Drink up: CC’s Coffee House continues its expansion throughout Louisiana, announcing today that it will open a new coffee house on Youree Drive in Shreveport. CC’s has more than 38 locations throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, according to a company news release, and is expected to triple its number of stores across the broader Gulf South by 2020. In June, CC’s announced it would open a large format, company-owned and -operated coffee house on Range Avenue in Denham Springs—the first since 2010—this fall.
Site selection: As Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. begins scouring the U.S. for a site to build a planned $1.6 billion auto assembly plant, one analyst thinks Louisiana could be a candidate for the facility. Alan Baum, a Michigan-based independent auto analyst, tells Bloomberg Japanese automakers have typically built plants in a variety of southern U.S. states to build a wider base of political support and influence. Mississippi, a frontrunner for the new project, is currently home to a Corolla factory. But Baum says Toyota could pick up support from two new senators by choosing a state where it doesn’t already have a plant. To that end, Louisiana, Arkansas and North Carolina are good candidates for the project, Baum says. Get more details.
Unloading: Uber Technologies plans to wind down its U.S. subprime car leasing division to stem unsustainably high losses, multiple sources tell The Wall Street Journal. The move is a major retreat for Uber, which started the car leasing business just two years ago. The ride-hailing company is aiming to close out or sell most of the business by year-end, the sources say. As many as 500 jobs could be affected by the exit of the Xchange Leasing program, representing roughly 3% of Uber’s 15,000-employee staff. Uber executives were prompted to hit the brakes on the auto-leasing unit in part because they recently came to a stunning realization: The average loss per vehicle was about 18 times what they had thought. Get more details. A subscription may be required.
