The Great Breakfast Cereal Slump

Plus: baseball caps for billionaires

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC, San Francisco, 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.

This is a friendly reminder to make eye contact, smile, and strike up a conversation. We can help with that last one: if you absolutely MUST go out and meet people, here are some stories that might spark some chit-chat.

For consideration …

• Breakfast news
  Cold cereal continues to get the cold shoulder from consumers, who are rejecting the once-undisputed leader in quick breakfasts. Especially Gen Z, who, according to an article in AP, eat more veggies first thing in the morning than Gen X or Boomers. The decline has been a slow, painful one for cereal companies over the last quarter century, with a brief, glorious bump in sales during the COVID lockdowns. Once-mighty breakfast brand WK Kellogg, makers of Corn Flakes, Special K, Rice Krispies, and others, is being sold to Italian candy maker Ferrero Group. According to experts, cereal also suffers from its essential nature: it’s not a grab-and-go food like a protein bar, and it’s processed. Tom Rees, a food product consultant, told AP that cereal “can’t escape the fact that it doesn’t look like a natural food. You have to create it and form it.” Here’s another first-meal scoop: McDonald’s just announced the Spicy McMuffin, which is exactly like their classic Egg McMuffin — only it’s spicy. (Each puck is blasted with McDonald’s Spicy Pepper Sauce.) Only at participating restaurants.
  

• Hats off
  Every year, the rich and powerful gather in Sun Valley, Idaho, for a conference cheekily referred to as “billionaire summer camp.” This annual get-together is a chance for tech bros, CEOs, and other masters of the universe to kibbitz about the state of the world while the rest of us watch from afar. But eagle-eyed observers at the Wall Street Journal have spotted the fashion accessory of the year: the humble baseball cap. According to the WSJ, it’s not that these affluent movers and shakers haven’t occasionally worn a baseball cap —it’s just that this year, the variety is nigh staggering. Blank hats. Hats with logos. Old-school. Brand new. The article even speculates on why some powerful men wore this hat or that one. Billionaires: they’re just like people! These dudes aren’t trailblazers, though — they’re just following other, more fabulous tycoons. Chalk it up to the still popular “quiet luxury” trend, one in which involves a whole generation of swells wearing deceptively simple sweaters and pants and, yes, ballcaps. These pricey threads aren’t actually quiet. But let’s not hurt any feelings. Here's how to clean a dirty baseball cap, FYI.
  

• Tales From The Crypto
  As Congress plans to debate crypto-friendly legislation, Bitcoin is enjoying an unprecedented rally. Nicknamed “Crypto Week,” the three bills in play—if passed—will supercharge the mainstreaming of the digital currency. Investors are bullish, sending Bitcoin’s value to new heights: over $120,000. George Mandres, senior trader at XBTO Trading LLC, told Bloomberg that this is a sign that Bitcoin is “maturing” as a “store of value.”

Quicker hits …

• Lena Dunham has a new show. So why is she hated so much?

• The new Superman is woke, as in, its studio, Warner Bros., woke up to great box office news.

• A new, terrible dating trend! Aaah!

• How much do you think the world's most expensive cheese is? (More than you'd think.)

• Don't own a sailboat? That's fine. Here's how to provision one for 100 days at sea anyway.

• Cyborg death bees. Oh, they're coming.

• Hey, the TSA made a good decision.
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird