Claire Saffitz

speaker

254 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3 Jun

Claire Saffitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Planet Money · There's no business like dough business · 3 Jun 2026 podcast

Then he started a business that sold painted hermit crabs from kiosks at the mall.

And that one worked out pretty well.

But he wanted something that felt more permanent.

And that's when he started looking at franchises.

Pretzels aren't like a big thing in Bangladesh.

But his years in the United States taught Ricky that Americans love hot dogs.

So he opened this Wetzel's in 2004.

And within a year and a half, he opened a second location right here in the same mall.

How do you decide if a mall can support a second storefront?

Or if a subway slash mall can support three?

Ricky said that he'd typically want to see these kinds of numbers during high traffic weekend hours.

They might be much lower during weekdays.

And Ricky stressed that this is not a perfect science.

Sometimes, he says, the foot traffic just doesn't convert to sales in the way you thought it would.

And sometimes, the foot traffic you thought you could count on just suddenly dries up.

Which brings us to the question at hand about whether or not the cluster of Wetzel's pretzels at the Atlantic Barclays station is actually profitable.

So when Ricky opened his first Atlantic storefront in 2016, it seemed like a perfect location.

As you've already heard, Wetzel's Pretzels does best in places like malls and transit hubs and event centers.

And this first location seemed to offer a bit of all of those things.

The spot was in a mall, above a subway station, across the street from an event center.

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