Morning Brew Daily - Analysts Fear We’re in an AI Bubble & Amazon Prime Deals…Aren’t Really Deals?

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Episode 689: Neal and Toby chat about the biggest question plaguing Wall Street right now. Are we in an AI bubble? Then, a Washington Post columnist finds that Amazon Prime Day doesn’t save you much... money at all. Perfect timing for the holiday shopping season. Meanwhile, the meme stock ETF is back and…maybe stronger than ever? Also, Ferrari just cut its outlook for EV production as it struggles with a waning demand for electric cars.  Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. Get your MBD live show tickets here! https://www.tinyurl.com/MBD-HOLIDAY  Join us for October trivia night! https://mbd-trivianight-oct2025.splashthat.com/  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:29 Good morning brew daily show. Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, do Amazon Prime Day deals save you any money? Ben, are we in an AI bubble? Maybe yes. Maybe no. It's Friday, October 10th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Friday. The Nobel Peace Prize was announced this morning, and it went to Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan pro-democracy politician. Machado is an opposition leader who created a social movement to counter President Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian regime, resulting in her being forced into hiding and banned from holding public office in her home country. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, the committee
Starting point is 00:01:14 said, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness. Machado's location remains unknown due to security concerns. And Toby, that caps a Nobel Prize week that had a little more drama than usual. Yeah, yesterday we also got the Nobel Prize for literature, and it went to Hungarian author Laslo, and I'm going to try my best here. Kras now Horka. He is famous for a very distinct writing style where he doesn't end sentences. Seriously, his latest book is literally a single sentence that spans roughly 400 pages,
Starting point is 00:01:47 400 pages, one period, and now a Nobel Prize in literature. Same amount of periods as Nobel Prizes, not bad. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Neil, we've talked an awful lot about Roaz, B2B, and weak grip strength this week. I don't see what that last part has to do with anything. They're just so feeble. Unlike LinkedIn ads, which has the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks. They have a network of over one billion professionals and 130 million decision makers.
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Starting point is 00:02:58 and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. In SpongeBob, one of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boys' Arch Nemesis is a villain called The Dirty Bubble, a villain that also seems to be tormenting lots of Wall Street prognosticators. Investors are increasingly growing antsy at the influence.
Starting point is 00:03:21 The AI trade is having overmarkets and the economy and are openly wondering if we are in a bubble. The International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England joined a growing course of financial institutions this week, warning that if investor optimism about AI cools, the global economy could take a serious hit. Both flagged the risk of a market correction driven by overextended AI bets. J.B. Morgan CEO, Jamie Diamond, agreed that while AI's benefits are real, many investors are underestimating the risk of losses if the current hype cycle fades. And data compiled by Bloomberg found that mentions of tech and bubble in news stories have
Starting point is 00:03:57 jumped in recent weeks as well. But several major banks released research this week arguing that bubble might be too strong a word. Goldman Sachs acknowledged that a handful of AI heavy tech giants now make up an outsized share of global market value, but emphasize that big tech's earnings are still growing at a nice pace. Similarly, Bank of America downplayed the impact of circular AI deals such as Open AI's $100 billion investment from Nvidia, noting that it represented only a small slice of overall AI funding. What is clear, Neil, is we are in the middle of an AI boom, but does economic transformation lie on the other side, or is it a dirty bubble with huge losses for investors in the store? The answer is probably a little bit of both. In the
Starting point is 00:04:36 meantime, stocks keep marching upwards, but it feels like anxiety is rising just as fast. Let's get on the same page about what a financial bubble actually is. It's an economic cycle characterized by a rapid and massive increase in market values to levels that simply aren't supported by the underlying fundamentals. And there usually is some sort of positive. of the bubble and then everything comes crashing down. Oppenheimer, which is an investment bank, lays out three hallmark traits of a bubble. One is rapidly rising asset prices, check. Extreme stock valuations, we also have that.
Starting point is 00:05:11 And then the third hallmark trait is rising significant systemic risks driven by increased leverage. And this might be seen in these AI companies taking out debt to fund all of their huge AI infrastructure build out. Okay, so now let's go to the arguments. Let's talk about those who argue for a bubble. What are they saying? What data points are they pointing to that show that we are currently in an AI bubble? Well, if we're talking about acid prices running up, right now the magnificent seven tech giants make up a third of the S&P 500 total value. Remember, that is seven companies accounting for a third of the entire American stock markets, global value.
Starting point is 00:05:49 So that is one issue that you could potentially look at, that things have become too concentrated at the top. As that's happened, though, investment has searched as well. The five biggest tech companies have spent $371 billion on data centers this year to power AI models, which you might say, okay, that's a good thing. It's stimulating the economy. But Harvard economists found that without that data center spend, GDP growth was just 0.1% in the first half of 2025. McKinsey is projecting $5.2 trillion in total spending by 2030, which on data center buildout. That is seven times the cost of the entire interstate highway systems, but you look at AI revenues.
Starting point is 00:06:29 They're expected to total just $60 billion last year. So the math ain't math in there. So we are seeing really, really high stock prices. We're seeing pledges of lots of data center buildouts. We are not seeing revenue to support those things, which is why maybe you're hearing those inklings that this is a bubble. The concern is that there's too much overbuilding and overinvestment. Open AI specifically has committed $1 trillion in spending on A&A.
Starting point is 00:06:53 infrastructure. It said it's going to do $13 billion in revenue this year. The concern is that people, all these AI companies are betting that everyone's just going to start to use AI, but maybe companies are not going to use AI at the levels that they think. There was this very buzzy MIT Media Lab study that cited, that found that 95% of AI projects piloted by businesses have produced zero measurable return for companies. And then McKinsey followed that up by reporting that almost eight and ten companies that adopt generative AI see, quote, no significant bottom line impact. One of the bad parts of this particular bubble, and I'm just using that as a shorthand right now,
Starting point is 00:07:31 is that if you look at something like a fiberopic cable buildout, which kind of spent a lot of money, which not a lot of return initially, or a railroad buildout, which, you know, again, eventually had utility, but probably plowed too many resources into it, was that the GPUs, the backbone of AI depreciate very, very fast. that, I mean, is that the current generation of NVIDIA's Blackwell chip is the state of the art right now. But in two, three years down the line, they're going to come out with another chip and all this money you spent on Blackwells is going to be not necessarily obsolete, but less valuable than the money you put into it. So that is a question mark here is that if GPUs are
Starting point is 00:08:10 where all this money is going and eventually they're going to be rendered obsolete, is that a really good smart usage of resources? All right. Let's talk about the arguments against the fact that were in a bubble. And the main argument here is that the companies now are simply better than they were in 1999 during the telecom internet.com bust. The median free cash flow yield for the top 500 companies in the United States right now is a roughly triple what it was in 1999. Back then during the dot-com bubble, you had a lot of early stage unprofitable companies leading the charge. And then eventually 200 of them went bankrupt when everything came crashing down. Now, who is leading the charge, it's meta, Amazon, Microsoft. These are the most profitable companies in the history
Starting point is 00:08:53 of the world. And so if they, perhaps they're overbuilding too much, but as Mark Zuckerberg says, as Sam Altman says, as all of these leaders say, we can afford it because we print cash and other parts of our businesses. So it's not a huge deal if, you know, at the margin we spend a little too much. So that's the main argument against a bubble right now is that there are the fundamentals actually support these rising asset prices because over the past few quarters, these companies are earnings, and they've been super strong. They're extremely profitable. They can spend money. They can afford this. And that's the argument saying, we are not in a bubble. And there you go. We can probably go on for this for a long time. But I think you're right that right now the AI's
Starting point is 00:09:32 economic footprint, it is certainly real. Like these data centers are being built. I think the question just becomes, do you get the productivity gains that AI evangelists have been saying for years? Is it going to remake work as we know it? Is it going to unlock trillions of market? value as they hope or is all this build out going to go for not? I think that's a question that you always have during a bubble. Like when the railroads were happening, is this going to be worth it in the end? The only thing we can do is wait and see. All right, moving on. Amazon packages are being dropped off on porches across America following its prime big deal days on Tuesday and Wednesday. But after yet another made-up sales holiday, more people are questioning whether the
Starting point is 00:10:11 deals were that big or deals at all. The Washington Post Jeffrey Fowler put on a Sherlock Holmes hat to find out just how much he was in line to save thanks to Amazon's discounts. He wrote down how much he paid for almost 50 non-grocery products he made on Amazon in the past six months and calculated what those same items cost during the last day of Prime Big Deal Days on Wednesday. His total savings would have come out to, drum roll please, a whopping 0.6%. Fowler found that some products he had bought spiked in price during the event itself. For instance, a TV went from $275 on. October 2nd to $379 on October 8th. In other instances, products that were marketed as on
Starting point is 00:10:53 sale were in fact the same price they had been weeks before. Fowler pointed to an oral B electric toothbrush that was hyped as 39% off, but cost the same in August. And Amazon spokesperson responded saying that while we offer millions of deals during events, not every item across our store will be on promotion during an event, which is normal in retail, adding that Fowler's examples are not indicative of the broader trends for this event. Still, his research adds to growing online backlash that Amazon shopping holidays are a great deal for Amazon, but maybe not a great deal for you. Yeah, it's a classic retail slight of hand where you go. It's 30% off, but they jacked up the initial price. So you're just right back to where you started. Amazon says that when they are saying
Starting point is 00:11:36 30% off, it's not necessarily about the price on their site. Sometimes they're comparing it to recent prices customers have paid elsewhere. So maybe it's at Walmart or something like that. they are using that as the base price to then discount, which is why you are seeing some of these prices not necessarily budge on the site, but labels attach them. That is their argument, but I think a lot of people just subconsciously know this is going on. There's no way that all of these things can be discounted as much as they are. The prices don't even look that much different from last time I look. So it is interesting to have a number put on it, which is essentially fat. 0.6% it's not savings at all. And consumer watchdogs have been on this for years, actually. So ahead
Starting point is 00:12:16 of 2017's Prime Day, the nonprofit consumer, it's literally named Consumer Watchdog, they found that 61% of reference prices on Amazon were higher than any price the company had charged for those items in the prior 90 days. So I think now in 2025, we're just talking about AI buildout. Perhaps people are going to start to use AI more to do more comparison shopping to research prices so they don't feel like they're getting duped by Amazon, especially ahead of the holiday season coming up. Fowler also said, here's how you can actually get a deal. He says use sites like camel, camel, camel, which actually charts historical prices and lets you set alert for actual discounts,
Starting point is 00:12:54 not just maybe the fake ones that are presented your way during big deal days. He also says, go shop around a little bit. He said he found his dentist sold an electric toothbrush for $10 cheaper than Amazon's deal price. And then he also said, the big holidays that you actually will get savings on are the ones that have historically been the biggest, which are Black Friday. That's when he did found that TVs, electronics, these big ticket items do hit their absolute low. So don't necessarily fall for maybe the marketing holidays, fall for the real holidays where everyone's offering real discounts. So I'm sure you're listening to this thinking, wow, you know, Christmas, Hanukkah is coming up in just a few months.
Starting point is 00:13:29 I probably should get on shopping. What is the macro outlook this year? Well, a couple of firms have come out with projections on how much Americans are going to spend online this year in the holiday shopping season. Adobe came out with their forecast. They said that shopping is going to be up five, online shopping is going to be up 5.3% year over year to $253 billion. Cyber Monday is going to be the biggest shopping day of the year, followed by Black Friday. And one note that they did make in their projections is that AI, the use of AI is absolutely going to surge. So in 2024, there was a 13,100 percent increase in AI traffic to U.S. retail sites. And then this year, that's expected to
Starting point is 00:14:12 boom again with a 520% year-over-year increase. So people are going to start turning to chat GPT. We know they just launched integrations with Etsy and Shopify and other sites, but people are going to start to use chat GPT and other AI systems to help their shopping journey as we gear up towards the colder months here. Let's move on. It's Stock of the Week, Dog the Week time, where Neil and I share one stock that resembles Cam Scataboo's thighs and one stock that resembles my own thighs.
Starting point is 00:14:38 I won the pre-show game of whose name has more consonant, so I'm up first. And my stock the week is the meme stock ETF because it's back in memier than ever. The asset manager Roundhill is resurrecting its infamous meme ticker after shuttering the original index in 2023. The OG came to life on the heels of GameStop and AMC's Meteoric Rises, which birthed the concept of a meme stock to begin with. Roundhill had the bright idea to package up all those volatile companies into one fund so you can follow the dumb money and get rich doing it. Surprise, it didn't go so hot from its launch to its closure in late 2023. The NASDAQ fell 10%. The S&P 500 slipped about 3% and GameStop and AMC
Starting point is 00:15:22 fell 69 and 96% respectively. As the meme fever cooled, Roundhill quietly shuttered the experiment. But now it's trying again with a new crop of stocks that encapsulates the latest market darlings, speculative names like the real estate tech company Open Door, Quantum Computers, Quantum computing companies like Righetti and IonQ and nuclear power moonshots like Oklo and New Scale. Neil Roundhill calls the meme ETF a way for everyday investors to capture a direct pipeline into the buzzy volatile names dominating social media chatter. I feel like this also might relate back to and could be indicative of our first story of the day as well. Absolutely. If you're looking for evidence of a market top or maybe even a bubble,
Starting point is 00:16:01 then perhaps the launch of a meme ETF is a good data point to turn to this shutter. back in 2020 with just $3 million in assets. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the $13 trillion U.S. ETF market. Perhaps it is a sign, though, that the retail trader and the power of the retail trader has stayed high and strong and influential in this market from 2021 till now. There was that huge crash in 2023, but it seems like meme stocks have not gone away. They've just taken on a different flavor in different industries. and people and the retail trader is still a major factor in the stock market.
Starting point is 00:16:41 And I think maybe that's something you can point to to explain why the MME-METF is back. Yeah, and they are trying a different tact at this time around. The first time they were almost focusing on past behavior, social media mentions, short interest. They were rebalancing it every two weeks. This time around, they are starting with the 200 most traded U.S. stocks. They're screening for volatility via the options market, and then they zero in on 30 of the most volatile names. and then based off of social media momentum, they're picking 13 to 25 stocks. They are rebalancing weekly or more to try to stay up to date with current sentiment shifts,
Starting point is 00:17:15 and they're relying very heavily on Reddit and X as real-time input. So basically what they're doing is saying we're going to try to give you the pulse of the market on social media in real time. So potentially that is the utility of the meme ETF, even though it's called meme and the fundamentals aren't necessarily there. If you just want to stay up to date with what the kids are talking about, this is the ETF for you. So what are the kids talking about? What's in this ETF? At least for now, the biggest weighted company is Open Door Technologies, which has gone,
Starting point is 00:17:43 it's a real estate tech company that's gone on a truly insane ride over the past few months. There's also hydrogen fuel cell companies like plug power in there and bloom energy. There's a lot of quantum computing companies including D-Wave and Raghetti. There's other nuclear energy firms as well. There's Bitcoin miners turned data setter companies. There's Hems and Hers, which is the direct-to-consumer health care. company. So a lot of names that you have seen on Reddit and X in the past few months are in this particular ETF. And you're seeing it take a much different flavor than the previous
Starting point is 00:18:15 ETF, meme ETF, which had things like GameStop and AMC and Hertz and those classic meme stock companies. Now we're seeing more in the quantum and nuclear realm. Let's take a quick break and come back with our dog of the week. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.S. College PC.
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Starting point is 00:19:23 Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. My dog of the week is Ferrari, which sank 15% yesterday for its worst day ever on the stock market. Investors were disappointed with the supercar company's profit and revenue forecasts, while also let down by its scaled back electrification plans. Ferrari has a much-hyped EV in the works, the Electrical model, its first ever, but said yesterday it only expects fully electric cars to account for 20% of its vehicle lineup by 2030, half of its previous
Starting point is 00:19:56 target of 40%. It is a rare L for Ferrari whose stock has gone as vertical as its doors, despite selling fewer than 14,000 vehicles a year. Ferrari is the most valuable automaker in Europe, topping the legs of Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen, which makes over 9 million cars a year. I'm going to correct myself. I said Ferrari's been successful despite selling so few cars, but really it's because of that exclusivity. Ferrari doesn't really sell cars. It sells expertly crafted collector's items to the 0.001%. And these stats are going to blow your mind. 81% of the cars Ferrari sold last year went to existing clients, according to Bloomberg, and nearly half were bought by current owners of more than one Ferrari. It generates almost $500,000 in
Starting point is 00:20:43 revenue per vehicle sold, and its operating profit margins of around 30% are unheard of in the auto industry. It released a new hypercar, the F80, at $4.1 million, and it sold out all 799 of them. Still, Ferrari has set a high bar for itself, and its worst day on the market reflects those towering expectations. Yeah, Ferrari's business depends on this idea that its cars are not just cars. They are investments. And when you start to see resale value slipping a little bit, which we are, some of its lightly used SF90s are selling for 30% less than their original sticker price.
Starting point is 00:21:17 I wish I knew what an SF 90. I know. You sounded like, you had a few parks and drive away. Someone out there listening knows what an SF 90 looks like. I'm sure it's a beautiful car. And then the other thing that they've been seeing creep into potentially their forecast, is that a lot of their revenue is derived from customization. So you come in and you're making bespoke models for people.
Starting point is 00:21:37 Sometimes a paint-color paint job alone can cost $30,000 because you want your Ferrari to feel like your Ferrari. If I had a Ferrari, I wanted to feel like my Ferrari. But that's a double-edged sword because when you have these bespoke models, they don't necessarily hold up when they transfer hands. And again, resale value is a big part of owning a Ferrari here. So they're trying to say that, hey, our business is still strong, but we're almost going to pull back a little bit on, we have the strategic shift underway. We want to protect the brand's namesake on the market.
Starting point is 00:22:07 We don't necessarily want to chase growth at all costs. We actually want to protect this resale market value because without that, we lose our entire business model. Let's talk about this EV, though, the Electra. So Ferrari is a company that kind of hangs its hat on its engine and the purr of the engine. A lot of people buy it because of an internal combustion engine that makes you feel like you're on top of the world. But in an electric vehicle, there is no engine. And so Ferrari is seen as the benchmark of what you can do as a super car company to create an electric vehicle. And one of the biggest variables here is that if you don't have an engine, you don't have an engine sound.
Starting point is 00:22:43 So how is Ferrari going about this? A lot of car companies are thinking about this, especially in the luxury segment. So what it says is it's not going to try to imitate a internal combustion engine sound. It's going to take the electric engine, quote unquote, and then amplify. it into the cabin to give the driver feedback. It compared it to an acoustic guitar versus an electric guitar. So that's one way they are thinking about this. But you can imagine across these cars, they have to think about how they're going to apply what people love about their internal combustion cars, which is, you know, a lot of things that they like about that and translate that
Starting point is 00:23:18 to an electric vehicle. And if you look across the landscape, Porsche, Lamborghini, and McLaren, they all said they were going to do an EV. But they also all delayed those plans because, again, the broader market is slowing down. EVs also depreciate a lot faster than traditional cars, which is a huge part of their business, as you mentioned. So they've got to figure out how to get that rumble in an EV, and we'll see when this car comes out. It is hugely hyped.
Starting point is 00:23:41 I hope we see it. If anyone from Ferrari is listening right now, you want us to test out this new rumble, you know where to find us. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Argentina, you are getting a bailout from the U.S. government. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he finally, a rescue package for the struggling South American economy, giving a boost to its leader and Trump ally, Javier Miele. The U.S. will give Argentina a loan of $20 billion and in a highly
Starting point is 00:24:08 unusual step directly buy Argentina pesos in order to prop up a currency that's lost more than 27% of its value against the dollar this year. And when I say highly unusual, I mean that this is just the fourth time since 1996 that the U.S. bought another country's currency on the open market. Toby, there's been a lot of criticism of this bailout, especially from America's farmers, for using taxpayer money to help out a competitor in the soybean market at a time when China has started to buy tons more soybeans from Argentina instead of the United States. Yeah, this is a lot of domestic backlash is coming Trump's way because U.S. farmers in the Midwest have been struggling because China stopped buying their soybeans. Instead, Argentina's suspension of export taxes made their soybeans cheaper. and so now China is buying from Argentina. So here you are a U.S. farmer looking at your own taxpayer money,
Starting point is 00:25:00 going to bailing out a rival who is stealing business from you. That is why the optics of it are deeply unpopular. And again, Trump is trying to show his support for a politically aligned ally. He thinks Argentina can be an ally to the U.S., which is why he's doing it. But domestically, it might be a tough sell, especially if this loan goes belly up, which has often been the case whenever you are lending money to Argentina,
Starting point is 00:25:22 historically speaking. Moving on, like the UNC tar heels, Delta is ready to move on from Coach. In its earnings yesterday, the airline projected its premium in corporate seat sales will surpass economy and revenue by 2027 and could do so for a few quarters as soon as next year. Q3 results already showed the shift. Revenue jumped 6% to $16.7 billion, driven mostly by demand for first class seats and loyalty program upgrades. Delta CEO says that high-income travelers are investing in themselves, by splurging on the experience economy.
Starting point is 00:25:56 Their number one objective is to travel. It's to go out in adventure, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said. We sit at the sweet spot there for that cohort, and that's what's driving the great results we're seeing. In other words, Delta's future isn't coming from putting more butts in seats. It's putting nicer butts in nicer seats. You know, flashback to April, Delta scrapped its full year forecast because tariffs made the rest of the year too unpredictable.
Starting point is 00:26:20 Now it's seeing travel demand stabilize on the backs of its richest customers. People just love their first class seat. So you said 6% was revenue growth last year for Delta. Let's actually dive into that a little bit. Premium cabin revenue rose 9% from last year to about $6 billion. Main cabin ticket revenue fell 4% from the year before. So you see the divergence there. And that's why Delta is predicting that first class and luxury travel is going to overtake us regular folks in the back of the plane in not too long at all.
Starting point is 00:26:50 And really, this is a very dramatic shakeup for the airline industry. Go back to 2010, Delta had a 60% share of its revenue coming from main cabin tickets. And then fast forward 14 years later to 2024, that fell to just 43%. Ed Bastion, the CEO, is saying what every other airline CEO is saying in that really rich people, what they want to do, they don't have to buy anything else, but they will buy travel tickets because that is their main priority. So whenever consumer spending drops off in any other sort of discretionary sector, people are still obsessed with travel, especially those in the 1%.
Starting point is 00:27:26 Speak for yourself in the back of the plane. I'm driving my Ferrari and rumbling around to my new EV. I have never flown first class. I've never flown first class. I really want to in the coming years. Maybe Delta, it looks like Delta is going to make its entire plane first class at this point and then just have two seats next to the bathroom. That's you and me.
Starting point is 00:27:45 That's you and me. All right, moving on. Finally, Laze wants to remind you that its potato chips are made from actual potato. PepsiCo, the brand's owner, is giving Lays an overhaul this year from the packaging to the ingredients to revive sputtering sales. According to the Wall Street Journal, the front of those iconic yellow chip bags are going to feature the phrase made with real potatoes, alongside images of potatoes and chips. As for what's on the inside, for some chips varieties, Lays is going to switch out seed and corn oils to olive and avocado oil. Plus, it's going to remove artificial coloring from its barbecue chips, which admittedly, made them look oh so delectable. The changes come as Pepsi snack units experience slowing growth since
Starting point is 00:28:29 2022 and activist investor Elliott management has taken aim at the company's management. Not to mention RFK juniors make America healthy again movement, putting pressure on food companies to include more natural ingredients. Toby, Lay seems pretty freaked out that people don't know they use potatoes for potato chips. Yeah, obviously you can tie it to this Maha movement of modernity, but also there was this survey back in 2021 that I think proved to be a massive wake-up call for PepsiCo. They found that 42% of consumers didn't know lays are made from real potatoes. That is a wild stat when you are a potato chip brand. I would love to know what did consumers think they were eating and why were they
Starting point is 00:29:08 continuing to eat it if they didn't think it was potatoes. But clearly they had to recalibrate here. They wanted to go more on this health-focused ingredient-aware consumer who is kind of dominating the snack market at this point. And I do have to say they do look a little bit more appealing now. Lay's always had a little bit of that artificial look now. Maybe with this matte finish, with the images of real potatoes and chips on the front, it starts to appeal to a customer who says, okay, yeah, that does look a little bit more natural and delicious. So interesting to see one of the biggest snack companies pivoting fully into this healthier movement.
Starting point is 00:29:44 But I think that's the way the winds are blowing right now. I just hope they don't mess up the barbecue chips. I know. I'm a little nervous about that color. And the coloring. You mentioned it. Yeah. All right, that is all the time we have.
Starting point is 00:29:53 Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. And speaking of that, a quick programming note, it is a three-day weekend with Indigenous People's Day and Columbus Day arriving on Monday. Exciting stuff. But just a heads up, on Monday, we're going to be releasing a special interview episode all about the job market. Then get back to regularly scheduled news shows on Tuesday when everyone's back at work. If you have any feedback on today's episode, send a note to Morning Brewdale. at MorningBrew.com.
Starting point is 00:30:22 Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lue is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup always suspected that potato chips were made with potatoes. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great. So did Daniel. I wish you all well.
Starting point is 00:30:47 Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th. the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. UN must be 21 to enter.

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