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Walmart is buying…malls.

While Americans are buying trash bags and Great Value soda at Walmart, Walmart is buying…malls.

The big-box colossus just snagged a Norwalk, CT, retail plaza for $44.5 million, beating out a “substantial” amount of interest in the space by laying out the juiciest offer, according to Jeff Kintzer, a principal at Royal Properties, which represented the seller.

A Walmart store anchors the shopping center, so the chain moving from lessee to owner doesn’t inspire much intrigue by itself. As the New York Times reported, Walmart already owns most of its locations. But the deal is part of an emerging pattern:

In May, Walmart bought another shopping center in Bethel Park, PA, where it was also the anchor tenant.
Perhaps most interestingly, Walmart bought a different Pennsylvania mall in January—where it had no retail presence.

Monroeville Mall (Walmart’s Version)

Walmart purchased the Monroeville Mall in Western Pennsylvania for $34 million. Perhaps coincidentally, it wanted a store in the town of Monroeville 20 years ago, but got denied by local authorities. In what might be a revenge move a la Taylor Swift, Walmart buying the mall can clear the pathway into the market far more easily than getting approvals and building a site from scratch.

The chain has not commented on its plans in Monroeville, but it applied for a $7.5 million redevelopment grant from the state of Pennsylvania to support the “full demolition” of the mall and to build new retail, restaurant, and entertainment venues.

What in the (Wally) world? In 2018, Walmart publicly announced a plan to reimagine spaces around its stores as “town centers” that could include local food vendors, gyms, and recreation centers. The Monroeville acquisition might be part of that. Who among us is not a little behind on our New Year’s resolutions?—HVL

Sports-branded ‘victory wine’ is winning

Sports and beer? Duh. Sports and wine, on the other hand? That’s a far less traditional pairing, but one you can expect to see more of.

Sports teams and athletes are increasingly churning out their own private-label “victory wines” — brand extensions that give fans a way to engage deeper with their favorite franchises while offering sports teams greater brand exposure — and business is booming, per Front Office Sports.

Wine for the win

Victory wines, many of which are commemorative, range in price and quality.

One prominent player in the space is Mano’s Wine, which has partnered with dozens of pro sports teams, including the MLB, NFL, and NASCAR, plus 100 collegiate teams.

After the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup this summer, wines labeled with the year, their logo, and the word “champions” quickly became available through Mano’s and a local grocery chain, priced between $35-$60.

How it works:

Teams work with producers to choose a wine style and create custom bottles etched with their logos, slogans, or other IP, with turnaround times as short as a few months.
After that, all they need are the right alcohol licenses to be able to sell it in their preferred retailers (sports stadiums, liquor stores, etc.) and region.

How do they taste?

Some victory wines are better than others.

The Jets 2022 Uncorked Legacy — a $40, award-winning bottle — for example, is apparently quite good, according to sommelier Amanda Schuster, who described it as “a full-bodied cabernet sauvignon with intense brambly fruit… and a balanced acidity with approachable tannins.”

As for other bottles: One social media user who tried an unnamed sports-branded wine claimed it tasted “like a penalty box after a triple overtime game,” per FOS.

But wine isn’t the only booze with spirit

Ready-to-drink canned cocktails: The Las Vegas Raiders released Rum Rusher in 2021, and the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes debuted its own cocktail last year.
Liquor: Sagamore Spirit’s $39 limited-edition Ravens Festivus Maximus, a small batch rye whiskey that celebrates Baltimore’s Super Bowl win in 2001, is now in its third release thanks to its massive popularity.
FOS predicts it’s just a matter of time before sports teams tap into nonalcoholic options.

BTW: If sports isn’t your thing, Mano’s also produces crypto wines as well as licensed LOTR and Scrabble ones.

NASA says it’ll let SpaceX rivals bid for moon trip

Like a commuter checking Uber availability while waiting for a delayed bus, NASA might turn to SpaceX’s competitors to help it get humans back to the moon.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNBC yesterday that SpaceX is behind schedule on its $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon using its jumbo Starship rocket—and said the space agency will consider other companies for the mission now slated for 2028. Duffy mentioned Jeff Bezos’s rocket-maker Blue Origin as a potential contender.

SpaceX rivals’ shares popped on the news: Rocket Lab was up 1.6%, Intuitive Machines rose 4%, and Karman soared 4.3%.

Moonshot misfires

SpaceX is a key player in NASA’s Artemis III mission to beat China’s goal of sending humans to explore the potentially resource-rich south pole of the moon by 2030. But the Star-Spangled Banner’s lunar ETA keeps going up:

SpaceX’s work-in-progress Starship exploded in three of the last five test flights.
Critics also blame deadline slippage on SpaceX’s experimental flight plan—which includes refueling Starship during midflight and a risky lunar landing of a 165-foot rocket.

Looking ahead…Some former NASA officials say they don’t expect Space X to be ready for Artemis III before 2032, according to the New York Times.—SK

Road painting is dangerous, but this robot can do it

People balk at the idea of robots snatching our creative jobs, but our dangerous jobs? Have at ‘em, robots.

The Hustle previously covered Grain Weevil, a robot developed by a Nebraska father-and-son team to break up clumps and level grain in silos. People often do this job by climbing into silos and walking across the grain, but it’s precarious as unstable grain can act like quicksand.

Now, Cleveland startup RoadPrintz offers another useful bot that can paint symbols — turn arrows, “Bus Only,” bike lane markings — onto roads, eliminating the need for stencils or humans to be standing in roadways.

How it works

A robotic arm — RoadPrintz’s first prototype is named Stella — comes mounted on a Ford F-550 Super Duty extended cab truck.

Instead of stenciling symbols on the pavement themselves, workers remain in the truck, stopping and aligning the truck where the symbol needs to go.

The arm — programmed with ~80 symbols and numbers — then paints the selected symbol while one operator watches from the comfort of their temperature-controlled cab on a video monitor. It can also place cones down before or after the painting while it dries, which takes ~10 minutes. Here’s a video demonstration.

The bot reduces what’s ordinarily a three-person crew down to one and doesn’t require anyone to stand in the road, which can be dangerous and difficult.

Where it’s working

It took RoadPrintz seven years to develop its bot, but it recently made a deal to sell one to the Missouri Department of Transportation.

RoadPrintz co-founder Wyatt Newman told Cleveland.com he estimated the department will recoup $500k in labor and productivity savings in two years.

Municipalities that use RoadPrintz may also find that using RoadPrintz work and symbol library prevents errors, like the multiple times crews have misspelled “school.”