đ Rise and shine. We hope good things happen to you this week, though getting trillions of dollars likely wonât be one of them (sigh). That special surprise was saved for the Citigroup customer who was mistakenly credited with $81T instead of $280 by the bank last year. Weâll keep our fingers crossed for a measly $1m?
đ§ On the pod:The startups trying to extend your pupâs life.
NEWS FLASH
đ More cheese, more dough: Dominoâs will start selling stuffed-crust pizza in its 7k US stores. After lackluster results last quarter, the chain is projecting a 3% rise in same-store sales this year with new sales initiatives, app partnerships, and, apparently, crusts. Pizza Hut was the first competitor to introduce stuffed-crust pizza in 1995, generating $300m in sales in the first year, with Little Caesars and Papa Johns following suit in 2018 and 2021, respectively. After seeing that ~13m customers were purchasing stuffed-crust pies from its competitors annually, Dominoâs had a change of heart. Now, the chain hopes that the new campaign â the longest product development process in the chainâs history â will fatten crusts and sales.
đ° Not so shocking â money is good for business. New research suggests that the amount of pre-launch fundraising a startup raises has the strongest correlation with business success. Starting with $1m in funding ups the probability of a businessâs success by 25 percentage points. It canât just be any old $1m, though â if the cash is self-financed, it can actually decrease your chance of success by 2 points, while bank financing can improve your odds by 9 points and VC moolah can boost your success 5 points.
đ Not in this town: College Station, Texas, residents sent the FAA ~150 comments against Amazonâs plan to expand its Prime Air drone delivery program, per Wired. They complained about the dronesâ noise (some likened it to âflying chainsawsâ), cameras, and the possibility that they were bothering animals. The FAA deemed some concerns meritless, but Amazon ultimately announced plans to relocate its drone depot, reduced flights, switched to quieter drones, and later grounded all flights for software updates. What we learned: people arenât necessarily opposed to drone delivery, but location and minimal noise are key.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Pedal to the autonomous metal: A $239k driverless Maserati MC20 Coupe set a new speed record for autonomous vehicles of 197.7 mph at Kennedy Space Center last week.
Hmm: Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger since 2014, resigned after an investigation found that his personal conduct was âinconsistent with Krogerâs Policy on Business Ethics.â
Pocket robot: Deutsche Telekom (DT) plans to release an âAI Phoneâ in 2026, first targeting European customers. The device will retail for less than $1k and include a baked-in AI assistant called âMagenta AI.â Silicon Valley AI startup Perplexity is partnering on the project.
MASTER MANAGEMENT
Be a remarkable manager
Shouts to every team leader who reads our newsletter. We know itâs not easy to always stay smiling, keep folks in check, and cobble up reports.
The job is daunting to some â but for heroes like you, whoâve mastered all the key concepts in our people management guide, itâs a welcome challenge.
Weâll just leave this free ebook below, in case youâd like to brush up on your skills or make damn sure youâre killing it.
Youâre so thorough. Itâs one reason why youâre the best.
Starbucks became the first fast food chain to launch a mobile app in 2009, letting customers see how many calories their caramel frappucino had from the privacy of their own homes.
Now, every restaurant worth its salt has an app.
Big Macs and big apps
Chick-fil-A has the best app, according toTastingTable, based on its tiered loyalty program (earn enough points to tour the companyâs headquarters!) â though gimmicks can only carry a chain so far.
For others, according to Eater, itâs all about ease of use. Customers want apps to remember their favorite items â and they donât want to have to talk to any humans.
McDonaldâs spent $5m on a 9.9% stake in app company Plexure in 2019, gaining exclusive access to its tech.
Wendyâs and Burger King are also spending âhundreds of millions of dollarsâ on apps.
Would you sell your soul for a doughnut?
In addition to tours of the Chick-fil-A corporate office, these apps offer exclusive items and deep discounts.
But those come with a cost that should be obvious to anyone who has ever used an app: Theyâre collecting your data.
Some apps track your location when not in use or scan your social media profile.
Itâs all about collecting customer data to make advertising more effective.
That can be invaluable to chains that want to know the demographics at individual franchises.
Eater figures that most consumers are aware of the practice, but donât care â the benefits of a free large fry outweigh the cost of McDonaldâs knowing everything about you.
In the end, a company as big as McDonaldâs probably knows everything about you anyway. You might as well see some benefit.
Japanâs export value of green tea in 2024 â a 25% increase from the year prior.
Whatâs behind the explosion? One part social media, one part Japanese travel boom, and a heaping scoop of matcha, perBloomberg.
Matcha, a powder made from green tea leaves, has a supply chain as delicate as an influencerâs lavender latte: The leaves are harvested only once each year, many producers are aging out of the industry without successors, and the amount of matcha produced in 2023 was only 78% of 2008âs volume.
That means a sudden explosion of the ingredient on TikTok and a jump in travel to Japan â 37m visitors arrived in 2024, up 47% from 2023 â are leading to shortages of the green powder.
If youâre a matcha lover, now might be the time to stock up. Or you could always just go outside and munch on grass. Itâs basically the same thing and itâs free to do.
AROUND THE WEB
đ On this day: In 2005, Martha Stewart was released from prison after serving five months for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators. She served her remaining five months at home.
đ Thatâs interesting:How open-access networks work and how they differ from traditional internet service providers.
đď¸ Newsletter: What do Goldman and JPMorgan executives have in common? They read The Daily Upside. Sign up for free.
Problem: Your cat hates pills but a urinary health crisis looms. The solution to this âadministrationâ issue, according to pet brand Kradle and its CEO Jennifer Renaud, is a Wellness Lick.
The pet CBD-hawking startup launched a line of salmon-flavored supplements promoting hairball prevention, skin health, and better peeing, but the part thatâll really excite your tabbyâs tongue is the novel package it comes in â a small, coated lickable nubbin poking out from something that resembles a deodorant stick.
Lick it or not, thereâs reason to believe itâll succeed: an estimated 42m American households own a cat â and spend an average of $1.4k annually on cat care, so whatâs another $18?
SHOWER THOUGHT
Sometimes it takes more skill to perfectly forge an art piece than it took to make the original.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Sam Barsanti and Kaylee Jenzen. Editing by: Ben âWould sell my soul for a McFlurryâ Berkley.
