Morning Brew Daily - Producers Show! The Year of Fast-Casual Dining, Viral Marketing Moments and more

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Episode 744: No Neal and Toby! You get to hear from the producers of MBD! In this episode, they’ll talk about some of their favorite stories the show has covered in the year, including the return of fast food restaurant favorites and why are more Americans staying more and more sober. Then, it’s a deeper dive into the biggest news in the entertainment world with the cancellation of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Finally, American Eagle’s viral ad campaign with Sydney Sweeney may have pushed the boundaries, but in the end, it put the longstanding retailer back in the conversation.  Check out https://www.public.com/morningbrew for more 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 Paid endorsement. Brokerage services provided by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Investing involves risk. Not investment advice. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and investment values may rise or fall. See terms of match program at https://public.com/disclosures/matchprogram. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today we look back at our favorite stories of the year. And we share how they came to be and whether or not we were fans of it. We discuss food, late night shows, viral marketing campaigns, and why no one wants to drink anymore. It's Friday, December 26th. Let's ride. Welcome to the producer. show. My name is Emily. I'm the executive producer of Morning Brew Daily and I've joined by producer Ray and associate producers Olivia Graham, OG for short, and Olivia Lake or Live. We are

excited to take the mics away from Neil and Toby. Yeah, this is an idea that we've had for a while. So for this special holiday episode, we let the guys take a break and thought, you know, it'd be kind of fun to share some of our favorite stories that we've covered this year. Morning Brew Daily covers a lot, so we had a work cut out for us. Each of us went through almost a year's worth of prep docs and podcast episodes and shows our top headlines. But first, let's toss it over to the guys for our presenting sponsor. Hey, thanks, Liv. It's the guys. All right, Neil, when you cook, what's the most important part? Well, that I have my ingredients, a recipe to follow, and that I want to eat whatever food I make,

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Details at Yamava.com must be 21. Twitter, please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Thank you to Neil and Toby for that stellar ad read that I wrote. All right, for our first story, reflecting on 2025, I, producer Emily, want to take you all on a culinary journey. We cover a lot of different stories on this show, but one of my favorite topics that everyone can get on board with is food. 2025 was the year of slap bowls and fast casual dining. When I was going through our prep docs for almost a year's worth of shows, I came across April 18th,

where we did a big food roundup. Let me read you the headlines. Chili's trolls McDonald's with its new quarter-pounder burger. McDonald's teases the return of snack wraps on social media. Taco Bell is bringing back a wildly popular menu item, chicken nuggets, and Red Robin unveils Burger Pass that can get you bottomless burgers in May.

Chili's in particular had a great year, which we covered fairly extensively on this show. They posted a 24% increase in quarterly, sales and a 16% increase in traffic. The restaurant's average revenue per location or unit volume has significantly increased from about $3.1 million in 2022 to roughly $4.5 million in 2025. Now hand up when we covered the quarter pounder story that weekend, I did go to eight chilies in Westfield, New Jersey, and I tried the burger for myself, and it was delicious. So let me ask all of you, have we covered any food stories this year that have made you go out of your way to

try something that you may not have thought you would before. Yeah, me and Toby actually went down the street and tried the new Luckin coffee. We kind of did a comparison between Luckin and Starbucks to kind of see, you know, taste vibe and also the speediness. That was their big sell. It actually wasn't too speedy. But I liked it. I liked how it tasted better, which I'm always going to put over speed. That was something where it was fun. It was, you know, we live in New York City, so we kind of have access to try out all these stories that we cover when it comes to products or food. So yeah, that was a little thing we went out of our way to do. Yeah, it was fun.

Actually, I shot that video. So if you go on our Instagram and look at the social video, funny quick story about that. When we went to Luckin Coffee and did the video, there was another Wall Street Journal reporter that was also covering it. So this was kind of like the big hoopla that Luckin Coffee was breaking in New York City. So we were interested to see what it was really like. But in terms of, like, other food, I have not tried the Chili's quarter pounder, which I was super interested.

But I did try Chili's earlier in the year. Still hits. I think Chili's is still great. I was like, wow, this is actually very, very good food, surprisingly. Yeah, talking about fast, casual restaurants, we took the whole team to Dave and Busters, like, a week ago for our end-of-year holiday extravaganza because December gets pretty crazy for us. So we thought before Thanksgiving, we'll all hit up Dave and Busters in Times Square. And they were, I was talking to the waiter and I was like, hey, like, how are you guys doing? Like, customer traffic, when's your busiest time?

And he was actually saying that in the past year, they're really banking on that nostalgia from people. Like, oh, yeah, I went to Dave and Busters when I was like 13 for a birthday party. And now that kind of wave is reviving their business, which I thought was really interesting because, like, that was me. I hadn't been to Dave and Busters since I was like in high school. or middle school and it was a lot of fun. Yeah, I think nostalgia was a huge thing, specifically around restaurants and their atmosphere. I mean, we saw the whole cracker barrel thing happen and that whole flip out of when they changed their interior. So I think food is obviously drawing people, but if you're going to spend your money and leave the house,

the nostalgia factor and the atmosphere is a big thing, too, that we saw this year. Yeah, I mean, that kind of ties into why Taco Bell was bringing back a widely popular menu item. And this is a year where a lot of consumers were kind of tight on their budgets and kind of spending, being more cautious about spending. So in terms of like the trend of the stories that Emily, you talked about in terms of food, a lot of people were just looking for value. And as a restaurant in that industry, we're just basically looking at what are some items that we know are going to hit, like the snack wrap, chicken nuggets, the quarter pounder. But, you know, it also speaks to how kind of more expensive McDonald's has kind of been, to chilies to code down to McDonald's bill. Look, we can offer what

you offer. We're not necessarily. in the same category, but we can still offer the same value for the quarter pounder, you know. And it was delicious. It was delicious. I encourage everybody to go try it. Okay, well, if y'all remember back in an August episode, in fact, it was August 14th, and I know this to be exact because I looked it up. We covered a recent Gallup poll that said 53% of Americans believe that drinking, even moderate drinking, was bad for their health.

This is up 28% back in 2015. In 2015, I was definitely doing a lot of drinking myself, but that's neither here nor there. Even for those who still have a drinky drink every now and then alcohol use has decreased across the board. The average number of drinks in a week has gone down to 2.8, which is actually the lowest it's been in decades. Alongside this story, there's been kind of a growing consensus among health professionals that drinking can lead to negative health outcomes. This is contrary to what was said before, which used to say, you know, have you. a drink every now and then has some benefits, like a glass of red wine. So team, this is the perfect primer for those getting ready for dry January.

Who's with me? I mean, I'm doing dry January. I'm a big fan of dry January. I'm Gen Z. It's huge. Pretty much everyone I know does it? I know last year we all talked about doing dry January. Emily said she was with me.

I did dry January Monday through Thursday. Yeah. And most Sunday. In most Sundays. Monday through Thursday. I don't know. At the end of the week, you're like, oh, my God, Chardonnay was, he's so good right now. No, absolutely.

But you guys were devout. Yeah, no, no. That's the one thing that I lock in on is dry January. So I'll be participating. But do you actually do, like, all of January? Oh, yeah. Like, no exceptions? Yeah, no exceptions.

No, yeah. I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. An alcohol story that we covered about Gen Z was that they don't start a bar tab. and I remember when we covered that, I started feeling really insecure when I would go out to a bar. And they'd be like, do you want to open her clothes? I was like, uh, open. Yeah, I'm cool.

And I actually had a bartender say thank you to me. Really? When I said open, because I guess they're so used to now people closing out. And they probably just have to do it so much more because even if people go back to get drinks, they're closing out every time. So he appreciated that I wanted to keep the tab open. But I guess that probably led to me drinking more rather than less. So it worked.

It worked. Yeah. It's one of those stories when we talked about it and we started covering it. I thought it was interesting because I quit drinking two years ago. So I've been kind of on this trend. Shout out, right? Yeah, I know. Not raving.

So Gen Z. But when the story in the Gallupol came out, it was interesting that, like, young people were quitting drinking, especially, like, I was kind of wondering, like, why and, you know, in terms of the health benefits. But, I mean, I also think about there's just, way more non-alcoholic options nowadays. There's a lot more people doing non-alcoholic beverages or low-alcoholic beverages,

and they taste more or less the same. So I think that contributes to it as well. I also think about cannabis as being a potential option if you kind of need to have some kind of substance for social activities. But cannabis is not a substitute for drinking. Right. That's either have anxiety and have fun or like really have fun. It is interesting because there's drinks now kind of marketed to kind of be like, oh, you can have this at the bar and something like that.

I also think it goes into the economy too. I mean, Olivia and I went and shot a video about, you know, bars and watch parties and trying to get Gen Z out to bars. And some of it is probably health concerns, but a lot of it also might just be, we don't got money to spend. Like, we don't have the money to go out drinking. and, you know, in New York City, a cocktail can be up to like $20-something dollars. Like, you know, we don't, it might be for a lot of people not wanting to drink because of the health risks and other people just wanting to save their money. I mean, a lot of people drink at home.

Like, they'll do shots at home and then they'll go to the bar. They'll buy one drink, sip on it throughout the night. But, yeah, when cocktails are like $15 to $20, you have to make do. And I see why people aren't keeping those tabs open. Yeah. Do you find that the social situation is kind of what makes it, tough too. Like even if let's say if you're during during dry January, but you still want to go out every now and then, everyone around you is having a drink. Is it difficult for you to be like,

ah, hi. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I like do significantly less in January. But it's also like it's the new year. I'm trying to do my resolutions. Like I'm keeping myself busy with other stuff. I'm not going to bars, but I'm not going to bars. Yeah. I remember Toby did it too last year. A lot of people. No, he didn't. Yeah, here we go. This is letting out. There you go. Okay. He did the damp. You're right. Actually, you're right. I remember him talking about whether or not he had a beer on a few weekends in Dry Junior.

That's a blow-up to be a spot for not doing that on this podcast. All right. On that note, Morning Brew Daily. We'll be back right after this. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade.

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storeshill-tells.com. All right, for our next story, one of the biggest stories of the year coming out of Hollywood was the cancellation of the late show Stephen Colbert. So it was announced in July that the show would end its run in May of 26. CBS famously stated the decision was purely financial due to economic challenges in late night, not a reflection of the show's performance or content. But that did not stop people from speculating since the cancellation followed Cobar's on-air criticism of a recent settlement by CBS's parent company, Paramount. So this story hit especially close to home for me as someone,

who used to work on the show, along with our other Olivia. We both used to work there. But, yeah, worked there before coming to Morning Brew. And when that news broke, I had people texting me that I didn't talk to in years saying, like, what's the inside scoop? And I'm like, I'm finding out with you. I don't know. Did they think you still worked at the show?

No, no, no. But they were just like, you did work there. So you're probably in close contact with people. But, yeah, I had no information at that time. But what I will say is that it's not so shocking to see the state of legacy media and television changing. I mean, I think we can all agree that the state of network TV has needed some revamping, but on a personal level, it feels kind of like surreal to see the world giving thick pieces on why Colbert sucks or like why he's awesome or why late night is dead or why streaming is like the biggest thing. But also streaming still sucks too.

So ultimately these things happen in entertainment like shows get cancer. sold left and right for millions of reasons, but the cancellation of the late show felt different. It felt like a shift that we haven't seen before in TV. And you couple that with the layoffs that we've seen at Paramount in the past year. And it's just not looking good for legacy media. Yeah, I know. When this story broke, it was kind of crazy because the late show has kind of been like a landmark in television, just late night in show, late night television in general.

And I'm a fan of late night TV and also a big fan of Stephen Colbert. So when the story of his show being canceled, especially being like number one for X amount of years, it's like, what? That kind of didn't make any sense. No, it was shocking. It was shocking. But I do remember when the story broke, it happened overnight. And so just a little peek behind the curtain. So we pretty much set the lineup for Neil and Toby, decided what they want to talk about for the episode, kind of like in the afternoon.

And then when we woke up in the morning, we saw that the show had been canceled, came to. the morning, came into the office and was like, oh, right? So I guess we're talking about Stephen Colbert. And it's just one of those things that we have to pivot, you know, with limited information that we have. Of course, you know, all the major publications were reporting on it. But it turned out to be like a huge thing because it was this magnifying glass into late night TV and the TV industry as a whole. I mean, and then Kimmel, like that news broke. And so I feel like we'll continue to see this ripple effect. But I still think there's hope in entertainment. I don't think I don't think late night or comedy is dead. I think it just might look a little bit different.

Yeah. Yeah. My internet stuff. I totally agree with you. And what was interesting about the Kimmel thing is that all of a sudden you started to hear these names of these news operating companies and syndicated channel operating companies who were players like Sinclair, which owns a number of television stations around the country, ultimately made the decision to pull Kimmel from.

their air for what two weeks something like that and I used to work in local news I was a local news reporter in my first job out of college in Maine I work for a company called tegna which was purchased by a larger company called next star and now sinclair and scripts might merge and it's just like everything that we've known yeah it's just like changing before our eyes and like things that I care about because like I'm a news junkie right and like have a bunch of friends and we all do who work in this industry, everything is just changing so rapidly because it's bleeding money and people are trying to figure out how to make money. I mean, we're sitting on a news podcast right now. That's the wave, you know? I think, yeah, I think adapting is really important because there are

so many opportunities like this. Obviously, we're on this news podcast. It's morning brew. So while legacy media may not be the thing right now, there are so many opportunities to adapt. When you guys worked over there, it was like this massive machine, I have to imagine. Oh, yeah, 200 plus staff members. But it was very, it's interesting growing up thinking of wanting to work in film and television. That was much more what I had imagined because it is that old school legacy media thing. But it was very, everyone knew their role. And it was, you know, down to a science.

It was a very well-oiled machine. Right. But then you move over to some. something like Morning Brew and you get to try so many different things. It's not as because it's a period of transition. You know, they've been doing late night shows for so many years that they know what works. They know what doesn't. And when you're in this new phase of media, like podcasting or online content, you're kind of learning as you go.

Yeah. So I didn't, when I was a kid, I would never ever think like, oh, I'm going to work on a podcast. Totally. I mean, I think we're still figuring out what our roles are. Whereas when we worked at the late show, it's like once a position opens, then someone else can fill that. But until that position opens, there's not really upward movement. Okay, for our final story, American Eagles Sydney Sweeney collab was the biggest marketing drama of the year, and it got a little out of pocket. The campaign, which debuted in July under the slogan, Sydney has great genes, quickly drew accusations online that it was flirting with the language.

of eugenics and racial superiority. But while critics pounced others, including President Donald Trump, praised the spot or insisted people were reading too much into it. Trump's approval alone sent American Eagle's stock soaring in early August. The numbers tell an even bigger story. The ad racked up nearly 150 million views across social platforms, while American Eagle reported its customer count jumped by more than 700,000 following the launch of Sidney Sweeney and Travis Kelsey campaigns. And according to data from the brokerage platform, Brokechuser, Sidney's denim debut boosted the retailer's shares by roughly 10%, doubled its web traffic,

and added an estimated $400 million in market value. The controversy resurfaced last month, when Sweeney addressed the uproar in a GQ interview, her response, the reaction was definitely a surprise, but I love jeans. Amid all the backlash, American Eagle clearly benefited from this controversy. Did they single-handedly prove that all press is good press? I mean, you can really make an argument one way or another. I think something, you know, that has been really interesting this year in particular is we see these moments pop up. You have Beyonce with her Levi's jeans ad. There are people who love that and there were people who did not like that. I even look at Lububo. It's like in the beginning of this year, I had no idea what a Labubu is. And then all of a sudden we're talking of how the founder of Pop Mart, which is the parent company of Labubu is worth like $9 billion or something.

insane like that. Yeah, I mean, we even see it with the Gap ad with Katzai. People loved that. And that came out after the Sydney-Sweeney-Gines campaign. So people were comparing the two. And then they were praising the Gap ad. And I think it's interesting that it gained press for both sides. Like, whether or not you like the American Eagle ad, like more people were talking about it when people were comparing it to Gap. So it's like, what is it, rising tides, lift all boats? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure if, you know, the Katzai one was already shot before the Sydney Sweeney because it came out very soon after. And I can't help but kind of think that, you know, the people on those marketing teams were like, okay, let's use this momentum to kind of get into this conversation. So we're seeing

not only like these marketing campaigns have this huge splash, but other companies jumping on bandwagons when they're hot and trying to capitalize on whatever is, you know, the talk of that week because trends are so like flash in the pan today. It's kind of, it reminds me of like the cold play kiss cam thing. Yeah. That thing broke out and then all these brands started to do their own spin on it. At first, sometimes it's, it's clever. It's funny like in the moment. But then when they, when there's like too many that do it, you're like, oh, okay. Well, I think that's why. Yeah, trends are so short-lived is because they're, they're, There's just so many, there's just so much content.

So you just get like an overwhelming amount of one thing that then you're like, if I see one more video of this, I'm going to throw my photo. So I never want to see it again. Yeah. In a way, it is kind of genius. In terms of the question of all press, kind of good press in a way, if people are talking about it, it is. It got people talking about American Eagle.

I'm sure, like the chief marketing officer defended the campaign, but I'm sure in the inner conversations. They were like, how do we become provocative? How do we push boundaries, you know, without stepping over the line? And some people would argue that they did step over the line, but at the same time, you know, it had some metric effect to their shares. So in the end, I think it was good for the company because people definitely talk about it. I mean, I hadn't heard anyone mention American Eagle in years before this thing. Right, exactly. So, I mean, it had been all Abercrombie. Right. Cromby's back. American Eagle and Abercrombie. Abercrombie does make good jeans.

Yeah. As a swear every time, they make good jeans. Good to know. All right, well, on that note, we are going to wrap it up. Hope everybody is enjoying their holiday break. If you get one, if you want to shoot us an email, you absolutely can. Morningrewdaily at Morningbrew.com. Also be sure to follow us on social media and the Daily show.

Let's roll the credits. I'm executive producer Emily. And I'm producer Ray. I'm associate producer Olivia. And I am also associate producer Olivia. Hair and makeup took Neil and Toby out to lunch. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew Inc. We will see you all next week.

Bye. Bye.