Starbucks Swipes Chipotle's CEO & Ice Cream Liquid Death?
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Starbucks has stolen Chipotle CEO. Breakfast burritos when? Then a wind project off the coast of Nantucket is generating more bad PR than electricity. It's Wednesday, August 14th. Let's ride.

Did you watch the Olympics closing ceremony and think, what is that catchy as heck synth track they're performing? I gotta look it up. Well, you are in good company. That vibey song called Night Call by the French artist Kavinsky became the most Shazam song in a single day ever after the event. Night Call is iconic in the electronic music canon, but it was introduced to the general population as the song Ryan Gosling listens to in the 2011 movie Drive.

Still, it is not the most Shazam song of all time. That would be Dance Monkey. I can't believe what you just did and got Dance Monkey in everyone's head right now. Oh my good Lord. But I went looking at the YouTube comments under the song and everyone was like, hey, who's here from the closing ceremony? And it was just a bunch of people hanging out. But you're right. I would say about 80% of the comments were still

I know this as the song that Ryan Gosling drives to in his movie Drive. And I felt a little snobby because I did hear of this song and listen to it a bunch before this even happened, the closing ceremony. But if you are driving at night, like by yourself on a lonely road, crank this song up to 11 and you will feel like you are in a movie.

Now a word from Morning Brew Daily sponsor, Beehive. One of the best parts about Beehive is that money-making methods are baked right into the platform. It's like the Great British Baking Show, but rather than a handshake from Paul Hollywood, you get money. Instead of sugar, flour, yeast, and eggs, your options for money-making are ads, subscriptions,

partner programs, and boosts. You can run ads for companies in your newsletter and subscriptions let you put some of your newsletters behind a paywall. The partner program pays you for getting people to sign up for Beehive while boosts lets you promote other people's newsletters for money. Heck, start a baking newsletter to teach people how to make bread while getting that bread.

Just make sure you let it prove long enough in the proving drawer, Neil. Please never attempt that again. But you should all attempt to sign up for Beehive by heading to beehive.com slash brew. That's B-E-E-H-I-I-V dot com slash brew to get a 30-day free trial and 20% off three months with code brew.

Looks like you'll have to start filming your Starbucks barista to make sure they're filling up your cold brew all the way because the coffee chain just swiped Chipotle CEO Brian Nickel to become its new boss. Starbucks is going through its biggest slump in decades, and it hopes that Nickel will help it turn around its business just like he did when he was hired to run Chipotle in 2018.

And investors certainly think it was a home run higher. Following the announcement, Starbucks shares spiked 22 percent, adding 18 billion dollars to its market cap. So that is what this guy is worth, according to the market. Eighteen billion dollars.

That stock pop is also an indictment of Starbucks' outgoing CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, who settled into the corner office just 16 months ago and probably won't get a goodbye happy hour. Meanwhile, Starbucks' gain is Chipotle's loss. The Burrito King stock fell 10% on the news that Nickel was decamping for Seattle, again demonstrating how much investors value his leadership.

Nichols starts his new job at Starbucks on September 9th. What do you imagine his onboarding process is going to look like? I hope it's not just putting avocado in all of Starbucks' existing drinks, but can you imagine how insufferable you would be if you walk in on your first day knowing that you caused a almost

$20 billion rise in the market cap of the company you're just hired at. But clearly, if you could create a Starbucks CEO in a lab, I think you'd come up with something similar to Brian Nicol. I mean, his specialties are everything that Starbucks is struggling with right now. You're lacking innovation. He...

ushered in stuff like Al Pastor at Chipotle. He had a stint at Taco Bell before where he started the Live Moss campaign. He brought in the Doritos Locos Taco. So this guy has definitely innovated in this food space before. Also, one of the big issues facing Starbucks is that it's just too crowded during rush hour. And that's another thing that Nichols has been there and done that. He has done things like

adding a separate lane to Chipotle restaurants where they can work on just mobile orders. So he's really done everything that Starbucks is facing down right now. So that's why everyone is so pumped to have him on board. And the one question is, what is Howard Schultz going to do now? Because this guy was the CEO of Starbucks forever.

for three different stints. And in May, following a disastrous quarter for Starbucks, he wrote this post on LinkedIn bashing the current CEO, saying that Starbucks is having a fall from grace. So he's been this backseat driver for many years now. His shadow is just

over the company, kind of clouding everything that's happening there. So we'll see whether Nickel can come in from Chipotle and be like, Schultz, you don't have to pay attention anymore. I got this. You can go golf. You can do whatever you want. You don't have to pay attention. I have this under control. So investors are looking at how this relationship will play out.

will be playing out between Schultz and the new CEO. And then the other player in this equation is Elliott Management, the activist investor who recently amassed a stake in Starbucks. According to reports, Starbucks execs didn't include them in discussions around hiring this new CEO. So even though I think that they got what they want, which was a new CEO, I think they're

it's got to hurt the ego a little bit. You amass all this stake. You say, we're going to exert this pressure. We want you to take the company in this direction. And then Starbucks goes ahead, probably does something that does benefit Elliott in the long run, but does it without their express input. So I think that they're happy, but,

All they want is the stock price to go up, and the stock price went up the most it ever has, 22%. Let's talk about some challenges that Nikko might face at Starbucks, the differences between Chipotle and Starbucks. They are very different businesses. Specifically, Starbucks has a huge international presence. It has more international stores than domestic stores. Chipotle doesn't have that much of an international presence. So Nikko will have to come in and kind of learn that part of the business that's been dealing with boycotts

over the Middle East, which it says is due to misinformation. It's getting walloped in China by Luckin Coffee and other players. It's losing rapid market share there. So he will have to adjust to the Starbucks way of doing things, which is more licensed stores all out over the world. Chipotle is very much a homegrown United States phenomenon. So they're

are many challenges. There are many differences between what he was doing at Chipotle and what he'll face in Starbucks. But yeah, you're right. If you could craft this guy in a lab to lead Starbucks, it seems like nickel is it. The offshore wind project constructed off the coast of Nantucket has had a summer to forget.

Vineyard Wind was supposed to be a high-profile step forward for the renewable energy sector, but has been more of an air ball instead. Nary a blade has turned this summer after a massive turbine blade fell into the ocean back in July, then splintered it in chunks that have recently washed up onto Nantucket beaches.

Federal regulators have shut down construction and power generation at the site indefinitely pending an investigation. It was a tough break for an already faltering industry that has been controversial in many coastal communities. Throughout the life cycle of this project, property owners have sounded off with complaints about obstructed views and potential negative effects on sea habitats. And this latest accident provides fresh ammunition to anti-wind foes both near on the island and far away in Washington. Neil, it was just

one blade, but it could spell doom for the entire project. It really could. I mean, this is just everyone is waiting for you to mess up, and you do. It's kind of like someone going on the balance beam, and you're like, can they actually pull off this routine for the entire three minutes? And they end up spilling and falling, which is definitely a blow to the industry and to the eight other projects that are happening off of the East Coast. This was considered a win when it started out.

I mean, it was the nation's largest offshore wind project. It was the first commercial one to deliver power to actual customers. Ultimately, it's expected to power 400,000 homes on in Massachusetts. And there are high hopes for it that it would ultimately offshore wind in general will ultimately prosper.

power 45% of the state's current annual consumption of electricity. And it is, you know, it's just one blade. But again, it was like everyone was just waiting for a mistake to be made because there were so many concerns to begin with and it just could not deliver on it. What they said was like,

It was just a manufacturing mishap. This is very rare. They just said the adhesive didn't work, so basically they didn't use enough Elmer's glue on this thing, but it is a high-profile mess-up at a time when everyone is scrutinizing this industry, and it did not deliver. Yeah, particularly in Nantucket, it's been a very complex relationship with this project because part of the community's growing resentment towards it is the fact that they just don't have much agency over this project because...

It is built in federal waters, even though you can literally see it from the island. So it requires very little buy-in from locals. So obviously, too, the island doesn't really like change. I mean, they haven't liked change since the 1800s when the whalers started to get displaced by Boston transplants. But yeah, if you don't have control over something that feels like it's happening right in your backyard, of course there's going to be resentment worldwide.

when giant shards of this wind turbine plane start washing up on your beaches. Right, especially when a lot of the industry there is fishing and tourism, and they talk to, you know, local owners of surfing schools, and they had to close up shop for a week. They lost, you know, a week of business. So, yeah, I mean, this is a tough look for the industry, but it is a huge part of Biden's plan to create more sustainable energy and, you know, it is zero carbon. So I think

There is momentum behind it from the current administration. If Trump is elected, then all of that goes to crap because he is a big opponent of wind energy. He had a high profile battle with a wind farm off the coast of his golf course in Scotland. He said he hates wind. That is a quote. So expect a lot of these projects to be canceled, even as they're just starting up. If Trump is elected, I'm sure Kamala Harris administration would continue promoting Biden's policies of subsidizing these projects.

offshore wind projects and hopefully getting them up and running in order to create more zero emissions power to power a lot of these coastal communities up and down the eastern seaboard. Later this week, Indonesia is set to inaugurate its new $32 billion capital city in the jungles of Borneo. A what in the what?

Five years ago, President Joko Widodo announced plans to move Indonesia's capital from the megacity of Jakarta, 1,200 miles away to the eucalyptus groves of Borneo. The idea is that Jakarta is overcrowded, is also sinking rapidly into the ocean, and the country should build a new capital from scratch to spread economic growth to other regions. It's essentially like Biden picking up the Capitol building and dropping it in the Oklahoma panhandle.

But the new city, known as Nusantara, has received lots of pushback. Environmentalists say it's going to lead to deforestation and the destruction of orangutan habitats. Indigenous groups say it's displacing native tribes. And others say it's simply a terrible use of money. Just make Jakarta better. Still, Widodo is full steam ahead.

head. On Monday, he held the first cabinet meeting in New Sontra as a sign he is committed to the city, which remains half built and won't be fully finished by 2045. Toby, you Zillow surfing in downtown New Sontra? Probably not yet, even though that there is precedent from this. If you look around the

the world. I mean, Egypt, as we speak, is also relocating their capital. They're trying to spend almost $60 billion on a new planned city outside of Cairo. But if you look through the past century, other governments have attempted this, some of them relatively successful. Brazil is probably the best one. They moved it to Brasilia, and that city is a big and bustling part of Brazil now. Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, these are all countries that have made a similar decision. But you're right. There are a lot of

of questions around this because yeah, if you're spending 40 billion, almost $40 billion, why not try to improve the current city? The one interesting critique that I saw too is that as soon as you move a capital away from people, things like

fraud and things like corruption. There's fewer journalists there to look over what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. When there's less people looking over your shoulder, you start doing worse and worse things. So that's another critique as well as moving this capital city away. Yeah, and they want private investment to fuel 80% of this, but that private investment has not really come to fruition. Let's talk about Jakarta, what's going on there. So Jakarta is home to 10 million people and the metro area has about 30 million people.

But 40 percent of Jakarta is below sea level and they expect that one third of the city could be submerged by 2050. So there are real problems. There's so much pollution. There's so much congestion. And the main reason for the reason why it's sinking is that there is uncontrolled groundwater extraction. So they're not really doing much to do that. And there is precedent, as you said, to move forward.

capital city to the quote unquote hinterlands to spread economic development. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the entire world, the fourth most populous one. It's spread across 17,000 different islands. And the idea here is to spread economic development and show that

They're not just the island of Java, which is where Jakarta is based. And there are a lot of big promises as well. When you build a new city in 2024, of course, you're going to say there's flying taxis. It's going to be a smart forest city. There's going to be EVs. We're going to be net carbon zero by 2045, which is 15 years ahead of Indonesia's bigger plan. What is also interesting is they say they're going to only build development along a certain band of elevation. So there will be green forested fingers, uh,

going across this city. Again, it is half built. People have visited say it's literally just a skeleton right now. So there's a long way to go. And it seems like many of these new cities just take so much money to build. We look at the line that Saudi Arabia is building. They've scaled back those plans by 98 percent. So these are just massive capital projects that take so long and so much money. It sounds like a Zillow description that you read. You read the description, then you look at the house and you're like, wait a second, this doesn't quite add up. But

Hey, if it ever gets done, I would love to take Moira Rudele on the road to Indonesia. I think we could do a nice international pod. Up next, AI resumes are becoming a real issue for job recruiters. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI. Whether you want to design a marathon training program that will get you race-ready for the fall, or you're curious about what planets are visible in tonight's sky, Meta AI has the answers.

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There has been so much talk of AI stealing jobs from humans, but maybe its real impact is being felt in how humans are applying for jobs. According to an estimate by the Financial Times, about half of all job seekers are using AI tools to apply for roles. And I'll tell you who's not happy about that stat.

recruiters. They have warned that they are seeing a barrage of higher volume but lower quality applications. The ease with which an applicant can feed questions from an application into ChatGPT is making it a headache to identify quality candidates. It's becoming a bot versus bot world out there. Job seekers are using AI to craft resumes in seconds to

then blast them out to robo-apply for hundreds of jobs, while companies are deploying bots of their own to sort through the increased number of applications they are getting. Neil, AI is breaking the hiring process. It truly is. And I know everyone made fun of the Bumble CEO when she said dating in five years is just going to be your AI talking to another person's AI. But that is literally what is happening in the job market right now. 97% of Fortune 500 companies are

already using automated AI systems to sift through candidates. And now candidates themselves are saying, hey, why do you get to do that? And we don't. So they're throwing all their resumes and cover letters into ChatGPT to game the system in part because there are these particular keywords that you need to use on your resume or cover letter to get past these AI filters that companies are using. So it is...

It seems to be extremely broken right now where these companies are putting up job positions and then within 24 hours, they're getting 1,200 applicants, half of which are likely just ChatGBT generated. And I don't think this is servicing anyone because the employers know which ones are made by ChatGBT. It is not that hard to look at a cover letter and be like, that is literally the most generic thing I've seen ever.

And I also am looking at 15 exact replicas of the same one. So they're just passing on those applicants. So we're at a place where I think this process is entirely broken thanks to AI. And a lot of companies are popping up that see it almost as an arms race because you're right. If

these Fortune 500 companies are deploying these AI tools, then they see it as an arms race and they want to equip job seekers with those tools as well. The Wall Street Journal talked to the founder of an AI job hunting company called Sonara for 80 bucks a month. It will find you open roles. It will answer questions as though they are the candidate and it can apply to as many as 370 positions for them. It

each month. So you see just the spray and pray with a little bit of that help from AI, but you can see why recruiters are just so bogged down right now because you're right, 1,200 applications, sometimes even more in the span of 24 hours. What are you supposed to do? You have to use AI to sort through that. But again, it's just, it is a bot-eat-bot world out there right now. If you were applying for a job right now, how would you use AI?

I just really would not because in a weird way, it's easier to stand out than ever because if you are getting this flood of applications that are clearly using ChatGPT, just say like, hey, it's me, guys. Like, I am a human writing you to this. I feel like we're on like a self-help podcast now. But yeah, it is true that maybe you can stand out by just appearing human.

The other thing that companies are doing in order to try to withstand this barrage of applications is setting little booby traps for people. We've talked about this before where the professor was saying people were just copying and pasting prompts, so he started hiding, say, like put a reference to Batman in in very small font. Companies are doing a very similar thing where they'll have a prompt, but at the end they say, if you're reading this, awesome,

do not answer this question. So if you have an application that does, in fact, answer that question, you know they probably use AI. So you're going to have to get creative with it because this problem isn't going away anytime soon. I would probably use it to make my resume because that's kind of copy-paste. I would say scrape the internet and just make a resume for me. Like just find everything that I've ever done and put it in a resume. Or just format it, make it more concise. That seems okay. Yeah.

In the most bizarre collab since Eminem and Elton John, canned water brand Liquid Death is teaming up with the bougie ice cream maker Van Leeuwen for a new product that hit shelves yesterday. No, it's not water flavored ice cream. It's hot fudge sundae sparkling water. Just to clarify, this is sparkling water that tastes like hot fudge sundae packaged in a tall boy can and containing 20 calories.

Though Liquid Death has become known for its crazy flavor drops like Convicted Melon, this marks the first time it's collaborated with another company on a new product. Van Leeuwen is also no stranger to diving off the deep end. In 2020, it worked with Kraft to make a macaroni and cheese flavored ice cream that sold 6,000 pints within an hour.

Yes, you might have thought mashups peaked with girl talk, but offbeat collabs like the hot fudge sundae water have become an unmistakable trend in the consumer goods industry. Brands like Crocs, Taco Bell, Hidden Valley Ranch, and Oreos have perfected the art of finding a partner who's down to get weird with you, build hype together on social media, and then do a limited drop of the product to create a sense of exclusivity. But before we talk about all that business strategy stuff, are you drinking this? I can't.

I cannot wrap my head around it. How can you make water taste like hot fudge? It's very confusing to me. The commercial that they made for this product is very funny as well. It's like a typical fratty beer ad, but instead they're funneling ice cream. People are getting brain freezes. So Liquid Death knows what they're doing. I actually really respect Liquid Death's just candidness with how they –

They say what their company is. Their CEO said that we're an entertainment company that monetizes via beverages. And then you look at the wider beverage industry, you see a lot of instances of this. Red Bull, Monster, typically they...

monetize and advertise themselves via action sports. Liquid Death is just doing it via comedy. So I like that they know that they're Lane and they keep leaning into this unhinged online marketing. But it's not, it's certainly not even close to the only brand that's been doing this. I mean, there are a bunch of different collabs where

There are companies that you would not ever put in the same room together. And they're coming together and doing this with limited drops and building social media hype. And it's very interesting to see this trend absolutely take off. And I'm curious your thoughts about how, Mark, like what is going on here, how social media plays a role, and why we're seeing these things boom recently. I think it's...

One, you have to tow this very fine line between being online, being unhinged, and then just going over the top. I mean, if you look at, you go back to Duolingo with their owl and just doing this very passive-aggressive social media presence, a lot of companies try to emulate that. I mean, look at Kamala Harris' campaign right now. They're leaning into Brat right now. I do think what you get when you have these collabs is what you call the halo effect, where when you take two beloved brands, you take Crocs

in KFC, for instance. They did a collab. You have this group that loves Crocs. You have this group that loves KFC. You put them together. It's just going to grow the overall pie. So I think people are very much into it as long as it does feel unhinged. If it's too corporate-y, then it's not going to hit the same. One of my favorites was Absolute Vodka and Heinz teamed up to make

absolute Heinz vodka sauce. It's stupid, but it also totally works in a weird way. Heinz saw really great results from that. So I think we're definitely in that era where it's still fun and still cool. Who knows if in maybe two or three years we'll be saying the same thing. Okay, Toby, I'm going to run down some of these insane collabs and I want you to say yes or no whether you're going to try them. Sour Patch Kids Oreos. That was a thing that came out in January. Yes, 100% yes. Burt's Bees and Hidden Valley Ranch Lipstick.

I remember when this came out. I legitimately threw up in my mouth. That sounds disgusting. I would do that one. Okay, I know you're going to say yes to this one, but Taco Bell Cheez-It Crunchwrap. I've already had it. And then the final one, this one was super buzzy. A Pringle and Crocs collab where Crocs created a shoe with a chip holster in one of the shoes. Can you imagine showing up to a date with your...

Pringle holster Crocs on? That's going to go well for you. I'm going to try that. That's a yes for me. You guys remember the good old days when you'd hop in your car, toss in a cassette tape, and pump some tunes? Well, I don't. I'm too young for that era. But I might get a chance to experience it soon because cassette tapes are having themselves a revival. Last year, the music sales tracker Luminate Data found that 430

36,000 units were sold, up from 81,000 in 2015. Unsurprisingly, Taylor Swift is contributing to the rise, even though she wasn't even alive when the first Walkman came out. Two of her albums were among the best-selling cassettes last year, but other very Gen Z artists like Phoebe Bridgers and even the Barbie Movie soundtrack contributed to the boom. This renaissance has shades of the vinyl comeback we've spoken about before, but the price tag of the cassette makes it especially appealing to the youths.

it's turned into a legit revenue stream for artists in the process as well. Yeah, you can't chalk this up to being like, oh, I really want to hear that beautiful sound that a cassette makes. You could maybe say it with vinyl, but it does appear like younger people are

reverting back and rediscovering old music formats like vinyl, like cassettes. And they're not listening to old music on it. They're not putting in like the Rolling Stones or the Monkees or anything like that. They're listening to Florence and the Machine, Harry Styles,

Arctic Monkeys, Olivia Rodrigo, who are releasing... When you release an album now, it's not just, I'm going to throw it on Spotify. It's I'm going to have four different vinyl records. I'm going to have a pink cassette tape. I'm going to have a white cassette tape. And it speaks to this nostalgia culture, this collectible novelty thing that a lot of younger consumers are...

seemingly interested in. It also mirrors the rise of digital cameras, which grew again in sales after falling since 2010. So there's been a revival in a lot of these old formats. I guess it's cool to do it. But this made me nostalgic for my first Walkman, which I'm thinking about. I think it was a CD one, not a cassette tape. But I did listen to a lot of cassette tapes. And it was interesting going through the history of cassette tapes. They were just big from the late 70s through the 90s. And those two

different hardware players were so integral. The Sony Walkman, which was the OG iPod, and then that Boombox came along, which you could record on. And those really, you know, elevated the cassette tape to become super mainstream. And if you just look at Popcorn's

culture the Walkman and cassettes are both featured very heavily I mean Stranger Things cassettes that's this whole era is right smack dab in the middle of when that is set and then Guardians of the Galaxy as well the main character there is always listening to these older tunes on it so I think people are seeing it everywhere and you

you're right. It is just nice to sometimes feel that nostalgia compared to vinyl too. It's just so much cheaper. So for, if you're a kid, if you're a teenager, of course, you're going to choose the cassette over a $40 vinyl or something like that during the pandemic. Also sales were goose because there were rising demand for vinyl. We talked about the vinyl Renaissance, but the supply chain was so messed up. Everyone's like, ah, I guess I'll get a cassette instead. So I don't know. I think cassettes are, are back even though,

If I'm going to be totally honest, I have used a cassette before. I do know how to use it, but it's better to show that. I was going to say, I think we should do a video where I give you a boombox and I give you a cassette tape and I ask you to play it. And I think if we film that, it would lead to a lot of hilarity. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Wednesday. Toby, you're going to be gone for the final two shows of the week, so safe travels.

Our super sub Kyle is warming up in the bullpen right now and will do a great job filling in for you. For any feedback on the show, please send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is the brand collab of the century. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.

Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.