If you’re an ice cream fan, there’s some bad news: One of America’s most beloved ice cream brands may soon see hundreds of its in-store retail locations vanish just as summer is beginning. Thrifty Ice Cream counters, which are found in hundreds of Rite Aid locations in California and other states, are facing an uncertain future thanks to the pharmacy chain’s most recent bankruptcy proceedings. Here’s what you need to know. What is Thrifty Ice Cream? Thrifty Ice Cream is an ice cream brand that is owned by the Rite Aid pharmacy chain. The brand was originally founded in 1940 in Los Angeles, where it was sold from soda fountain counters inside the Thrifty Drug Store chain. The brand is iconic in Los Angeles and throughout California, where its cylindrical ice cream scoops are a summer staple for people who want to cool down with a sweet treat. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2018, until 1975, a scoop of Thrifty’s ice cream cost as little as five cents, and today scoops cost just a few dollars.   In 1996, the Rite Aid pharmacy chain bought Thrifty PayLess Inc., the then-owner of the Thrifty pharmacy store and Thrifty ice cream, for $2.3 billion. After the acquisition, Rite Aid operated over 500 Thrifty Ice Cream counters inside its pharmacies, mainly in California. But now it is likely these Thrifty Ice Cream counter stores-within-a-store are closing. What will happen to Thrifty Ice Cream? Over the past several days, reports have emerged indicating that up to 500 Thrifty Ice Cream stores may close. When these reports mention “stores” closing, they are referring to the Thrifty Ice Cream counters found in Rite Aid pharmacy locations. Rite Aid is currently undergoing its second bankruptcy in as many years, and the pharmacy chain has already announced plans to close hundreds of locations. It’s important to note that this bankruptcy will mark the end of Rite Aid. All of its stores will either close or be sold to other owners. Locations that that ultimately remain open will no longer be Rite Aid stores. (For example, pharmacy giant CVS has said it will take over 64 physical Rite Aid stores in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.) In 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported that Rite Aid operated more than 500 Thrifty Ice Cream stations; however, the pharmacy chain has significantly reduced its footprint since then, having gone through its first bankruptcy in 2023. Meanwhile, Thrifty Ice Cream’s online store locator tool appears to be only partially functional as of the time of this writing, so the exact number of locations the brand has is unknown. Fast Company has reached out to Rite Aid for clarity on how many Thrifty Ice Cream counters are still in operation and what their fate will be amid the bankruptcy process. But just because Rite Aid is closing locations and filing for bankruptcy, that doesn’t mean Thrifty Ice Cream is necessarily done for good. After selling off most of its pharmacy assets this month, Rite Aid is expected to hold an auction in June to sell its remaining assets, including the Thrifty brand and the Thrifty Ice Cream factory in El Monte, California. It’s possible that a buyer could swoop in to scoop up the Thrifty Ice Cream brand. If so, any buyer may continue to operate Thrifty Ice Cream stores. The counters in the closing Rite Aid stores would no longer be an option, but a new buyer would be free to open Thrifty Ice Cream individual stores, or form partnerships with other pharmacies or retailers to run Thrifty Ice Cream counters in their stores. Thrifty Ice Cream also currently sells its ice cream at retailers including Vons and Albertsons. A buyer may choose to keep the brand alive through retail outlet sales alone. But for now, all this is just conjecture. We likely won’t know the future of Thrifty Ice Cream until Rite Aid’s bankruptcy is completed, or until next month’s auction.

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Summer officially starts in a few weeks, but I’ve already ordered and preordered the books that will keep me company on airplanes and trips to the beach. The first Modern CEO reading list was heavy on buzzworthy titles. Last year’s edition was a bit more dutiful, highlighting three works that explored the complexities of capitalism. This year, I’m diving into the lives of the ultrarich, whose impact on culture, society, and policy continues to rise. The Haves and the Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos Thanks in part to social media, consumption—of luxury goods, five-star resorts, rare wines, and the like—is increasingly conspicuous. One place where the ultrarich can avoid prying eyes? Aboard their superyachts. As Evan Osnos, a staff writer and podcast host at The New Yorker, writes of such floating mansions: “These shrines to excess capital exist in a conditional state of visibility: they are meant to be unmistakable to a slender stratum of society—and all but unseen by everyone else.” Osnos’s collection of essays promises to shed light on the excesses but also on how the rich amass and keep their wealth and the power that it affords. Personal History: A Memoir by Katharine Graham and Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein One of the biggest business stories of the year—Warren Buffett’s announcement that he will step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway—and the ongoing struggles of The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos (a superyacht owner), are prompting me to reread two great books on my bookshelf. Personal History is Graham’s candid memoir of the personal and professional hurdles she had to overcome en route to becoming CEO of The Washington Post Company and one of the most admired executives in media. Lowenstein’s masterful portrait of Buffett is part biography, part investing tutorial. Graham and Buffett were longtime friends, and Lowenstein seems to credit Graham with leavening some of Buffett’s thrifty instincts. Stories of Buffett’s frugality—his primary residence is a home he bought in Omaha in 1958 for $31,500—will surely be a good palate cleanser after the Osnos book. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao Hao, an Atlantic contributor, is one of the leading journalists covering artificial intelligence (AI), and her book promises to be an unflinching look at the potential and perils of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ambitions for generative AI, which seem to mirror the “move fast and break things” ethos of many tech companies. Luckily for readers, Hao seems willing to explore the unintended consequences of unfettered AI expansion, including the environmental impacts of water- and energy-hungry data centers. So Far Gone by Jess Walter Walter’s latest book—my one fiction pick—has many of the things I love in novel: a road trip, multigenerational conflict, and a gruff former journalist as the protagonist. In So Far Gone, Rhys Kinnick sets off to rescue his daughter and grandchildren from a radical militia group. It’s a world Walter knows well: As a journalist for the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, Walter covered the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge in Northern Idaho, which is credited with fueling the anti-government militia movement. Challenging stuff, but an early review from Ann Patchett confirms why I love Walter’s writing: “Jess Walter managed to build such a warm, funny, loving novel out of so many horrible parts.” What are you reading this summer? What’s on your summer reading list? Please send the name, author, and a sentence or two about why you’d recommend it to modern leaders to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll publish a bonus newsletter with reader suggestions before the official start of summer. Read more: summer reading roundup 24 books to read this summer, according to The Atlantic The Economist’s latest “beach friendly” reads The 15 books USA Today says you should read this summer

When it comes to efficiently detecting memory issues and optimizing performance, the information shown on the Memory Profiler, as well as the information’s precision, is key. We’re investing significant effort in this area. In two recent blogs, members of my team introduced Memory Profiler 1.0.0 and shared five key workflows to diagnose and examine memory-related issues in your game.Soon, we will be releasing Memory Profiler 1.1 (an experimental version is available now), which includes updated labels and descriptions to explain how memory works and how application memory footprint is calculated.Since memory footprint continues to be a hot topic in our conversations with developers, I’m here to answer your frequently asked questions – specifically, to cover these three topics:What resident memory isHow application memory footprint is calculatedHow to analyze memory footprintLet’s drill into memory allocation in Unity. When the engine allocates memory, it first reserves multiple memory pages in the virtual address space that can fit the requested allocation. Pages are the smallest units of memory management. Virtual address space and physical storage are each organized into pages, and the page size depends on the platform used. For example, on x86 computers a page size is 4 KB.After the engine has reserved enough pages, it asks the operating system (OS) to “commit” physical storage to memory. This is why allocated memory is often referred to as “committed.” Next, the OS registers that the pages now have physical storage assigned and they can be accessed. Your application-reported “total committed memory” will then increase. However, the physical memory footprint of your application stays the same.The footprint stays the same because, even though you’ve committed your region to physical storage, most OSs are lazy and thrifty, so there’s no assignment of a specific physical storage location. As an example, let’s say you decide to write something in the committed region. There is not yet any physical memory underneath the region, so accessing it will incur a page fault. In response, the OS’s memory manager will allocate a previously available physical page in order to complete your operation. Because all operations are performed with page-size granularity, unaccessed pages of the region will remain empty and without physical memory assigned. Similarly, your application’s resident memory size will increase by the total size of all physical memory pages allocated to complete your operation.If a page has not been accessed for a while or demand for physical memory is high, an OS might offload some pages from your allocated region either to compressed memory or a page swap file, depending on what is supported on your platform.In this case, your application’s reported allocated memory will stay the same but resident memory size will decrease.As you might have already realized, if you only look at allocated memory you may be misled by which allocation consumes your physical memory, which can trick you into optimizing something that isn’t a problem. Not only does this waste your valuable time, you don’t see any difference in your application performance and stability.Overall, your application memory state can be described by this diagram:In summary, here’s how the memory footprint is calculated:Physical memory footprint = Application resident memory + Application compressed memory pagesIn Memory Profiler 1.1, the Summary, Unity Objects, and All Of Memory views will not only show Allocated memory size but also provide information about Resident memory. However, this information will only be shown if the Memory Profiler snapshot is made with Unity 2023.1 or newer. With older snapshots, you’ll still see updated UI and breakdown views, but without information on Resident memory.TheSummary view provides a general overview and an essential metric: Total Resident on Device. If your application needs to run on a platform with limited memory, Total Resident on Device is critical for reviewing low memory warnings and out-of-memory evictions. As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t go over 70% of the total physical memory available on a device.For detailed analysis, you can use Unity Objects andAll of Memory views. You’ll need to select Resident on Device or Allocated and Resident on Device from the dropdown menu and sort by Resident size to see objects that contribute most to the total physical memory used.When analyzing resident memory usage, remember:Managed memory will be dominantly resident. Mono Heap and Boehm Garbage Collector regularly access objects and make them resident.Graphics memory (estimated) is shown as estimated. On most platforms, we don’t have access to information on the exact whereabouts of the graphics resources, so we estimate size based on available information like width, height, depth, pixel format, and so on. This also means we don’t have information about graphics resources’ residency status. For usability reasons, all graphics objects are shown only in the Allocated view mode.Untracked is all memory reported by the OS as allocated by the application, but which lacks solid information on the source of the allocation. It could be native plugins, OS libraries, thread stacks, etc. On some platforms, we provide additional insights into who might have allocated that memory in the group breakdown.When analyzing Native memory, which contains all Unity non-managed allocations used by objects, you’ll see the Reserved memory item. This is memory allocated by Unity Memory Manager but not used by any Unity object during capture. Here’s some helpful information:Reserved memory can be resident, which means that there might have been an object that was recently deleted.You can access additional information about Reserved breakdown by going to the Memory Profiler settings and enabling the “Show reserved memory breakdown” checkbox. By default, this is disabled, as Reserved breakdown doesn’t always contain enough actionable information and requires a deep understanding of how Unity Memory Manager works.You can learn more about Unity Memory Manager and allocation strategies in the allocators setup documentation.On some platforms, we show additional platform-specific groups if they’re of significant size, like Android Runtime on Android. Here are some notes on Android Runtime:On some versions, Android Runtime tends to preallocate a significant amount of memory but never use it. In that case, allocated memory doesn’t add to the application memory footprint and only the resident part of it needs to be considered.If the Android Runtime resident part is taking up a significant amount of the application memory footprint, use the Android Studio profiler to analyze allocations done in Java.Although Android doesn’t have a page file or memory compression by default, the Linux kernel allows applications to overcommit and allocate more memory than is physically available.When capturing, make sure you understand the device you’re using. Some vendors supply the Android Linux kernel with memory compression (zRAM) or vendor-custom page swap file tools.We hope this overview of what to expect in Memory Profiler 1.1 (experimental version available now) and exploration of various topics around memory footprint have been helpful.My team and I plan to continue improving the Memory Profiler to provide more precise and targeted information, as well as warn you about potential out-of-memory situations and how close they might be. Follow the progress on our product roadmap and tell us what you think.Share your feedback with us in the forums. Be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.