Despite an uneven consumer landscape, Wendy's expects its makeover to boost same-store sales this year, CEO Emil Brolich told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Wednesday.

"Certainly, it's a challenging economic environment out there," Brolich said. "But, remember, this is a very large marketplace, and there's always been an opportunity for excellent success for those brands that are relevant to consumers. We believe we can be one of those brands."

Christmas isn't for seven months, but Christmas tree growers have already discovered coal in their stockings.

"I'm pretty frustrated with the White House," said Betty Malone of Sunrise Tree Farm in Philomath, Oregon. Malone has been in the business for 40 years, but she said tree sales are falling even as the population grows. "There are challenges to our industry from outside of the U.S., from plastic trees coming from China."

A Harris poll conducted for the National Christmas Tree Association revealed a 20 percent drop in the numbers of live Christmas trees bought between 2011 and 2012. When Americans were asked if they displayed a tree during the holidays, 56 percent said they put up a fake tree, while only 17 percent said they bought a live one.

Outdoor chefs are in for an unhappy surprise as the summer grilling season approaches: The cost to fire up a backyard barbecue is going up.

The price of wholesale beef hit an all-time high Friday and there is no indication it will decline this year. While the price of beef alone is up at least 5 percent, that summer cookout is going to feel much more expensive to any serious barbecue aficionado buying good-quality meat.

It's far from a done deal, but the days of mostly tax-free shopping on the Internet moved one big step closer to ending on Monday.

By a vote of 69 to 27, the Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act with bi-partisan support. The bill would allow a state that has a sales tax to require online retailers—those with more than a million dollars in out-of-state sales each year—to collect that sales tax from all of its customers in that state.

Zac Brown, the Grammy-award winning country singer who often writes about beer in his lyrics, will soon have his image on specially designed beer cans.

Landshark Lager, an Anheuser-Busch InBev brand, will feature the Zac Brown Band on limited-edition, 16-ounce cans hitting shelves nationwide this week. Two additional Zac Brown Band can designs will be released later this summer.

While Landshark Lager is one of the smaller brands in the Anheuser-Busch portfolio, the partnership with Zac Brown Band is taken from the same promotional play book the brewer is using for some of its larger brands, namely to highlight an association with music.

The top-selling Bud Light will be the sponsor of "Bud Light Music First," a summer-long music and concert promotion that will culminate with Bud Light presenting one concert in each of the 50 states on Aug. 1.

Decades after downing their first juice boxes, health-conscious Americans are showing renewed enthusiasm for cold-pressed juice, a trend that's prompting private equity and venture capitalists to follow in search of profits.

After sampling the offerings of several juice companies, Jonathan Grayer, the CEO of Weld North, an investment firm in partnership with KKR, bought a minority stake in Organic Avenue and eventually invested more, for a 70 percent share of the company, shelling out "eight figures" in the process, he said.

When mom receives pink roses in a Mother's Day bouquet, it's the end of a long process that began 80 days before, when a farmer, typically one living in the Andean mountains of Ecuador, pinched his flowers to start a new cycle and have peak of production in time for the holiday.

"Mother's Day is known as a holiday of volume, but the last few years the production for Mother's Day has been slow because of the weather conditions in Ecuador and Colombia," said José Vicente Mantilla, a manager at Bellaflor Group. The company manages a 38-acre farm, 7,874 feet above sea level in the suburbs of Quito, Ecuador.

Although Bellaflor sells more flowers on Mother's Day, revenue on Valentine's Day is larger because moms may receive a mix of flowers, while Valentine's Day is more skewed to pricier roses. Though this year, because of the weather conditions, Mother's Day prices are approaching Valentine's Day level prices, said Mantilla.

Talk about a Jedi mind trick—Madison Avenue wants in on Star Wars' "force."

For years, giving quasi-holiday status to May 4 was a sort of inside joke for sci-fi types, a play on the famous phrase "May the force be with you." Fans dressed up, got together for movie marathons and horsed around with homemade light sabers. But now, marketers have begun appropriating Star Wars Day with giveaways, sales and other promotions. Has this viral phenomenon gone to the Dark Side?

Clothing store Hot Topic is debuting a new line of Star Wars-themed tops and dresses on its website and giving away 500 Star Wars cinch sacks to online customers, and toy company Hasbro is discounting "Star Wars" items by 20 percent on its site tomorrow. (Shoppers have to enter the coupon code SWFANDAY at checkout.)

The death toll after the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh topped 500 Friday, and is still expected to climb.

While this is the deadliest industrial disaster in the country's history, it is just one of a string of tragedies over the past year. Five months ago, a fire in a factory producing clothes for Wal-Mart killed 112 workers.

Major retailers like Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, Gap, Nike and Target are feeling a new degree of pressure to re-assess global sourcing strategies. The disaster's magnitude is hard to ignore, but this tragedy also comes in the midst of a transition in which consumers are becoming less tolerant of perceived complacency regarding workplace safety.

"These companies constantly assess their reputational risk," said Scott Nova, executive director of The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) in Washington, D.C.," and they then balance that against the cost of making changes."

According to Nova, the frustration among consumers and activists could be starting to tip that balance, which may force retailers to make changes.

LeapFrog saw its sales improve in the latest quarter, but investors are still looking for something more.

The Emeryville, Calif., toymaker topped Wall Street's expectations Thursday by posting a narrower-than-expected loss, but shares fell because its outlook for the rest of the year is a bit lighter than some had hoped.

In recent years, LeapFrog has seen success with its popular LeapPad2 tablet for young children. But other products have lagged in innovation such as its Tag reading system.

The company tried to change that this week by introducing the LeapReader, which goes beyond Tag, by not only helping teach children to read, but also to write.

"It is a product [LeapReader] that will keep their reading franchise going. It is a better product than Tag—it works on writing as well as reading," said Sean McGowan, a toy industry analyst at Needham & Co.