Columbus, Ohio-based pizza chain Sbarro, recently out of bankruptcy, is set to open the first of four freestanding restaurants with traditional menus in its home city - as well as carryout and delivery. The new stores represent a big remodel and menu simplification, with the concept restaurants the first of Sbarro locations to use open kitchens where customers can see the process. The focus will be pizza and stromboli.

Toyota will invest $50 million in a new joint project with Stanford University and the MIT to advance the development of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and robotics. While the project could eventually lead to fully autonomous vehicles, the more immediate goal is to assist human drivers to be not only safer but also to allow them to drive later in life.

It appears Google has found a way to neutralize an ad-blocking technology, AdBlock Plus. It is popular as a way to bypass ads hosted on the internet, including video ads served by Google's YouTube. But Google's workaround also seems to punishes ad blockers. As Twitter users have noted, AdBlock users are having to see full-length video ads with no option to skip...unless they disable AdBlock.

Heavy duty truckers and managers need diesel engine oil. And they have dreams and aspirations. A new global campaign by J. Walter Thompson for Shell Rimula oil shows how dreams, family, and personal ambitions keep truckers going. Running in 17 countries, it features two films, respectively, about a Chinese and Russian trucker. View them at the jump.

One awards series at the yearly Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators Conference, or MUFSO, is Hot Concepts. This year's winners are New York-based Bareburger, with organic, all-natural burgers made from a wide variety of meats. The other winners are Cava Mezze Grill; Eureka; Tortas Frontera and Vertskebap.

Esurance is on the ball when it comes to sports and entertainment alliances, which include the U.S. Open, Major League Baseball, the San Francisco Giants' all-star catcher Buster Posey, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers and music-film-arts event South by SouthWest. But as Chris Lee, director of brand partnerships and social engagement for the division of Allstate, relates in this Q&A, a big part of the challenge is not in just building these relationships but keeping the company's message fresh.

In a classic "burgers to brioches" story, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has named John Fuller, formerly CEO of Johnny Rockets, its next president and CEO. Fuller had been CEO of Johnny Rockets for the past five years, where he led the company's global growth and helped generate record earnings. He also guided the 338-unit chain through its sale to Sun Capital Partners in 2013.

Leon Gorman, who led L.L. Bean after the company's founder, his grandfather, died, has passed away at 80. Gorman led the Maine-based company as CEO or chairman for 46 years before retiring from L.L. Bean as chairman of the board in 2013. He transformed L.L. Bean from a catalog company with a single retail store and 100 employees into a multi-channel retailer with more than 5,000 employees and sales topping $1.5 billion.

Austrian Hans Dieter Poetsch, Volkswagen Group's finance chief for the past 13 years has been tapped to be chairman of the company, which at this point is also to add more red ink to the company's ledger. It is also going to be a challenge since making changes there is a little like trying to pass reforms in Congress: the divided supervisory board is refractory. He was chosen because he is viewed as neutral.

In a survey by Precima, the data analytics division of LoyaltyOne, 60% of respondents said large retailers don't stock enough local products, while 42% said chains don't do a good job of highlighting local selections. Only 15% rated large retail chains as excellent at stocking and promoting local products. In comparison, local farmers' markets earned an excellent rating from 71% of consumers, while 23% rated natural food stores as excellent when it comes to local.