You may have heard American malls are dying, but earlier this month, $290 million changed hands for the purchase of the Crabtree Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina.

• Real estate investment trust Macerich purchased the 1.3 million square-foot mall with plans to implement a $60 million strategic investment plan that would “create a more inviting and refreshed ambiance and reinforce Crabtree’s longstanding reputation within the community,” Macerich CEO Jack Hsieh said in a statement.

That’s a lot of money for a shopping format that is regularly declared dead or dying. Then again, Crabtree isn’t just any old mall. It’s a Class A mall—a category that some in the industry see as a bright spot in the current retail landscape.

“Class A malls have emerged as one of the highest-performing retail formats over the past year, with high occupancy and growing sales, and are positioned for continued success through 2025 and beyond,” a recent report from real estate advisory firm Newmark concluded.

The report explained that “while the broader mall format has fallen out of favor,” a lack of new development has bolstered the appeal of existing malls to retailers, with the result that asking rents are rising and available space is shrinking.

Keep reading here.—AV

CPG giants from Kraft Heinz to PepsiCo have been saying their goodbyes to synthetic food dyes amid pressure from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—but not every company is giving in.

The FDA requested in April that brands remove petroleum-based synthetic dyes from food products, as part of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Since then, a slew of big CPGs announced their plans to oblige. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta confirmed in April that the company is phasing out artificial colors across Lays and Tostitos by the end of 2025. In June, Jell-O maker Kraft Heinz said it wouldn’t launch any new products with synthetic colors, and would remove them from existing products where “not critical to the consumer experience,” replace them with natural options, or create new colors if natural ones aren’t available, according to a company release. Lucky Charms parent General Mills said it’ll remove the colors from its US cereals and K-12 school foods by next summer. Nestlé USA, too, said it’ll remove synthetic colors by mid-2026, and Conagra, maker of brands like Birds Eye and Duncan Hines, will phase them out of all frozen brands by the end of 2025 and all products by the end of 2027.

Keep reading here.—EC

You yearn for the days when the Black Eyed Peas were on the radio the way Ronald McDonald yearns for a better quarter. In its latest bid to win over cash-strapped customers, McDonald’s put the beloved Snack Wrap back on menus starting today, nearly a decade after it was discontinued.

The revamped wrap will cost $2.99, more than double its $1.29 launch price in 2006, per QSR Magazine (and about a dollar more after adjusting for inflation). Many McD’s fans are so fed up with everything costing a bajillion dollars that they guessed the wrap would be $4 or more in Reddit discussions.

McD’s also added spicy McMuffins to the menu this week, in a play for Gen Z’s heart.

McBig picture: Low- and middle-income customers are the Golden Arches’ core base, and McDonald’s feels them pulling away amid a broader consumer spending slowdown. The chain reported its worst quarter since 2020 in May, citing a 3.6% dip in US sales.

Keep reading here on Morning Brew.—ML