Will Breakfast Bankrupt You?

Plus: the new streaming platform

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.

I’m hearing that SNL 50 delivered last night. Eddie Murphy was back. Paul McCartney showed up. Sabrina performed with that other Paul, Simon that is. The real star is creator Lorne Michaels, though. Keeping something afloat, nay relevant, for 50 years, especially within the ever changing mores of comedy (it often doesn’t age well, does it?), is a feat to be admired. Read this New Yorker profile on Michaels, or the hilarious reply-all thread that resulted from an invite to his recent book event. As Graydon Carter put it, “Honestly, I have my own life. I cannot devote any more time to Lorne …”

I’m sure you all are thinking something similar here, so I’ll get to it with today’s Small Talk.

For consideration …

• Breakfast, but make it expensive
  First they came for our coffee, now the entire cost of breakfast is going up. Avian flu, and the subsequent slaughter of 159 million birds, has ratcheted egg prices up to nearly $5/dozen, a new record, while citrus greening is destroying Florida orange groves. OJ “has jumped nearly 90 percent since 2020.” And yet, breakfast at restaurants is bigger than ever. I love to see restaurants thriving, and part of that equation, especially at your high wattage spots, is the maître d’, the best of whom can make much of the magic happen. Our friend Chris Black spoke to five of the finest to get their secrets. For instance: at Tower Bar, in LA’s Sunset Tower, maître d’ Dimitri Dimitrova reveals that a special light switch was installed so that the light above Tom Ford’s table could be turned off, as per the famous fashion designer’s request. Less, shall we say, accommodating is—allegedly—Bon Appétit, who Wishbone Kitchen claims copied her own videos to create their new series, “Dinner with Friends.”
  

• In influencers we trust?
  TikTok this, Netflix that. Whatever. YouTube is king. CEO Neal Mohan revealed that we’re all collectively watching over a billion hours of YouTube a day. Even more interesting, and surprising, is that we’re consuming more YouTube on actual TVs rather than phones. Makes sense, I suppose. Everyone knows you stream on TV while simultaneously doomscrolling on your phone. Elsewhere in streaming, a new video platform has emerged, and it’s targeting independent filmmakers. Olyn likens itself to Shopify for filmmakers, in that it “leans on the power of social referrals to spread ‘à la carte’ streaming content.” Critics, creators, influencers etc. can recommend movies—like the new “Midas Man,” a biopic about Beatles manager Brian Epstein, which recently made its Olyn debut—and be more effective than a multi-million dollar marketing campaign or an algorithm. At least that’s what Olyn is banking on. As CEO/co-founder Ana Maria Jipa told TechCrunch, “a recommendation from someone you trust carries far more weight than a suggestion by an algorithm on a streaming platform.” Speaking of which, Gen-Z admit they’re more likely to trust an influencer rather than an expert like, say, a doctor or a scientist, because influencers meet them where they are: on their phones. It’s a gambit travel booking platform Klook is betting on. The company, which targets Millennial and Gen-Z travelers who use social to plan experience-driven trips, just raised $100 million, bumping its total to over $1 billion.
  

• It's called branding
  Of course not all influencers can be trusted. Take Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness influencer who claimed to have had brain cancer as a way to pedal her holistic cures. Gibson inspired the new Netflix series everyone is binging, "Apple Cider Vinegar." In better beverage news, prebiotic soda (yuuum) Olipop is now valued at $1.85 billion – not bad for a seven-year-old brand. Olipop's success story is a textbook example of excellent branding, something their rival Poppi, who (controversially) sent vending machines to influencers for $25k a pop, could learn something about. Then there’s milk. You think we’d be shunning it, and we are, unless it’s laced with protein. Fairlife is booming, and proving very expensive to its parent company, Coca-Cola. When the iconic soft drink maker purchased Fairlife in 2020 “they agreed on performance based payouts, originally projected to be $320M.” Fast forward five years, and thanks to the one-two punch of protein maxxers and the Ozempic craze, and Fairlife’s “price tag is now looking to be closer to $7.4B over the past 5 years, making a huge dent in Coca-Cola’s operating margin.”

Quicker hits …

• Everyone's favorite Kennedy, Jack Schlossberg, has quit all socials.

• How this show brought one of cinema's most iconic and beloved characters back from the dead [SPOILERS].

• There's a "new" Robert Frost poem.

• Can Switzerland's most old school ski resort survive a new glam hotel?
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird