Latest news with #SomiaFaridSilber
Forbes
21-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Forbes Daily: Is Elon Musk's DOGE Work Creating A ‘Crisis' For Tesla?
The company behind Edible Arrangements is aptly expanding into a different type of edible. In addition to their festive fruit baskets, Edible Brands, which had $500 million in annual sales last year, recently launched an e-commerce site for hemp-derived THC products. Marijuana remains illegal federally, but the firm is focusing on THC products made from less-potent hemp—though they can still get you high. 'We're already called 'edible', right?' Edible Brands CEO Somia Farid Silber told Forbes. 'We know that sometimes there's even a little bit of an expectation from a customer for [cannabis] products.' There's an even bigger industry for hemp than for marijuana: Hemp product sales hit $28 billion in 2023, compared to over $26 billion for marijuana. Jaylen Brown of the Boston CelticsThe biggest sports sale in U.S. history is moving forward, as a group led by investor Bill Chisholm and private equity firm Sixth Street agreed to buy the NBA's Boston Celtics at a $6.1 billion valuation. The price tag of a sports franchise has sharply risen over the last two decades, and Forbes ranked the Celtics the fourth-most valuable NBA franchise in 2024, though the team's outgoing owner acknowledged last year it was 'losing money.' DOGE head Elon Musk is set to visit the Pentagon today, Trump Administration officials confirmed, while vehemently denying a New York Times report of the billionaire being briefed about the U.S. military's plan in the event of a war with China. The report noted that the Pentagon's war plans against adversarial nations are among the military's 'most closely guarded secrets,' and Musk's knowledge of the plan could raise questions about the billionaires' various conflicts of interest over his companies' U.S. military contracts and business interests in China. A lifeline for small businesses is on the chopping block as part of an executive order from President Donald Trump to slash federal programs. The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is a small but long-running program in the U.S. Treasury that helps finance small businesses in underserved areas. For fiscal year 2025, the CDFI has $324 million available for grants, and advocates for the program estimate more than $2.5 billion in economic impact from that investment. DOGE's cost-cutting efforts are affecting government contractors, too, and shares of consulting giant Accenture sank 7% to an eight-month low on Thursday as its CEO Julie Sweet noted new government business acquisition has 'slowed.' Revenue from work for the federal government accounted for 8% of Accenture's $65 billion in global revenue in its most recent fiscal year. DOGE has specifically homed in on contracts with firms like Accenture and its rivals Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte. American businesses will get a temporary reprieve from the latest batch of tariffs, as the European Union delayed its retaliatory tariffs against some U.S. imports—including a 50% tax on American whiskey—until mid-April. The levies, announced in response to Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, are expected to hit $28 billion of U.S. imports to the EU. The outlook for Tesla on Wall Street continues to get worse. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, one of the most optimistic analysts covering the EV maker, said a 'crisis' is forming at the company, and urged CEO Elon Musk to take a step back from his work at DOGE. Tesla shares have fallen 52% from their peak in December. MORE: Ives' note alluded to the widespread vandalism and protests at Tesla showrooms, and on Thursday, the Justice Department charged three people responsible for vandalizing and destroying Tesla cars, dealerships or charging stations in three separate states. Attorney General Pam Bondi said 'the swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism.' A judge blocked DOGE's access to personal data from the Social Security Administration, the latest legal setback for Trump and DOGE's controversial efforts to slash government spending. The judge said DOGE must 'disgorge and delete' any non-anonymized data it has obtained from the SSA since Trump took office, though it can still access data from the SSA that has been redacted or anonymized. President Donald Trump signed an order that will shrink the Department of Education, though fully dismantling it as he has long promised would ultimately require Congressional approval. The order does keep some 'critical functions' under federal control, such as Title 1 funding to schools in low-income areas and student loans, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The crew of a Delta flight that flipped on a Toronto runway last month may not have taken corrective action beforehand, according to a preliminary report released by Canadian authorities, as the incident and others have raised concerns about aviation safety. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, and a final report may not come for up to a year. London's Heathrow Airport halted operations early on Friday and will remain closed throughout the day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation caused a power outage, a move likely to impact hundreds of thousands of passengers and disrupt global travel. Heathrow, one of the biggest travel hubs in the world, warned that it expects 'significant disruption over the coming days.' A federal judge suggested the Trump Administration violated his order forbidding the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador Saturday, which raises a key question: What are the consequences for defying court orders? Judges could hold Trump officials in contempt of court, though Trump's Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute any of the administration's own officials for contempt. Civil contempt of court, however, can't be addressed with a presidential pardon, and one expert told Forbes that could make it the only effective remedy for contempt. Damage to Tropicana Field JULIO CORTEZ/Associated Press After Hurricane Milton peeled the roof off Tropicana Field last fall, the Tampa Bay Rays were able to find a temporary home for the 2025 season in the New York Yankees' much smaller minor league ballpark. But they had just four months to get ready for Opening Day, next Friday against the Colorado Rockies. That meant rebuilding their ticketing infrastructure and coordinating with Major League Baseball to get Steinbrenner Field ready for national television broadcasts. The Rays would also have to rejigger sponsorships—which, at best, typically take three months to come together, and sometimes years—to fit their new inventory of signage space. They would have to adjust to a new concessions operator, speeding up a process that took them a year and a half the last time they switched vendors, and decide whether they needed trailers or additional cold storage space. They had to figure out how to ship merchandise from their warehouse at the Trop and start planning for kiosks on the stadium concourse to compensate for the smaller footprint of the team stores. 'It was almost like standing up a new business, frankly, in the span of a few months,' says Bill Walsh, the Rays' chief business officer. Even with all of that effort, there will be no avoiding a revenue impact as the team moves from Tropicana Field—which had been configured to hold roughly 25,000 fans since 2018, with 54 luxury suites—to a 10,046-seat park with 13 suites. That's more bad news for a franchise that ranked 27th of 30 on Forbes' 2024 list of MLB's most valuable teams at $1.25 billion, with estimated revenue of $301 million. But the Rays are confident that their busy offseason will minimize the disruption—and even lead to some new money-making opportunities. WHY IT MATTERS 'The Rays' future is uncertain—they pulled out of a plan to build a new stadium, repairs still haven't begun on Tropicana Field, and their owner is being pressured to sell the team—but they're surprisingly optimistic about 2025,' says Forbes assistant managing editor Brett Knight. 'The season-ticket base has grown, some corporate partners are spending even more than they did last year, and the location of the new home field in Tampa is allowing the Rays to experiment with new types of sponsorships and promotions. There's still work to do—for one thing, mounting more than 3,000 signs around the ballpark next week—but Tampa Bay's front office is making the best of a bad situation.' MORE Baseball's Most Valuable Teams 2024 A jury this week sided with pipeline giant Energy Transfer, controlled by billionaire Kelcy Warren, finding Greenpeace liable for $660 million in damages. The case surrounded protests aiming to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline: 1,200-miles: The length of the pipeline, completed in 2017, which the company contended faced delays due to the protests $7.5 billion: The net worth of Warren 1970s: When Greenpeace got its start protesting nuclear bomb tests, as the group now faces possible bankruptcy AI is critical in every profession, not just tech roles, and learning how to use it can help you stay competitive in the job market. But understanding AI is more than just utilizing a chatbot like ChatGPT, so be curious and think about how AI can help make your job easier. Some critical AI-related skills to pick up include: learning how to optimize a prompt, as well as knowing how to question AI and spot potential biases. President Donald Trump could lose liquor licenses at two of his clubs as a result of his guilty verdict, though the state they are in has yet to make a final decision. Where are the clubs located? A. Florida B. New Jersey C. North Carolina D. California Check your answer. Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.
Forbes
20-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Edible Arrangements Can Now Get You High—On Edibles
Edible Brands, the parent company of the fruit basket outfit Edible Arrangements, is taking a bite of the cannabis industry. The Georgia-based company, which had $500 million in annual sales last year, launched this week, an e-commerce site that sells hemp-derived THC products made by some of the biggest brands in the marijuana industry, including Wana, Kiva and Cann. Edible Brands is not selling marijuana, which is federally illegal, but is focusing on THC products derived from hemp, marijuana's less potent and federally legal cannabis cousin. But these products are still strong enough to get customers stoned. 'This is a really natural fit for us,' Edible Brands CEO Somia Farid Silber tells Forbes. 'We're already called 'edible', right? We know that sometimes there's even a little bit of an expectation from a customer for [cannabis] products.' which the company acquired last year, will launch in Texas first but will soon expand to Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, and expects to go nationwide later this year. With its network of more than 700 Edible Arrangements stores, the company says customers can order online and get their cannabis products delivered to their door faster than an old school pot dealer. 'We have an incredible delivery network with our franchisees for fulfillment—we can reach 70% of U.S. households within an hour,' says Silber. Because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level but hemp has enough THC to get someone high, some of the weed industry's biggest players have started selling hemp products outside of dispensaries. The hemp and marijuana industry used to be at war, but over the last year some of the biggest cannabis companies, from Curaleaf and Trulieve to Kiva and Wana, have embraced the federal legality of hemp-derived cannabinoids, thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill, and started selling their own products. The hemp products industry is even bigger than the marijuana sector, which has been throttled by a punitive federal tax code for drug traffickers and overregulation on the state level. In 2023, hemp products sales hit $28 billion while marijuana sales topped $26 billion, according to Whitney Economics. Joe Hodas, the CEO of Wana, one of the country's best-selling edibles manufacturers, says he sees hemp as a way to expand to states that do not have recreational marijuana laws. Wana has also started selling its hemp-derived THC beverage line in Total Wine stores. This is not the first time Edible Brands dipped into the cannabis space. In 2019, Edible Arrangements launched its own CBD edibles line, which are not psychoactive. But this pivot to THC is even more bold. And it's a signal that cannabis products, especially edibles and beverages, have gone mainstream. In 1999, Pakistani immigrant Tariq Farid launched the first Edible Arrangements store in Connecticut. Now based in Georgia, the company has become the go-to fruit basket gifting company by selling chocolate covered strawberries, cookies and bouquets of cut fruit for birthdays, anniversaries, funerals and other life milestones. In addition to its franchised stores across the U.S., Edible Brands also owns and Roti, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain. Edible Brands is going headlong into the political battle over THC hemp products currently underway in Texas. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is leading a push to shutter the industry, which is composed of more than 8,000 hemp shops across the state. On Wednesday, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would ban all products containing THC, including gummies, vapes, flower, and beverages. The bill has not become law as the House still needs to vote on its proposal, which would regulate, not eliminate, the state's hemp market. None of this is stopping Edible Brands. The company is also building a flagship Edibles store in downtown Atlanta. The company will own the first few hemp products stores under this concept but will eventually open the model up to franchisees. 'We're treating it like a bodega style [store],' says Thomas Winstanley, the executive vice president of 'We want to make it feel like it's a regular consumer experience that's elevated, that's premium, and doesn't feel like you're walking into a smoke shop, or a gas station.' When asked if Edible Brands is betting its future on cannabis, Silber, the founder's daughter, is clear. 'For us, this is just one of the pillars of our growth strategy,' she says. 'It's definitely not a make or break type of thing. We're going to continue to diversify and grow this brand, just as we are with [our] other brands.'
