Hello Omni Talk Fans! Enough already! It is just too damn cold in Minneapolis. It cannot be April 28th and still be below freezing!

So to all of you living in warmer climes, Anne and I salute you, are envious of you, and wish we were you right about now.

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, Anne and I had a ball discussing:

- Amazon’s newest suburban store Amazon Go concept, replete with made-to-order food, and whether it could one day soon evolve into “the gas station of the future.”

- A really interesting new store concept from online retailer MorningSave down in Texas that promises to meld the beauty of the online treasure hunt with in-store retailing.

- Meta’s new “Meta store,” which is so meta, in and of itself, I can barely control myself.

- An idea coming out of American Eagle, called the “frenemy network,” which encourages apparel retailers to come together to share the costs of fulfillment.

- And closed with a look at Buy with Prime and what it means for Amazon, consumers, and Shopify.

There’s all that, plus hands-free beer buying, airline layovers in San Jose, and the biggest douche since Steff from Pretty in Pink.

Listen to This Week’s Fast Five Podcast

Be careful out there,

-- Chris, Anne, and the entire Omni Talk team

P.S. We have a couple of really interesting events coming your way soon as part of our ongoing Ask An Expert Live Series on LinkedIn.

Up first on May 17th, we are sitting down with Scandit Co-Founder and CTO Christian Floerkemeier to learn how almost anything inside a physical store can be turned into a smart scanning device.

And then on the following day, May 18th, we are chatting with Talkdesk’s Genesis Miranda Longo and Antonio Gonzalez about how retailers should think about customer service and loyalty across generations as this world of omnichannel retailing continues to evolve.

You can register for the upcoming events by clicking on the two images right below this sentence.