ultrafast delivery, now testing in Seattle and Philadelphia.
• The company said customers can choose from thousands of items for delivery in under 30 minutes.
• While Amazon's e-commerce business is bigger, it's still catching up with Walmart in terms of speed.

Amazon orders keep getting faster.

The e-commerce juggernaut said Monday that it is making a big push into ultrafast fulfillment with new 30-minute delivery tests in Seattle and Philadelphia.

Through the new service, dubbed Amazon Now, customers can choose from thousands of essentials, such as diapers, milk, pet food, electronics, and more, delivered right to their doorstep in under half an hour.

In the Seattle test, Amazon workers pick and bag items at its warehouse, which are then handed off to Amazon Flex drivers who are expected to collect orders and get going within two minutes, tech news site GeekWire reported last week, citing Amazon's permit application filings in Seattle.

While Amazon is the biggest player in e-commerce in terms of sheer volume, the company is still catching up with retail giant Walmart in terms of speed.

Powered by its fleet of more than 4,600 stores in the US, Walmart is within a three-hour delivery reach of roughly 95% of American households.

The company also said more than a third of shoppers pay an additional fee to have their orders delivered in less than an hour, and it routinely fulfills orders in a matter of minutes.

For example, Walmart said its fastest delivery on Black Friday was a Shark Steam & Scrub Mop to a shopper in Utah.

Of course, Amazon hasn't been sitting still.

In June, the company began adding 4,000 "smaller" communities to its same-day fulfillment service by stocking more everyday essentials at strategically located delivery stations around the US.

As for the question of whether US retailers will start promising 15-minute delivery (or even shorter), supply chain consultant Ralph Asher previously told Business Insider the laws of physics and finance could prove to be real constraints.

For example, Asher modeled a 30-minute delivery concept for Minneapolis and found that four fulfillment stations were needed to serve the metro area. Getting fulfillment down to 15 minutes required a whopping 31 centers, each of which would have to be stocked with sufficient inventory to meet demand.

"You need more and more expensive equipment to do it, you need more and more inventory, you need more and more real estate, you need more and more drivers willing to drop everything at a moment's notice to do delivery," he said.

"There's just probably not as much of a market for anything under 30 minutes," he added.

• K&W Cafeteria has closed all of its locations after nearly nine decades in business.
• The cafeteria-style Southern comfort food restaurant chain faced declining sales.
• K&W Cafeteria previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, but emerged a year later.

K&W Cafeteria, an 88-year-old Southern comfort food chain, abruptly shut down all nine of its restaurants across North Carolina and Virginia this week, leaving hundreds of employees out of work and loyal patrons devastated.

The cafeteria-style eatery, known for its affordable, homestyle meals of fried chicken, baked spaghetti, and chocolate cream pie, announced its permanent closure in a Facebook post on Monday.

The restaurant chain thanked customers for their support and added, "We are truly sorry to bring this chapter to an end, but profoundly thankful for the love you've shown us for nearly nine decades."

No explanation was offered for K&W's sudden closure. Just last month, the chain was hawking a $30 gift card and a free pie for holiday season shoppers.

K&W did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider on Tuesday, but told FOX8 WGHP in a statement that "like many restaurant companies across the country, we have struggled to navigate an extremely challenging operating environment."

Data from foodservice industry research firm Technomic's Ignite database showed that K&W's sales fell 10% year over year in 2024, and its 2025 sales were predicted to be even more grim.

The chain's abrupt closure comes as the restaurant industry has been under pressure due to rising food and labor costs, as well as tightening consumer budgets.

A bankruptcy filing for K&W in 2020

The restaurant chain began as the Carolinian Coffee Shop in the North Carolina city of Winston-Salem before its original investors — T.K. Knight and his brothers-in-law, Thomas, Kenneth, and William Wilson — renamed it K&W, using their initials, in 1937.

In 1941, the late Grady Allred Sr., who worked at the Carolinian Coffee Shop, became the sole owner of K&W and ultimately expanded the business to 16 locations across the Carolinas and Virginia.

By 2020, the Allred family had grown the restaurant to 28 outposts, however, the business, like many others, was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

K&W shuttered several restaurants at the time and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2020, saying in court papers that it had just over $30 million in assets and $22.1 million in liabilities.

The chain emerged from bankruptcy a year later after a reorganization.

While there are no current bankruptcy filings under the K&W name, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence shows that 2025 corporate bankruptcies are on track to hit levels not seen in 15 years, since 2010. Personal bankruptcies are also on the rise, according to data from the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

In 2022, K&W was acquired by Falcon Holdings, a Texas-based company that also owns the Piccadilly restaurant chain.

By the end of its reign, K&W was operating eight locations in North Carolina and one in Virginia. A former employee told WFMY News 2 that more than 300 K&W workers were left jobless.

Following K&W's closure announcement, customers flooded the comments section to share their sadness, reminisce about their memories, and even beg for recipes.

"Can you at least give us the baked spaghetti recipe???" one post read.

• Luigi Mangione, charged with fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare's CEO, was in a NY court on Tuesday.
• Prosecutors played police bodycam video as Mangione challenged his arrest.
• The video showed the moments before Mangioni's arrest following a manhunt that riveted the nation.

The suspect is nervous as he's frisked in a corner of a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. His hands shake.

There's fibbing on both sides: The suspect says he's a "homeless" guy named "Mark." The cops say it's just an ID check.

And through it all, surreally, Christmas carols play on the restaurant sound system — with one cop whistling along to keep things calm as they try to verify his identity.

Dramatic police bodycam video of Luigi Mangione, screened for the first time Tuesday in a New York City courtroom, shows the 28-year-old's December arrest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as it has never been seen before.

"Stand up for us — put your hands on top of your head," Altoona Police Officer Joseph Detwiler can be heard telling Mangione twice in the video, which is not being released to the public and could only be seen in court.

"You seem nervous right now," the officer says next, as Mangione stands up and is patted down at 9:50 on a Monday morning — five days after Thompson's murder on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk.

When the officer asks, "Why are you nervous?" Mangione, his hands atop his head, gives no answer.

"Sit down. Sit down," the officer tells him.

The video was played throughout most of Tuesday morning and into the afternoon — the second day of an evidence-suppression hearing in state court in Manhattan. It was narrated from the witness stand by Detwiler, who, with his partner, was the first officer on the scene.

As they rolled up to the McDonald's in their patrol car, Detwiler was thinking the job would be a waste of time, he testified.

"I did not believe it was going to be the person that they said it was," Detwiler said Tuesday, during questioning by the lead state prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann.

The 911 call had come in from a very skeptical restaurant manager. She's called police reluctantly, according to Monday's testimony, after customers insisted the guy sitting back by the men's room — his face obscured by a hat and medical mask — looked like "the CEO shooter" in the news.

The dispatcher was skeptical too, listing the call as "Priority: Low."

And on the way to the McDonald's, Detwiler saw a text from his supervisor, Lt. Tom Hanley: "If you get the New York City shooter, I'll buy you a hoagie."

Detwiler kept the patrol car's sirens silent as he and his partner, Patrolman Tyler Frye, rolled into the parking lot.

Once inside, the two approached Mangione's table, interrupting a meal of a breakfast sandwich and a hash brown.

They knew this was the guy the manager had called about, Detwiler testified. There was only one person in the restaurant wearing a mask.

"Yeah, we don't wear masks," in Altoona, Detwiler explained in his testimony. "We have antibodies."

"Can you pull your mask down?" the video showed Detwiler asking, while Mangione watched from the defense table, dressed in a dark suit and open-necked off-white dress shirt.

Then the footage played in court showed the moment Mangione complied, showing his full face, and everything changed.

As "Jingle Bell Rock" played on the McDonald's speakers, the five-day manhunt that had captivated the country — involving hundreds of law enforcement personnel in New York City and beyond — had ended.

"I knew it was him immediately," Detwiler testified.

It didn't help that Mangione appeared "nervous," as the officer described it on the stand, explaining, "I saw his fingers shaking a little bit."

Defense lawyers are challenging the evidence and statements police took from Mangione in the 30-minute period when he was questioned and arrested in that McDonald's.

By the time Mangione was cuffed and led out — with "Holly Jolly Christmas" playing on the restaurant sound system — some 10 cops had gathered in the restaurant.

They included the lieutenant who'd promised Detwiler a hoagie.

"I'm 100 percent sure that it's him," Detwiler testified he told the arriving lieutenant. "He was surprised," Detwiler testified.

Prosecutors are trying to show that stopping, questioning, and searching the belongings of Mangione was proper, given the officers' knowledge from the news media of the Thompson shooting suspect's appearance and dangerousness.

Defense lawyers are arguing that Mangione was improperly questioned before he was read his Miranda rights, and they want the judge to rule that any statements he made can't be used against him at trial.

On Tuesday, Detwiler described asking limited questions focused on Mangione's identification and potential imminent dangerousness, not the facts of the case itself.

"Mark," Mangione told police at first, when asked his name, according to the video. "Homeless," he said, when asked his address.

"Did you ever mention the shooting in New York City?" Seidemann asked. "No," Detwiler answered.

"Did you ever pull out your gun?"

"No," the cop answered again.

Mangione's lengthy hearing has so far featured testimony by five law enforcement and civilian witnesses involved in the manhunt and the Pennsylvania arrest. It is scheduled to continue Thursday and Friday — and possibly into next week.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro has not said when he will decide if any evidence must be barred from an eventual trial. Judges have yet to set trial dates for Mangione's federal and state murder trials.

• Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced the company would reduce recurring meetings in his latest memo.
• The memo encourages biweekly one-on-ones and suggests that employees decline unnecessary meetings.
• Many leaders are rethinking meeting culture to improve efficiency.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri's latest memo didn't just cover RTO. It also tackled something that employees and leaders alike love to hate: the recurring meeting.

The memo, titled "Building a Winning Culture in 2026," said that recurring meetings will be canceled every six months and only re-added if "absolutely necessary." He also encouraged making recurring one-on-ones biweekly "by default" and said employees should decline meetings that interfere with "focus blocks."

"We all spend too much time in meetings that are not effective, and it's slowing us down," Mosseri wrote.

Mosseri's crackdown on meetings echoes a growing chorus of executives frustrated by bureaucratic sluggishness. As AI tools introduce a new era of workplace efficiency and competition ramps up, leaders are rethinking culture from the ground up — trimming layers, streamlining processes, and doubling down on speed and efficiency.

Leaders are rejecting meeting-heavy workplaces

Many CEOs and billionaires have long held strong opinions on meetings. Jeff Bezos has favored "messy" meetings, while Airbnb's Brian Chesky and Nvidia's Jensen Huang prefer to eliminate one-on-ones altogether.

Others view the practice as a distraction from real work. Elon Musk has argued large meetings should be eliminated or kept "very short," and billionaire investor (and lover of emails) Mark Cuban has similarly said meetings derail his productivity.

"I try to only do meetings if I have to come to a conclusion or there's no other way — same with phone calls," Cuban said in 2023. "It kills so much time."

The debate over meetings has only grown louder as efficiency takes center stage across corporate America. In Jamie Dimon's 2024 annual letter to shareholders, the JPMorgan CEO said he wants to "kill meetings" because it slows work down.

Earlier this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he wants to bring back in-person collaboration, while also limiting the "pre-meeting for the pre-meeting for the decision." The tech giant recently cut 14,000 workers in a push to revive a scrappier, startup-like culture.

Reversing the pro-meeting trend

Benjamin Laker, a leadership professor at the Henley Business School who has researched effective meeting structures, told Business Insider that in the post-pandemic era, there was a "huge acceleration" of meetings, both in frequency and volume.

Laker said that psychological factors, like heightened loneliness and anxiety during the pandemic, contributed to this rise in meetings, as they offered a way to regain a sense of connection.

Petri Lehtonen, CEO of the meeting analytics platform Flowtrace, told Business Insider that the company's data indicates that 50% to 70% of total meeting hours in large companies come from recurring slots, and many companies find those standing meetings don't always have a clear purpose. The crackdown on meetings isn't just a cultural trend, but "a structural correction," Lehtonen said.

That's why executives like Mosseri may be re-examining the habit, he said. Lehtonen said that as collaboration becomes increasingly asynchronous, due to AI-generated summary tools, companies are shifting from thinking of "meetings by default" to "meetings as escalation tools."

Restoring balance

In the aftermath of the pandemic, some companies have taken more radical approaches to reducing meetings.

In 2023, Shopify's bosses introduced a plug-in to track the dollar amount spent during meetings, a move the COO said at the time was aimed at reducing meetings so employees could actually "get shit done."

Others, like Salesforce, took a less extreme approach. The company tried a no-meetings week in 2021 to give employees a break from the disruptions, and ended up implementing three more no-meetings weeks. Other companies like Citi, gave meeting-free Fridays.

In a yearlong survey of 76 companies published in MIT's Sloan Management Review in 2022, Laker wrote that productivity was 71% higher when meetings were reduced by 40%. However, Laker said that the advantages of no-meeting periods began to plateau after meetings were reduced by 60%, and diminished beyond that.

Laker said the best way to keep meetings effective is to set clear boundaries, such as a maximum number of attendees, a 24-hour notice period before the meeting, an agenda, and a set timeframe.

"As long as you have meeting hygiene, you don't have to eliminate meetings altogether," Laker said.

• A Charles Koch-backed group is supporting an effort to "reignite the American spirit" around the US's 250th birthday.
• The "Be the People" initiative has signed up top marketers and other notables, including Mark Cuban.
• Organizers are pitching it as apolitical, as critics say the official America250 celebrations could take on a partisan tone.

An emerging initiative to "reignite the American spirit," set to launch around the country's 250th birthday, is getting a funding boost from the billionaire and conservative megadonor Charles Koch, Business Insider has learned.

The new effort, which has the tagline "Be the People," has enlisted a number of marketing heavy hitters in addition to its support from Stand Together, a philanthropic endeavor founded by Koch in 2003. It's led by Andrew Essex, the founding chief executive of creative agency Droga5 and a longtime media and ad executive.

The organizers described the "Be the People" initiative to potential supporters as an apolitical effort to unite America, three people briefed on the plans in recent weeks told Business Insider. The initiative is a separate effort from America250, the official celebration that is being planned by a bipartisan commission, with involvement from President Donald Trump.

A leaked "Be the People" presentation document dated October and seen by Business Insider lists six prominent marketers as advisors: John Hayes, formerly of American Express; Jim Stengel, formerly of Procter & Gamble; Mike Jackson, ex General Motors; Tariq Hassan, a vet of McDonald's; Jill Baskin, ex Hershey; and Remi Kent, formerly of Progressive.

It cites data showing people are politically divided and also ready for change. It calls for a $250 million promotional campaign — an amount similar in scale to a blockbuster movie push — encouraging people to volunteer and give to causes like combating hunger. The campaign would also create a platform where people could find charitable organizations based on their interests, the pitch document says.

The document emphasizes that the initiative is working to create a "brand safe, apolitical" coalition. It says it's in conversations with around two dozen blue-chip companies and organizations, including Starbucks, JPMorgan Chase, and Habitat for Humanity, to lend support.

"We the People" also wants to enlist popular cultural figures to help amplify its mission. The document lists around 80 bold-face names spanning industries and disciplines, including Oprah Winfrey, Fox News' Bret Baier, happiness expert Arthur Brooks, and billionaire investor Mark Cuban. It's unclear from the document who has signed on and who is seen as a potential supporter. Cuban and Brooks confirmed they're involved. Reps for Winfrey and Baier said they weren't aware of the initiative.

"The effort aims to support sustained civic engagement that begins with America's 250th anniversary and extends well beyond it, and is intended to complement the many other efforts around the anniversary," a spokesperson for Stand Together said in a statement. The rep said Stand Together is one of several funders helping build a coalition of leaders and partners, and declined to name the others. They said the presentation deck is an early aspirational concept, with the activities and coalition still taking shape.

The "Be the People" pitch comes ahead of the official US birthday celebration, America250, which was similarly pitched as nonpartisan. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets have reported that Trump had been placing his allies and operatives in charge of much of the planning. America250 has faced criticism from lawmakers, including Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-NJ, who sits on the commission to plan the America250 celebration, as well as historians such as presidential biographer and frequent Trump critic Jonathan Alter, that Trump is making the official celebration about himself, as The Atlantic and other outlets have reported.

An America250 spokesperson said its celebration is a bipartisan effort to involve all Americans through "values-based programming, the largest bicameral, bipartisan congressional caucus in history, and historic public-private partnerships."

Koch and his brother David, who died in 2019, have been powerful forces in Republican politics and the modern conservative movement. The Kochs have sometimes been at odds with Trump, going back to his first term. Their political network endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 campaign, and in April, the Charles Koch-funded New Civil Liberties Alliance sued Trump over import tariffs. Trump successfully moved to have the case transferred to the US Court of International Trade, which is overseeing similar cases. The case is ongoing.