Le Pain Quotidien, the bakery-café brand founded in Brussels in 1990, is well-known in London, France and New York, but few realize it's a hit in Russia, where the premium bakery is a go-to for expats and upscale residents in Moscow. It's operated there by NX Bakery Group, which runs several bakery brands in the market for a monthly turnover of $2 million. From sourcing local ingredients to hedging against the unpredictable Russian weather, NX Bakery executives Gohar Gragossian and Ian D. Zilberkweit tell Russian TV's Business RT how they have overcome obstacles to make importing a very European brand a success.

Last Sunday was a bad day for the Glazer family. Both its soccer club, Manchester United, and its American football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, lost home games in London over the weekend. That's right, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the designated home team when they played the Chicago Bears at Wembley Stadium, England's national stadium. It was the Bucs' second trip to London in three years to play a regular season game on foreign soil.

NFL games in Europe are not a new phenomenon. This year's installment at Wembley was the fifth annual “International Series” game played by the NFL across the pond. The International Series began in 2007, the same year that NFL's Europa League ceased operations. The NFL's initial European experiment began in 1995 but failed to generate a profit despite generating strong attendance numbers. Maybe it was a case of too much, too soon.

The NFL's current strategy for exporting American football falls in line with that of Europe's most popular soccer clubs, including Barcelona and Manchester United, both of which toured the United States this past summer to prepare for their upcoming regular seasons in Spain and England, respectively. Many European soccer clubs have also taken their talents to Asia as they scramble to sell replica jerseys and other branded merchandise in Asia's growing economies.Continue reading...

Afar.com, launched in 2010, is the digital extension of the travel magazine of the same name. As the above video explains, for founders Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz, “experiential travel is a way of life,” and their brand nuance is getting "out of your comfort zone," delving beneath the surface to real places and real people.

It’s one example of how travel is trending as one of the hottest online verticals for disintermediation, with a slew of start-ups seeking differentiation in a crowded field.

Following the early crop of online booking sites – Hotels.com, Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline – a second wave of sites like Kayak made search the currency for iterating online travel. Now, leveraging social media is the Shangri-La for targeted trip advice, crowdsourcing experiences and recommendations from the most trusted sources – friends, and friends of friends.Continue reading...

Singapore is a hotbed of fashion, innovation and culinary excellence. Now this independent Asian city-state that sits at the tip of the Malay Peninsula wants the rest of the world to get a taste of what it has to offer.

The Singapore Tourism Board has created "Singapore Takeout," a unique pop-up restaurant housed in a custom-fabricated shipping container, to allow consumers around the world to sample Singapore's famed cuisine.Continue reading...

Brittany Laughlin, co-founder of Gtrot, a travel platform that uses Facebook’s social graph to help plan and share their trips, recently talked about her passion at at the IdeaMensch Los Angeles.

Her pitch: Gtrot, short for globe-trotting, combines the ease and expectations of digital natives; post a message to each friend’s Facebook wall and access a stream of advice and daily deals from the likes of Groupon, based on destination, with curated email deal offers five days before departure right up until the trip is over.Continue reading...

For Southwest, 40 is a magic number. The airline just turned 40, so it will celebrate by holding 40 conservation projects from the East to West Coasts of the U.S. during its "Conservation In Action Tour," which started last Friday in Southwest's home town of Dallas. Sony, American Eagle Outfitters, and The Coca-Cola Company are sponsors of the tour. 

Southwest employees will team up with the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Over 700 Southwest employees participated in the first projects in Dallas, which included work on behalf of Rochester Park, the Texas Trees Foundation, and Trinity River Audubon Center.Continue reading...

For an entire month, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's main offices will be located in China.

The US-based hotelier is planning to open an astounding hotel every two weeks in China for the rest of this year, an agressive expansion that made it almost a necessity for Starwood's CEO, Frits van Paasschen, and other top execs from the company's White Plains, New York, headquarters to relocate to Shanghai.

The commitment to China was in place even before the Beijing Olympics, as Starwood Asia Pacific exec Matthew Fry told Bloomberg in 2008. True to its word, Starwood is now opening its new Chinese properties at a dizzying rate.Continue reading...

Behold the world's first "amphibious ice cream van," now cruising the Thames for anyone in London and in need of a (novel) cool treat. Check out the "making of" below.Continue reading...