Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.
To begin, I’m thinking about my LA family and friends and everyone else affected by the fires right now. We hope you are all safe.
For consideration …
Coffee could make you healthy
With no end in sight to surging coffee prices, here’s some positive news: turns out drinking coffee is good for you. Providing you do it at the right time. A study, in which the coffee consumption habits of 40k adults were analyzed, found that those who enjoy a morning brew or two “were 16 percent less likely to die of any cause and 31 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease.” The twist? Those benefits disappear when we drink coffee in the afternoon. So stick to the morning routine, you nihilists, there are rules here. Elsewhere in the lawless realm of breaking breakfast news, there’s a shortage of doughnuts affecting some Dunkin’ locations, notably in Nebraska, where the product received was “not up to standard,” or whatever standards people have who begin their day with a half a dozen glazed jelly sticks. Hey, there’s always Dunkin’s new limited edition collab with Native, which will make you smell like doughnuts.Video screen saved the restaurant?
Not only are commuters affected by Manhattan’s new congestion pricing, so, too, are restaurants. To add to their woes—January’s dining slump, a big dip in drinking habits, particularly among Gen-Z diners—congestion pricing is squeezing them even further. With essential deliveries like produce, meat, liquor, and laundry all arriving via truck during peak hours—trucks being charged $21.60 every time they drive below 60th Street—operators predict “there’s no way this doesn’t cost us money in the immediate future.” Meaning: expect to pay a lot more for that roti canai. Beer doesn’t get a free pass either (unless you belong to Blackbird’s Beer Club, nice); Anheuser-Busch will raise keg prices by $5 to all Manhattan bars, which could result in a 13 percent increase in pint costs passed down to consumers. No such problems were faced by the 33 people snowed-in at a British pub for four days, who presumably imbibed heavily. A more practical solution to shrinking restaurant sales might be McDonald’s touchscreen kiosks (h/t to Why Is This Interesting? for the find). Once feared to be “job killers,” the automated kiosks have actually increased sales (they’re much better at upselling items like milkshakes and fries than an overworked cashier), resulting in increased revenue and shifting workers to other areas of the restaurant.Disappearing bar carts and adults
The bar cart—that stylish accoutrement of any self-respecting mid-century modern aesthete—is on the decline. The post-pandemic drinking and hosting habits of people have changed, leaving less need for the once prized bar on wheels. Makes sense given our present loneliness epidemic. Yes, Americans are lonelier than ever (even the Surgeon General says so), which we can blame, like most problems in our lives, on the devices with which we are obsessed. Therein lies the problem. Humans are inherently social animals, meaning when previous generations felt lonely, this triggered an action … say, meeting friends at a cafe, bar, or restaurant. Whereas nowadays, our phones delude us into thinking we are not lonely due to the perception of constant connection, and thus the impetus for IRL meet ups is simply not there. This leads to a host of personal and societal problems, most notably the degradation of democracy. Indeed, we are fatigued by the feeling of constant communication—group texts, work Slacks, endless doomscrolling—which has rendered us flakier than ever. When you are bombarded by these things non-stop, cancelling plans (even last minute) feels less rude, and more like self-care. Although maybe all this flouting of societal norms can be blamed on our inability, at least those of a certain generation, to grow up. As the WSJ reports, whole swaths of 30-somethings are bypassing traditional adult milestones like marriage, kids, and home ownership due to factors like inflation, rising housing costs, and the questioning of previously accepted conventions.
Quicker hits …
Could the impending TikTok ban be bad for livestream sales? Not if you're this $5b app built precisely for that.
Donkey from Shrek is dead. 😢
Timothée Chalamet will be an upcoming musical guest on SNL.
Enjoy your week.
BL
Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird