In most of the U.S., tree foliage is green and temperatures are warm. But for many restaurants and retailers, fall is already here.

Halloween candy and pumpkin spice lattes used to wait until after Labor Day to make their annual debuts, ushering in the start of fall several weeks before the season officially begins. But in the past few years, restaurants and retailers have been releasing their autumnal food and beverages even earlier.

The number of limited-time pumpkin launches more than doubled to 86 in August 2022 compared with 2019, according to Technomic, which tracked the top 500 restaurant chains and top 40 convenience stores. November is still the most popular month to launch limited-time pumpkin items timed for Thanksgiving, but August is gaining ground.

Restaurants’ and retailers’ extended fall also comes as pumpkin food and beverages become more popular throughout the autumn. In 2019, restaurants and convenience stores launched 268 pumpkin-themed seasonal items. By 2022, the number had more than doubled to 559 items.

Ken Harris, managing partner at Cadent Consulting Group, said three reasons have driven the shift.

″[The companies] make money from it, the stuff tastes good and they have consumer research that says they have permission to push the boundaries of timing,” he told CNBC.

As schools have pushed for an earlier start to the school year, Labor Day has lost some of its status as a seasonal indicator. Since many families are preparing for school in August anyway, fall seems right around the corner. Picking up Halloween candy during back-to-school shopping helps some parents kill two birds with one stone.

Starbucks claims credit for the rise of pumpkin-themed drinks and food, stemming from the introduction of its pumpkin spice latte 20 years ago.

“Go back 20 years ago, nothing pumpkin existed in the marketplace. The only thing you could find in the grocery aisle was a pumpkin puree,” Peter Dukes, one of the original creators of Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte, said at a recent press event celebrating two decades of the drink.

The coffee chain also takes the brunt of the ire of consumers who chafe at the early introduction of fall menus. Since 2018, Starbucks has re-released the pumpkin spice latte in August. Its Aug. 24 launch this year is tied with 2021 as the earliest rollout yet for its fall menu.

“It does tend to be at the end of August, which is that time that our customers are returning to their routines,” Starbucks spokesperson Erin Stan said.

As Starbucks has pulled the fall season earlier, it has also adjusted its menu. In 2019, it launched the pumpkin cream cold brew, its second-ever pumpkin drink. This year, Starbucks added the iced pumpkin cream chai latte to its menu.

Both drinks address the rising popularity of cold drinks, which account for more than three-quarters of all Starbucks beverage orders, no matter the season. They also happen to be more temperature-appropriate options for late August, when many consumers are still battling the heat and seeking air conditioning.

But Eleni Demestihas, a 28-year-old lawyer based in Denver, plans to delay drinking her first pumpkin spice latte of the season, even though she prefers them iced. Demestihas said she typically waits until she can wear a sweatshirt all day — likely sometime in mid-October.

Until then, she’ll just be enjoying the PSL-themed memes.

Dunkin’ beats Starbucks to the pumpkin punch

For all the grumbling over Starbucks’ early fall menu, some of its rivals entered the arena even earlier. Dunkin’, which is privately owned by Inspire Brands, released its autumn menu Aug. 16, eight days before Starbucks launched its items. Krispy Kreme rolled out its pumpkin spice doughnut lineup Aug. 7.

IHOP released its fall menu, including pumpkin spice pancakes and pumpkin spice cold foam cold brew, on Aug. 28, six days later than its launch last year.

“Generally speaking, for us, the timing of anything like this is really based on consumer insights,” IHOP Chief Marketing Officer Kieran Donahue told CNBC.

The Dine Brands chain typically sells about one million of its pumpkin spice pancakes every time they return to menus.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s a popular menu item … I think we could offer it at any time and people would buy it,” Donahue said.

Lizzy Freier, director of menu research and insights at Technomic, said it’s too soon for her to enjoy a pumpkin spice latte. Her hometown of Chicago is expecting temperatures to exceed 90 degrees on Labor Day.

Luckily for Freier, Demestihas and other consumers who plan to hold off on enjoying their favorite fall treats, the early kickoffs haven’t led companies to pull items faster, according to Freier.

And fear not — plenty of companies are sticking to normal seasonal boundaries.

Reynolds’ Hefty isn’t releasing its cinnamon pumpkin spice-scented trash bags until September.

CEDAR KEY, Fla. — As cleanup begins in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, the storm has served as a stark reminder that Florida’s insurance industry remains in flux.

Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend just before 8 a.m. Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. It killed at least three people in Florida before it battered Georgia and other states on the East Coast as a downgraded tropical storm.

Idalia moved offshore Thursday morning, leaving around 330,000 customers without power in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Powerful storms have regularly pummeled Florida’s coastal communities in recent years. The hurricanes have brought high winds, lashing rains and deadly storm surge. Idalia brought much of the same, and it has forced many homeowners to turn to their insurance policies in hope that repairing their homes and replacing their belongings might be covered.

But many of those homeowners face uncertainty amid the upheaval that has emerged in Florida’s insurance industry in recent years.

Burned rubble where a house stood after a power transformer exploded in the community of Signal Cove in Hudson, Fla., on Wednesday, after Hurricane Idalia made landfall.Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / AFP – Getty Images

A thinning insurance market that is beset by more regular hurricanes has caused insurance policy costs to skyrocket. An average home premium in Florida is about $6,000 per year, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade organization. The U.S. average is about $1,700. 

The state’s insurance industry is preparing to lose four insurers since last year — Farmers Insurance, Bankers Insurance, Centauri Insurance and Lexington Insurance. Farmers Insurance announced just last month that it intends to leave Florida, affecting about 100,000 policy holders, and that it would not be writing new policies. 

Still, it appears Florida is better-positioned to handle insurance claims than it was last year after the state’s insurers acquired adequate levels of reinsurance — a reimbursement system that insulates insurers from very high claims. 

“With all the weather and hurricane events that have come through, the reinsurance market has hardened on the Florida insurance companies,” said Chris Draghi, who specializes in the state’s insurance market as an associate director at AM Best, a global credit agency. “That’s led to material increases and reinsurance costs, which, of course, then strain bottom line results to afford the same level of protections as in the past.”

That could mean that, as the costs for insurers rise further, Floridians’ premiums will be affected. 

Gregory Buck, the president and owner of National Risk Experts Insurance, based in Florida, said that his company’s premiums last year were four times the national average but that those prices are largely based on reinsurers. He expects rates to increase further.

The remains of a destroyed home built atop a platform on piles in Keaton Beach, Fla., on Wednesday during a flight provided by mediccorps.org after Hurricane Idalia passed through.Rebecca Blackwell / AP

“If you look at year on year for the last three to five years, you’re probably talking about between 100 and 300% (in insurance cost increases) depending on where you are and obviously the age and the construction of the homes themselves” Buck said by email. “But absolutely, we are looking at more increases.”

Homeowners in the state said they expect the cost to jump once again, which has led some to consider going without insurance because of the price.

Aimee Firestine stood outside her hotel, the Faraway Inn, in Cedar Key as she said her homeowners insurance rate doubled last year. She said it has left her “thinking about whether you can keep paying for that.”

“That’s one of the issues in Florida is Mother Nature does what it wants and we have to just rebuild and hope insurance can help us out with it,” Firestine said.

The cost of insurance policies could be a major contributing reason that as many as 15% of Florida homeowners are living without property insurance. That is the highest percentage in the country, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

In Florida, 16 severe storms or hurricanes since 2020 have caused $100 billion to $200 billion in damage. That has pushed many in the state to turn to Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort, which has quickly become Florida’s fastest-growing insurer. 

The company now has more than 1.4 million policies, centered largely in southeast Florida, up precipitously from 500,000 in 2019. It now covers roughly 1 in 8 Florida households. 

It is a reflection of how private insurers have left the state as the storms walloping Florida grow in number and strength, said Amy Bach, the executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. Because the agency is a state-run entity, it could also have an effect on taxpayer dollars.

“As they retreat and government is having an increasing role, that basically translates into taxpayers,” Bach said. “So really, we’re talking about a huge shift in risk-bearing from the private sector to the public, and it’s a big deal.”

Four new insurance companies will join the Florida market next year after legislative reforms designed to promote market stability were passed and signed into law, which could help address the problem. It is unclear, however, what market share the companies might be able to soak up or what their rates might be. 

A flooded house in Crystal River, Fla., on Thursday after Hurricane Idalia made landfall.Chandan Khanna / AFP – Getty Images

Aggravating the problem, 82% of Floridians do not have flood insurance, which is typically operated by the National Flood Insurance Program, a federal program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Congress created the program in 1968 because of a similar issue — the lack of private insurers in flood-prone areas. 

Analysts and experts said few people purchase flood insurance because many do not realize that most homeowners or hurricane policies do not cover flooding, even though hurricanes are a key threat to Florida’s low-lying areas.

Hundreds of thousands of Florida homes lie in flood-risk areas that are not designated as such by the federal government, leaving many homeowners vulnerable to massive out-of-pocket costs for damage after hurricanes.

More than 785,000 properties in the state face flood hazards but are not recognized as high risks in FEMA’s flood maps, according to data from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group. 

The First Street Foundation said that it factors in heavy rainfall, the impact of small waterways’ flooding and climate change and that it updates its models annually, while FEMA does not. On its website, FEMA said it “consistently releases new flood maps and data, giving communities across America access to helpful, authoritative data that they can use to make decisions about flood risk.”

Meanwhile, Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, said Florida has major flood events year-round.

“We’re going to see very significant flood losses from the hurricane this week, and only a small percentage of homeowners have that coverage,” he said.

In Taylor County, where Idalia made landfall, for example, only 5.4% of homeowners have flood insurance, Friedlander said. The county, in the Big Bend area of Florida, is home to about 21,000 people, according to the latest census data.

“That entire community is under water,” Friedlander said.

Gabe Gutierrez reported from Cedar Key. Phil McCausland and Melissa Chan reported from New York City.

Amazon has been quietly raising the amount some customers must spend on its site to get free shipping.

To qualify for no-cost deliveries, some Amazon customers who don’t have Prime memberships now need to spend $35, up from $25 previously.

Amazon spokesperson Kristina Pressentin confirmed the company is testing the new qualification, which was first reported by the blog eCommerce Bytes. The change doesn’t impact Prime members who pay $14.99 per month, or $139 a year, for free shipping and other perks.

“We continually evaluate our offerings and make adjustments based on those assessments,” Pressentin said.

For now, the new $35 minimum seems to apply to customers based on where they live, the consumer education website Consumer World said Monday. Among other cities, it noted Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, has a $25 minimum, while non-Prime customers in nearby Bellevue have to pay $35 for free shipping.

The move comes as the online retail giant works to cut costs across different areas of its business. The company has cut more than 27,000 corporate jobs in the past year and axed areas of its business that haven’t been delivering. Earlier this year, it stopped free grocery delivery for Prime members on orders less than $150.

In the past, Amazon has raised the threshold order amount for free shipping as high as $49. It lowered it to $25 in 2017 as Walmart was ramping up its ecommerce operations.

Mark Thompson is stepping in as the next CEO and chairman of CNN.

Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery said Wednesday it appointed Thompson as the next leader of the cable news network, a few short months after the ouster of Chris Licht.

Thompson previously served as CEO and president of The New York Times from 2012 to 2020, as well as director-general of the BBC from 2004 to 2012. Thompson’s first day at the CNN office will be Oct. 9, he told CNN staffers in a memo.

“I am confident he is exactly the leader we need to take the helm of CNN at this pivotal time,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told staff in a note Wednesday. “Big thanks to all of you for your patience, commitment, and hard work. Simply stated: the real strength of CNN is its people, and you continue to set the highest standard in all that you do.”

The appointment of Thompson, a 40-year news veteran who was recently knighted for his services in media, occurs just as the presidential campaign cycle in the U.S. accelerates.

Thompson takes the reins of CNN as cord-cutting has ramped up for the traditional TV bundle and ratings have lagged behind other cable news competitors. Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would add CNN to its Max streaming service beginning Sept. 27. It will serve as the network’s answer to streaming as a 24/7 live news hub.

“As everyone knows, TV journalism is approaching peak disruption. We face pressure from every direction — structural, political, cultural, you name it. Like many other media organizations, CNN has recently felt some of the uncertainty and heartache that comes with all of that,” Thompson wrote to CNN staff. “There’s no magic wand that I or anyone else can wield to make this disruption go away. But what I can say is that where others see threat, I see opportunity — especially given CNN’s great brand and the strength of its journalism.”

His hiring also follows what has been a tumultuous time for the cable news network, especially for its leadership.

In early 2022, longtime leader Jeff Zucker resigned after failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a high-ranking colleague — who also once served as communications director to ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Zucker’s resignation came as a shock to staffers. Shortly after, prime time host Chris Cuomo was fired after CNN said it obtained new information about his controversial role in advising his brother.

Soon after Zucker stepped down, CNN’s parent company ownership changed hands with the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery. Prior to closing the deal, Zaslav had appointed Licht as CNN’s CEO, who was previously the chief executive behind the “CBS This Morning” news program and “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. At the time, Zaslav called Licht a “dynamic and creative producer, an engaging and thoughtful journalist, and a true news person.”

One of Licht’s first moves was the swift closure of CNN+, the cable news network’s then-newly launched streaming platform that was failing to garner viewership in its early days.

Licht’s time at CNN was short, however. In June, Licht departed CNN after leading the network for little more than a year that included a series of programming missteps and rock-bottom ratings. He had also drew criticism in the weeks before his ouster after CNN hosted a town hall with Donald Trump that was packed with tons of fans who cheered on the former president as he pushed election lies and insulted host Kaitlan Collins.

Shortly after, The Atlantic published an unflattering 15,000-word profile of Licht titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” which likely sealed his fate. Although Licht apologized to CNN staffers it wasn’t enough and his departure was announced in the ensuing days.

While network executives Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, Eric Sherling and David Leavy led CNN since Licht left CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery brass searched for a replacement for the leadership role.

Read Zaslav’s memo to staff:

All,

I wanted to tell you first that we will be welcoming a new leader for CNN Worldwide. Shortly, we will announce that highly respected news executive Mark Thompson will be joining our leadership team as Chairman and CEO, effective October 9, reporting directly to me. Mark has been in the news business for more than four decades and, as many of you are aware, he has an exceptional track-record of innovation and excellence. I am confident he is exactly the leader we need to take the helm of CNN at this pivotal time.

I’ll share more about Mark in a moment. But before I do, I want to say that I recognize change is not easy, and I know you’ve been through a lot of it. Big thanks to all of you for your patience, commitment, and hard work. Simply stated: the real strength of CNN is its people, and you continue to set the highest standard in all that you do.

I want to give a special thanks to Amy, David, Virginia and Eric for the exceptional job they’ve done leading CNN and moving the business forward during this interim period. They pulled together as a team and really delivered, and I am personally grateful for their hard work and sacrifices, as they added significant responsibilities on top of their substantial functional roles. I know they’ll be a huge help to Mark when he comes on board.

Mark has led and transformed two of the world’s most respected news organizations. Most recently, he served as president and CEO of The New York Times from 2012-2020, building the company into a digital-subscription powerhouse. In fact, under his leadership, the Times increased its paid digital subscriptions tenfold and more than doubled its total digital revenues.

Before that, Mark served as director-general of the BBC from 2004-2012, where he presided over one of the world’s biggest newsrooms as well as scores of national and international TV and radio services and extensive global digital news assets. He led the development of the BBC iPlayer, the world’s first streaming service from a major broadcaster, expanded web and smartphone services from news to education to entertainment, and oversaw coverage of the biggest events of the time from the global financial crisis of 2008-09 to the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Before becoming a senior executive, Mark was a working researcher, director, field producer and award-winning showrunner in the BBC’s news division.

I’ve long admired Mark’s transformative leadership and his ability to inspire organizations to raise their own ambitions and sense of what’s possible… and achieve it. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with him over the last few weeks and couldn’t be more excited for all that’s in store.

Please join me in welcoming Mark to the team!

David

Read Thompson’s note to CNN staffers:

Dear all,

No doubt you’ve heard the news and read David Zaslav’s message confirming that I’m to be CNN’s next Chairman and CEO. I just wanted to add a few words of my own.

I can’t tell you how pleased and proud I am to be joining you after so many years of watching — and envying — your work from the outside. Over the decades, I’ve bumped into CNN teams on story after story from Washington, DC to Tiananmen Square. Two months ago I spent a day watching CNN’s spell-binding coverage of the Wagner rebellion, and I watched and read our major competitors too. That day confirmed an old truth to me: when it matters most, CNN is the best place to find out what’s happening. You always rise to the occasion.

As everyone knows, TV journalism is approaching peak disruption. We face pressure from every direction — structural, political, cultural, you name it. Like many other media organizations, CNN has recently felt some of the uncertainty and heartache that comes with all of that. There’s no magic wand that I or anyone else can wield to make this disruption go away. But what I can say is that where others see threat, I see opportunity — especially given CNN’s great brand and the strength of its journalism. I’ve spent most of the past twenty years figuring out with colleagues at some of the world’s other great news operations not just how to survive the revolution, but to thrive in it and gain new audiences and revenue streams. I aim to do the same at CNN. It won’t be myplan that wins the day but our plan, the plan we devise and implement together. Which is why, particularly in the early weeks, you’ll find me doing a lot more listening and learning than holding forth.

I want to add my personal thanks to the interim leadership team. Amy, David, Virginia and Eric have done a terrific job steering the ship over the past couple of months and I look forward to working with them.

My first official day in the office is 9 October but I’m planning to pop in a few times before then. So if you see a tall figure with an English accent and a loud laugh, you’ll know who it is.

All the best,

Mark

The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.1% annual pace from April through June, showing continued resilience in the face of higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, the government said Wednesday in a downgrade from its initial estimate.

The government had previously estimated that the economy expanded at a 2.4% annual rate last quarter.

The Commerce Department’s second estimate of growth last quarter marked a slight acceleration from a 2% annual growth rate from January through March. Though the economy has been slowed by the Federal Reserve’s strenuous drive to tame inflation with interest rate hikes, it has managed to keep expanding, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending.

Wednesday’s report on the nation’s gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — showed that growth last quarter was driven by upticks in consumer spending, business investment and outlays by state and local governments. A measure of consumer prices in the report also showed inflation cooling, which could ease the pressure on the Fed to further raise interest rates.

“Lower growth and weaker increases in prices are good news for the Federal Reserve,’’ said Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of the U.S. economy, rose at a 1.7% annual pace in the April-June quarter — a decent gain, though down from 4.2% in the first three months of 2023. Excluding housing, business investment rose at a strong 6.1% annual rate last quarter. Investment in housing, hurt by higher mortgage rates, fell in the second quarter.

The American economy — the world’s largest — has proved surprisingly durable in the midst of the Fed’s aggressive campaign to stamp out a resurgence of inflation, which last year hit a four-decade high. Since March of last year, the Fed has raised its benchmark rate 11 times, making borrowing for everything from cars to homes to business expansions much more expensive and prompting widespread predictions of a coming recession.

Since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, year-over-year inflation has fallen more or less steadily. Last month, it came in at 3.2% — a significant improvement though still above the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core inflation in July matched the smallest monthly rise in nearly two years.

One measure of prices in the GDP report — the personal consumption expenditures index — rose at a 2.5% annual rate last quarter, down from a 4.1% pace in the January-March quarter and the smallest increase since the end of 2020.

Since the Fed began raising rates, the economy has been bolstered by a consistently healthy job market. Employers have added a robust average of 258,000 jobs a month this year, though that average has slowed over the past three months to 218,000.

On Tuesday, a report from the government added to evidence that the job market is gradually weakening: It showed that employers posted far fewer job openings in July and that the number of people who quit their jobs tumbled for a second straight month. (When fewer people quit their jobs, it typically suggests that they aren’t as confident in finding a new one.)

Still, job openings remain well above their pre-pandemic levels. The nation’s unemployment rate, at 3.5%, is still barely above a half-decade low. And when the government issues the August jobs report on Friday, economists polled by the data firm FactSet think it will show that while hiring slowed, employers still added 170,000 jobs.

The combination of tumbling inflation, continued economic growth and slower but steady hiring has raised hopes for a rare “soft landing.” That’s a scenario in which the Fed manages to conquer high inflation without causing a painful recession.

Wednesday’s government report, its second of three estimates of last quarter’s growth, will be followed by a final calculation late next month.

A U.S. judge has rejected Burger King’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that it cheated hungry customers by making its Whopper sandwich appear larger than it actually is.

U.S. District Judge Roy Altman in Miami said Burger King must defend against a claim that its depiction of Whoppers on in-store menu boards mislead reasonable customers, amounting to a breach of contract.

Customers in the proposed class action accused Burger King of portraying burgers with ingredients that “overflow over the bun,” making it appear the burgers are 35% larger and contain more than double the meat than the chain serves.

Burger King, a unit of Restaurant Brands International, countered that it wasn’t required to deliver burgers that look “exactly like the picture,” but the judge said it was up to jurors to “tell us what reasonable people think.”

In his decision made public on Friday, Altman also let the customers pursue negligence-based and unjust enrichment claims.

He dismissed claims based on TV and online ads, finding none in which Burger King promised a burger “size,” or patty weight, and failed to deliver it.

“The plaintiffs’ claims are false,” Burger King said in a statement on Tuesday. “The flame-grilled beef patties portrayed in our advertising are the same patties used in the millions of Whopper sandwiches we serve to guests nationwide.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs was not immediately available for comment. Earlier efforts to mediate a settlement proved unsuccessful.

McDonald’s and Wendy’s are defending against a similar lawsuit in the Brooklyn, New York federal court. The plaintiffs’ lawyer there on Monday cited Altman’s opinion to justify letting that case continue.

Taco Bell, a unit of Yum Brands, was sued last month in the Brooklyn court for selling Crunchwraps and Mexican pizzas that allegedly contain only half as much filling as advertised.

Each lawsuit seeks at least $5 million in damages.

The case is Coleman et al v Burger King Corp, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, No. 22-20925.