A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2021
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DOW
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BRIEFING
Powell: Inflation
rise only temporary
The economy is grow-
ing at a healthy clip, and
that has accelerated in-
flation, Federal Reserve
Chair Jerome Powell says
in written testimony to
be delivered Tuesday at a
congressional oversight
hearing.
Still, Powell reiterated
his view that inflation’s
recent jump to a 13-year
high would prove tempo-
rary. He blamed the rise
in inflation on several fac-
tors, including sharp price
declines last year at the
onset of the pandemic,
which make inflation fig-
ures now, compared with
a year ago, look much
larger. Higher gas prices,
and rapid increases in
consumer spending as
the economy reopens,
coupled with supply bot-
tlenecks, have also con-
tributed to rising costs.
“As these transitory
supply effects abate, infla-
tion is expected to drop
back toward our lon-
ger-run goal,” Powell said,
referring to the 2% infla-
tion rate the Fed typically
targets.
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Harris pushes
child tax credit
The White House
sought Monday to raise
awareness of the federal
government’s new ex-
panded child tax credit,
which will start paying out
monthly in July to families
with children who are 17
years old and younger.
Vice President Kamala
Harris spoke at a recre-
ation center in Pittsburgh
as part of a broader push
to promote the pro-
gram in partnership with
churches, schools and
other organizations.
“When more families
know about how they
can get the relief, that is
how we will be able to lift
our children out of pov-
erty,” Harris said.
The administration
has launched the website
https://childtaxcredit.gov
with details for poten-
tial recipients. As part of
President Joe Biden’s $1.9
trillion coronavirus relief
package, eligible families
can receive as much as
$3,600 for each child un-
der the age of 6. The tax
credit will be $3,000 an-
nually per child between
the ages of 6 and 17.
The payments are to
be made monthly, a first
for the program.
— Bulletin wire reports
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Troubled Portland CBD brand sold Demand
to California lifestyle company
fuels
PORTLAND
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
A California company
has acquired the Social CBD
brand from Sentia Wellness,
a high-profile Portland busi-
ness beset by a series of prob-
lems after its troubled launch
in 2019.
Kadenwood, a privately
held company in Southern
California, announced last
week that it had bought the
Social CBD brand to add to
its existing line of CBD-based
sports creams, pet foods and
teas. The companies didn’t an-
nounce terms of the deal.
CBD, or cannabidiol, is de-
rived from hemp and doesn’t
have the psychoactive ingredi-
ent of recreational marijuana.
CBD has attracted a following
of enthusiasts who believe its
properties improve health and
well being.
Sentia didn’t say whether it
will continue to operate after
the deal and referred ques-
tions to Kadenwood. The Cal-
ifornia company said it will
retain 16 Sentia employees, 14
of them working remotely in
Oregon or working at its Port-
land warehouse.
Sentia emerged from the
2019 sale of Portland mari-
juana company Cura Cannabis.
Cura sold its recreational mar-
ijuana business to a Massachu-
setts company, Curaleaf, which
is now one of the nation’s larg-
est cannabis businesses.
Cura’s original funding came
from a notorious Lake Oswego
real estate firm, Iris Capital,
whose 2015 collapse cost doz-
ens of Oregon retirees approx-
imately $1 million. And Cura’s
former CEO, Nitin Khanna,
left that job amid fallout from
a past rape allegation against
him, but he remained involved
in the company and later ran
Sentia.
See Social CBD / A13
rocketing
housing
prices
Median jumps
$15,000 in a month
BY JANET EASTMAN
The Oregonian
Stocks snap back
after bad week
Stocks rebounded
Monday on Wall Street,
clawing back most of
their sharp losses from
last week, as the initial jolt
passes from the Federal
Reserve’s reminder that it
will eventually offer less
help for markets.
The S&P 500 rose 1.4%.
Oil producers, banks and
other companies that
were hit particularly hard
last week led the way.
The Dow Jones Indus-
trial Average climbed
1.8%, and the Nasdaq
composite rose 0.8%.
Companies whose
profits are the most closely
tied to the economy’s
strength and inflation
were among the market’s
strongest Monday.
Hess, Marathon Oil and
Devon Energy all rose at
least 6.9% as energy stocks
rallied with the price of oil.
Banks were also strong,
with Bank of America
up 2.5% and Wells Fargo
climbing 3.7%.
High-growth com-
panies able to flourish
almost regardless of the
economy lagged behind,
meanwhile.
SILVER
$26.02 +.06
Customers use cashierless technology to
check out with an app or credit card at the first
Amazon Fresh in Washington on opening day
Thursday. Ken Lambert/Seattle Times photos
‘Just walk out’
The median sales price
in the Portland metro area
jumped $15,000, or 3%, from
$500,000 in April to $515,000
in May, according to the Re-
gional Multiple Listing Service.
Home shoppers’ preference
for expanded living spaces,
indoors and out, continues to
cause well-priced homes in de-
sirable areas to receive multiple
offers.
For example: A midcentury
modern house designed by ar-
chitect Saul Zaik in the South-
west Hills sold for $164,000
over its $1.1 million asking
price on May 14.
Trisha Highland, a broker
with John L. Scott Woodstock,
said economists aren’t predict-
ing an end to escalating offers
in the greater Portland area
anytime soon.
“Bidding wars are fueled by
good old-fashioned supply and
demand,” she said.
Compounding an anemic
number of homes for sale, the
state’s growing population,
September 2020 wildfires that
destroyed more than 4,000 Or-
egon dwellings and a lack of
new construction. Oregon has
long had the largest housing
shortage in the nation, accord-
ing to the Federal Home Loan
Corp or Freddie Mac.
See Housing / A13
Amazon opens its largest-yet cashierless grocery store
BY KATHERINE ANNE LONG
The Seattle Times
A
mazon’s long-
awaited Fresh
grocery store
in Bellevue,
Washington, opened
Thursday to crowds —
and a twist.
The company re-
vealed in a surprise an-
nouncement last week
that the store is the
company’s first full-size
Fresh grocery equipped
with cashierless tech-
nology, powered by a vast
array of motion-aware ceil-
ing cameras and sensors that
track which items are removed
from shelves and then automati-
cally bill customers’ Amazon ac-
counts when they leave.
Nationwide, Amazon operates
more than a dozen Fresh stores,
where groceries have a lower price
point than the more upscale Whole
Foods chain acquired by Amazon
in 2017.
While other Fresh stores have
their own share of space-age tech-
nology — including smart shop-
ping carts that total up their con-
tents and send customers a digital
bill — the new location in Bellevue’s
Factoria neighborhood is the first
Fresh store to be equipped with
Amazon’s cashierless checkout ca-
pabilities, which Amazon calls “just
walk out” technology. Amazon
Fresh is also the name of the com-
pany’s grocery-delivery service.
“The first time you do it, you feel
like you’re getting away with some-
thing,” said shopper Celeste Coo-
per, who trekked from her home
in Seattle to see the new store on its
opening day.
Cooper said she already uses the
An Alexa device is available for
customer use at the first Amazon
Fresh in Washington.
“The first time you
do it, you feel like
you’re getting away
with something.”
— Celeste Cooper,
a shopper from Seattle
cashierless technology at the Ama-
zon Go convenience store near her
house. “It takes some getting used
to, but now I just can’t stand the
lines anywhere else.”
Cooper also said she was “im-
pressed” by the scale of the store.
The 25,000-square-foot grocery
store, a former Safeway, is Ama-
zon’s largest application of its “just
walk out” tech. The company has
historically struggled to use the
technology in formats larger than
a convenience store, according to
reporting from Bloomberg, be-
cause of the technical com-
plexity of tracking a large
number of shoppers across
a bigger space.
But rather than rely ex-
clusively on cashierless
checkout, the Factoria
Fresh store has a hybrid
model, according to
Amazon spokesperson
Rachel Hass. Custom-
ers can choose whether
to “just walk out” or to
check out with human
cashiers — who unlike in
early iterations of Amazon
Go stores, do take cash. The
Factoria store is Amazon’s first at-
tempt at such a hybrid model.
Amazon’s sprawling grocery
lineup has undergone changes re-
cently and expanded during the
pandemic. The company said last
month it was ditching its Amazon
Go Grocery branding for larger
grocery stores with cashierless
technology.
Amazon has also been intro-
ducing its cashierless technology
into progressively larger formats,
according to recent media reports.
Bloomberg reported in April that
Amazon was installing ceiling
cameras at an under-construction
Connecticut grocery, and a vacant
storefront in Ballard, Washington,
also bears signs of a cashierless
Amazon Fresh location to come.
Amid concerns from grocery
unions that Amazon’s cashierless
technology could hurt grocery
employment, the company had
sought to play up its hiring push
for the Factoria store and another
under-construction Fresh grocery
in Seattle’s Central District.
See Amazon / A13
American,
Southwest
airlines
scrap flights
Crew shortages, weather
cause cancellations
BY MARY SCHLANGENSTEIN
Bloomberg
American Airlines Group
Inc. dropped about 1% of its
scheduled daily flights for July
after a faster-than-expected
surge in summer travel led to
crew shortages.
The airline will cancel 950
flights during the first 13 days
of July, after it scrapped more
than 400 flights over the week-
end and into Monday on what
it cited as poor weather con-
ditions at its Miami and Chi-
cago hubs that exacerbated
a shortfall in pilots. In some
cases, delays caused by storms
exhausted its group of reserve
pilots.
The sudden jump in de-
mand fueled by people tired
of staying close to home has
strained airlines’ ability to re-
build operations cut back amid
the onset of the pandemic last
year. Pilots who took leave and
those who were switched to
new types of planes have had
to be retrained as flight de-
mand has recovered to near-
2019 levels.
American added flights back
faster than its primary compet-
itors and is operating at about
10% below its 2019 seat capac-
ity, according to records from
flight-data firm OAG.
See Flights / A13