(Warning: You’re gonna need 8 napkins for this episode):#1. Haribo Gummy Bears is now the biggest candy business on earth… because it’s done the same thing for 100 years. (1/22/2024)#2. The hot new IPO this year? It’s Bubble Tea… Boba tea chains are IPO’ing for billions, but Bubble Tea may face a Bubble Tea Bubble. (5/6/2024)#3. While all the other food chains struggled this year, one didn’t: Shake Shack… The $10 Shackburger proves perception overpowers prices. (8/5/2024)Share this episode with the next person you’re eating dinner with… or your hungriest buddy.We’ll be back on Monday, January 6th, with our regular TBOY podcasts. But look out for more bonus pods from us dropping over the holidays.And if you crave more business storytelling from us? Check out our weekly deepdive show: “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with. From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What are the top food stories of 2024?
This is Nick. This is Jack. And today's food pod is the best one yet. The top three food stories you need to know today. Now, besties, this is episode number three of our holiday bonus week. It's the best of food. Our best stories of the year on food, beverages, and restaurants. And Nutella. Send this episode to your buddy who works as a chef or in a kitchen.
Or just send it to your hungriest buddy. You know what? Send it to your buddy who can get you a 7 p.m. at Carbone on a Friday night. Send it to that sommelier. That's what you got to do. It'll be a quid pro quo. You send them a great podcast, they send you a great reservation. And they're going to get promoted. Jack, three stories for today's food pod. What do we got?
Our first story is from January 22nd. My birthday. We got an inside look at one of the world's oldest businesses, Haribo Gummy Bears. Haribo, they became the biggest candy company on earth by staying the same. For our second story, we're going back to May 6th. That's when the new hot IPO of the year was Bubble Tea. Bubble Tea. Boba Tea Chains were IPOing for billions.
But bubble tea may actually be facing a bubble tea bubble. And our third and final story is from August 5th. While all the other food chains were struggling, one was rising. Yes. Shake Shack. Shake Shack. The $10 Shack Burger is proof that perception overpowers prices. But Yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories, Jack.
When 2024 was beginning, Starbucks was launching their first olive oil coffee. But as 2024 ends, Starbucks is canceling their olive oil coffee. Olietta. Olietta. That pretty much sums up the year, doesn't it? It does, because 2024 saw more wild food stories in business to make Gordon Ramsay bite a pan. First, remember Chipotle was accused of shrinkage with their burrito balls on TikTok?
Yeah, Jack. And then one bank analyst ordered 75 burrito bowls in order to test their size. And this was the year that Red Lobster sadly went belly up bank. Yeah, blame the all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet or their private equity owner. On the bright side, Sweetgreen opened up a robo-restaurant. And Sweetgreen's stock tripled. While McDonald's finally started selling their sauces separately.
Although McDonald's stock fell. We discovered in this pod this year that Capri Sun invented the juice box. And we discovered that Disney World got a Michelin star. We also invented a new financial food metric. Yeah, we did. ROI, return on ingestment. And we calculated that the avocado, while delicious, is actually the least efficient fruit.
Because the avocado has the lowest fruit to pit ratio in produce. You're tossing most of that avocado. Oh, side note, Jack had his very first Dr. Pepper. You still okay? You enjoying it? How you feeling about that? Oh, side note, Nick ate a bunch of strawberries, leaves and all. He just popped the entire thing into his mouth. It was controversial. Berry game. Never forget, berry game.
And every food business launched a value meal this year. It was hot value summer. So besties, you're about to give a five-star Yelp review with a terribly taken photo from your iPhone of this episode. Because these are the three best food stories of 2024. We're going to need some more napkins. More napkins, please. Excuse me, sir. More napkins.
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Chapter 2: How did Haribo Gummy Bears become the biggest candy company?
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Yetis, for our first story, we're going back to January 22nd, 2024. Happens to be my birthday, but also happens to be a great story. Happy birthday, dude. Thank you. I appreciate that, man. Let's jump right into the story. Okay, this one is on our favorite gummy bear. The biggest confectionery company on earth just gave us a rare inside look at the business. Haribo gummies. It's Haribo gummies.
Haribo's success may be from never, ever changing. But yetis, before Jack and I jump into this story, if you're a dentist or a dental hygienist,
earmuffs you're gonna hate this story here it is and let's start with a trivia question jack who invented the gummy bear well the answer is mr hans regal from the german city of bonn hans regal from bonn haribo oh my god jack we put it together we solved the case yeti 102 years ago haribo named after hans regal from bonn literally invented the gummy bear
And today they sell a thousand different varieties of gummy bear across 120 countries. And now this is a private, not a public company, but according to Bloomberg Research, Haribo is the biggest confectionary brand on earth. Hershey's and Mars makes more candy in the United States, but nobody sells more candy in the world than Haribo. Yeti's Haribo is the sultan of sugar.
It is the chancellor of chew. Jack, can we say it's the king of the cavity? Haribo brags that their annual production of gummy bears could wrap the world 10 times. Yeah, it's the king of the cavity. And 102 years after birthing the very first gummy bear, Haribo is still owned and run by that same family, the Regals. But yet, here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this story.
Haribo is the only company we have ever covered on this podcast that has said this. We will never change. We will never change. Literally, the COO of Haribo told Bloomberg last week that the company's German principles come down to this. We don't like to change. If it ain't broke after 102 years, over at Haribo, they don't fix it.
For example, in the last century, they've only made one major change to their core product, the gummy bear. They changed its pose. Yeah, for the first 40 years, the Haribo classic gummy bear was like a dancing bear. It had its legs out. It was dancing. It was having fun. Now it's a chubby bear. It's not dancing anymore.
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Chapter 3: What is the Bubble Tea Bubble and why is it important?
Because usually we see bubbles in the stock market. The price of a stock outgrows the underlying value. That's a bubble. But this is an economic bubble. The number of physical boba shops simply outgrew the underlying demand for boba tea. Here's the cycle that happened. First, to chase demand, there was a surge in new boba stores that just got out of control. 36,000 mixu stores?
That is so many stores. And it's just in China. And then there was so much competition among those boba stores that the prices started One chain sells everything on the menu for $1. Just $1. And the result of too many boba chains selling drinks for way too cheap? What was it, man? The result was a price war and none of the Chinese boba chains are profitable right now.
That cycle is why we're seeing so much thirst for boba, but none for boba stocks. It doesn't matter how much you love boba. We're in a bubble tea bubble. And I promise I'll try my first one soon. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
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For our third story, we're jumping back to August 5th, 2024. Okay. The first story was Nick's birthday. The second story was Molly's birthday. The third story is where Nick and Molly had their first date. It was honestly a total, total coincidence. I think it's conspiracy. It's a total coincidence. This one's on Shake Shack. Are you trying to replace me with Molly this episode?
Also a Shake Shack shareholder. I should point that out, Jack. Okay, definitely conspiracy. Besties are going to love this one. Let's jump into the Shake Shack story. For our second story, the surprise top stock of last week, get this, it's Shake Shack. Shake Shack shows that value doesn't mean low price. Value means it's worth it. Jack, I feel like we got to check ourselves on this.
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Chapter 4: Why did Shake Shack thrive while other chains struggled?
If unemployment's rising fast, you can't just tap the brakes. Like the Titanic, it takes a while to slow down. It's a giant ship, not a go-kart. Just ask Kate and Leo. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the U.S. economy? The Fed drives this ship, but the ship takes forever to turn.
Now, yetis, for three years, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, has steered our economy with high interest rates. That has been the direction. The goal was to steer us away from hot inflation, to slow the economy down, to get prices down. And you know what? That worked. Inflation has been slayed, but now our economic ship has turned to a new issue. Unemployment. And it worked.
Inflation has been slayed. It was great that the Fed turned the ship in that direction. But now our economic ship is headed towards a new issue, unemployment and a potential recession. So now the Fed has to try to avoid that and turn the ship in a new direction by cutting interest rates at their next policy meeting. So here's the underlying problem. our economy is like a huge ship.
It takes months or years to turn it into a different direction. It's like trying to boost the economy at the next policy meeting in September. That could just be too late. It would be too long. The new iceberg facing the American economy isn't inflation like the last few years. It's a recession and high unemployment.
So hopefully the Fed, the captain of our economic ship, can turn this ship on time. Yetis, those are the three best food stories of 2024. But grab another napkin because now we got the best fact yet on food for 2024. Here it is. Nutella was created because of a shortage of chocolate. That's right. Nutella, the legendary hazelnutty Italian spread, also a good skin cream, was invented-
because of a shortage. That's true, Jack.
Here's the story.
Post-World War II, the region of Piedmont, Italy, had shortages of just about everything, including cocoa. But the one thing they were not short on was hazelnuts, which are grown locally, and they also had a whole bunch of ingenuity. So they mixed ground hazelnuts into their chocolate to make the little cocoa that they had go further. It's like the first example of shrinkflation.
They didn't have the cocoa, so they used more of the hazelnuts. I think it's swapflation. It is swapflation. Good point, Jack. And the result... was Nutella. They didn't turn lemons into lemonade. They turned not enough cocoa into Nutella. It's like we always say, necessity is the mother of invention. And Nutella. And skin cream, apparently. And skin cream, trust us.
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