Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

So when Jed flagged for us three Wetzels all within spitting distance of each other, we knew there was some bigger story under there.

Okay, so for today's episode, we're going to hit play on that hyperfic story based on my little reporting journey in just a minute.

To set things up, I set out to untangle Jed's pretzel-based mystery and then hand it over that reporting to you, Alex, and your team to put the episode together.

Which worked out great for me because you did all the hard work.

You know, I love that for you.

And I began my quest in maybe an obvious place by calling up Wetzel's Pretzels corporate.

And that is how I met a jovial man named John Fisher.

John retired just last month, but when I spoke with him, he was the head of development for Wetzel's Pretzels, which means it was his job to help the company's franchisees find and build successful locations.

And that mantra, it's not just a catchphrase.

It's kind of a shorthand for Wetzel's business strategy.

It also holds part of the answer to Jed's questions.

And for that, we're just going to play an excerpt of that hyperfixed episode where Alex takes the reins.

How do you think about when it makes sense to have multiple Wetzels locations in the same broad space versus the risk of cannibalizing your own sales or oversaturating the place?

So in this case, it's like, okay, these locations may seem to a layman like me walking through being like, why would you possibly have these two pretzels stand so close to each other?

When I first started looking into the mystery of the Atlantic Barclays pretzel cluster, it became clear that the person best equipped to answer Jed's question was a man named Ricky Alam.

Because after a little bit of digging, I found out that Ricky owned all three of those Wetzel's pretzels, along with more than a dozen others around the country.

Now, for a few weeks, Ricky did not seem super eager to talk to me.

But one day I finally got him on the phone and he invited me to come visit him at the site of his first Wetzel's Pretzels store.

It was at a mall deep in suburban L.A., kind of place you might associate with Valley Girls.

And in fact, I found out it was literally the mall from the movie Clueless.