Losses widened at Sears Holdings' in the second quarter, hurt by weak sales and deep discounts. For the period ended Aug. 3, Sears lost $194 million, compared with a loss of $132 million in the year-ago period. Revenue dropped 6% to $8.87 billion, from $9.47 billion. Same-store sales fell 1.5%, with a 2.1% drop at Kmart and a 0.8% drop at Sears.

In a bid to win college sports fans, Sonic is branding burger buns with team logos. The edible stamps are made of tapioca starch, and will feature schools including Oklahoma State, University of Oklahoma, as well as universities in Louisiana and Texas.

Arian Foster and Marshawn Lynch may be star NFL running backs, but their training and skills, as EA Sports folklore and marketing would tell you, comes from their dads getting hyper-competitive while playing Madden NFL and passing the rivalry down to their sons.

Amazon is testing a new wireless network, which would let people connect their Amazon devices to the Internet. Tested in Cupertino, California, the trial underscores how intent the world's largest e-commerce company is on moving beyond being a Web destination and hardware maker, and digging deeper into the Internet's underlying technology.

Asda, Walmart's U.K.-based discount chain, is adding real social media posts from customers to packaging, and using the positive responses in point-of-sale materials, too. The goal is to make the private label Chosen By You food brand more emotional, using a #ChosenByMe hashtag.

In an effort to promote healthy eating for kids, Whole Foods Market is teaming up with PBS Kids, offering resources in stores and online. Nutrition materials are geared toward "PEG + CAT," a new PBS show, and will include videos, games and recipes.

Toyota is betting its all-new compact Corolla will only boost sales and lift its reputation as it migrates from traditionally safe, if plain vanilla. With such competitors as Nissan, Hyundai and Ford gaining on style, the Japanese giant admits it needed a "radically different" approach in order to build traction with young buyers.

Fox is reporting that 85% of Super Bowl ad spots are sold out and will be 90% gone by the time the NFL season begins in less than two weeks. Fox won't say what it's charging for the ad space, but top media buyers say some of the game's 30-second slots are going for north of $4 million, vs. the $3.8 million average for CBS for its 2013 broadcast.

With all the foodies on both sides of the Atlantic talking about the cronut craze, the popular croissant-doughnut cross, Britain's Evening Standard newspaper tasked food writer and bloggerVictoria Stewart with commissioning a winning "mashup" dessert to rival the cronut. It turned to American baker Bea Vo, who owns three Bea's of Bloomsbury bakeries in London, who has created the Townie. The hybrid of a brownie and a tart, has been a big success, generating both sales and TV coverage.

A London researcher reports that burgers are the most commonly found food on increasingly Americanized British menus, and found in 13% more places in the past year. Horizons' 2013 Menurama survey reports that they're also getting smaller, reflecting cost-cutting measures: Burgers average 6.35 ounces, a 17% decrease from the 7.69-oz. average found in the summer of 2010.