Morning Brew Daily - Twitter vs NPR, McDonalds layoffs, Chipotle files lawsuit against Sweet Green

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Episode 33: Neal and Toby dive into the latest Twitter naming NPR a state-affiliated media source. They also discuss McDonald's layoffs and why Chipotle filed a lawsuit against Sweetgreen in a battle of burrito bowls. Plus, Neal's Numbers - which if you have any fancy kitchen appliances, you may wanna take a look at your real estate value. And a full preview of the new Barbie Movie and why the food prices at The Masters are inflation-proof. Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Listen Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good morning, Brue Daley Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Our top story today is about Twitter's controversial move to label NPR as state-affiliated media. And we'll also talk about how Barbie has built so much hype around this upcoming movie. Side for that. And then we're also talking about the layoffs hitting McDonald's in some burrito bowl drama between Sweet Green in Chipotle. Burrito brawls. Barito brawls.

Say that five times fast. But before we jump into our stories, I want to take a moment. and apologize for an egregious error I made on yesterday's show. We strive to bring you the best, most accurate content. So whenever that isn't in the case, I want to own up to it. And the incident I'm talking about is yesterday when describing a story about the Bay Area, I uttered the words San Fran, which is a huge no-no, apparently, which I actually do. I should have called you out right away.

So instead of calling it SF, I called it San Fran. So I now realize the error of my ways, and I will never disappoint our Bay Area listeners again. That's so many. Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue.

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Comments about that. I know. They call me out. This is why I like our audience. You hold me accountable, which I appreciate. SF. All right, let's get into it

with our top story. Twitter made another controversial decision around a media outlet Tuesday when it labeled NPR, National Public Radio, as state-affiliated media. Now, this is drawn an outcry from NPR and other folks

in the U.S. industry for being a false characterization and one that dangerously lumps NPR in with actual state-run media outlets in places like China and Russia. So whatever you think of NPR, it is a massive stretch to consider state-affiliated media under the definition that Twitter itself provides. So that definition is outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and or control over production and distribution. And the crazy thing was, as recently as Tuesday, Twitter said that NPR would not be included. So it had this carve out, said that state finance media organizations with

editorial independence like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the U.S., for example, are not to find a state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy. So NPR was removed from the statement. Yeah, they literally went back on their own word. And so this is why people are saying this is kind of crazy because the financial part isn't even that big. So the NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget on average from federal sources. So it's not like it's getting 50% or it's not getting this huge financial help from the federal government. And then, yeah, the key point is it has editorial independence. Like there is no influence from the U.S. government on their editorial board.

So it's a weird decision from Twitter. So it gets less than, just want to clarify, gets less than 1% of its budget directly from federal government. It receives about 10% of its budget from the corporation through public broadcasting. NPR has all of these member stations all over. They pay fees to NPR corporate and those regional outlets get funding from state, federal grants through the corporation of public broadcasting. But yeah, the biggest issue here is the topic of editorial independence. And the White House press secretary was actually asked about this yesterday.

And here's how she responded. There's no doubt of the independence of NPR's journalists. And it has been, if you've ever been on the receiving end of their questions, you know this. You know that they have their independence in journalism. So the people are, the reason people are kind of upset about this and think it's really dangerous move is because it kind of creates a false equivalency

between NPR and these other outlets from China and Russia. I'm talking about Russia's RT and China's People's Daily. that are actual mouthpieces for the government. So when you see something from them, it's just straight up propaganda. Yeah. If we just want to take a zoom out picture into like what is Elon doing, really?

Again, it feels like he keeps shooting himself in the own foot because remember, one of the reasons why people go to Twitter is for news and a big part of getting news from Twitter is knowing that that news is coming from a reputable source. And once he's done in the past two weeks, he removed New York Times checkmark because they wouldn't pay the $10,000.

for the organization. And then he labeled NPR as state-affiliated media. So he seems like he's undermining one of the key use cases of Twitter and letting this narrative that false news and that misinformation can spread grow because he keeps undermining himself. It's bizarre. The policies are not consistent. I think that's the biggest problem.

PBS, which receives federal funding, is still, is not affiliated state-affiliated media. Yeah. The Washington Post, which is not, paying for verification is still verified. Meanwhile, the New York Times is not. So this has not been consistently applied and no one really knows what's going on over there. For sure. We always talk, we keep, he's still in the news. We can't get rid of them. Okay, let's move on to our next story. It's another layoff story, unfortunately, but this one's a little bit different from the normal big tech ones that we've been talking about recently. This time, it's McDonald's that is laying

off an unknown amount of corporate workers. And there's a few interesting aspects to this story that I want to touch on. First of all, McDonald's is overall doing generally pretty well. So global sales rose 11% worldwide last year, 6% in the U.S. And then second of all, McDonald's did this really kind of suss, kind of a polarizing thing where they closed all their corporate offices and conducted these layoffs virtually. And so, Neil, this is a hot button issue for a lot of people. What are your thoughts on virtual layoff? Well, you said it was suss. And I think some people don't think it's us. Some people think it's the right way to do it. But yes, over the pandemic, this has been a growing trend. We've had Google deliver its layouts

via email. Twitter also did this. So it's divided the HR community a little bit. Some people think it's actually the better move because, you know, you don't have this awkward conversation where people have to go into the office and come back to their desks and kind of like shamefully grab all of their stuff. But the other hand says it's kind of disrespectful to people to not have a conversation face to face. I see it both ways. I mean, I came to the job market in the time where we worked virtually. And I can't imagine telling someone to come into the office just to like fire them. That's the like the cruelest thing in the world to do, especially if you've been a remote worker.

So I'm on team, yeah, just rip the Band-Aid off. It's much easier to deal with that and the privacy of your own home. So, yeah, even though it doesn't have that interpersonal aspect, like, I'm non-confrontational. So, yeah, fire me via Zoom if we have to. It does seem like over remote, things can go way more wrong. Like, remember the better.com guy? So he did these mass layoffs via Zoom, which is the absolute wrong way to do it. He fired 900 people in a mass Zoom call.

That's not the right way to do it at all. Yeah. And then just to zoom out and go back to McDonald's for a second, one of the reason why they may be conducting these layoffs is food costs are rising. It's just getting more expensive to run a fast food because of inflation. Everything kind of funnels into making things more expensive. And then also, this is a white-collar layoff story. McDonald's is seeing increased demand, increased foot traffic, so they need the people in the

restaurants making the food. So this is mostly going to affect like the corporate white collar workers from corporate and McDonald's. Really interesting stat that McDonald's has more than 150,000 employees in corporate roles and in its restaurants around the world. About 70% of those employees are not in the U.S. Wow. This is a truly global corporation. Yeah, it's big. Golden Arches. We have another food story up.

We mentioned at the top of the show, this burrito bowl drama. So there's a court case brewing that we need to cover again. and this one is the highest stake game of chicken we've seen so far. So Chipotle is taking on the salad chain Sweet Green to federal court over its new Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl. So basically Chipotle has gone Will Smith on Sweet Green and wants it to keep Chipotle's name out of its damn mouth. The lawsuit alleges that Sweet Green's new burrito bowl constitute trademark infringement

and argues that Sweet Green attempts to profit on. off of Chipotle's near identical and well-known product. What do you think, Neil, do they have a point? Well, there's a few aspects to this. In the branding for this particular bowl, they wrote Chipotle and kind of made it look like the Chipotle. The font is similar. The font is similar.

And then they also are alleged to have put it in this Adobe red that Chipotle's branding is based on. And they also had this big time oops moment where they kind of gave away their schick. Because on Instagram, a commenter wrote Chipotle Who, to on a post of Sweet Green's new bowl. And the brand responded, you said it, not us, with the zipped lips emoji. I know.

That poor social media manager, now they're going to court and like that's going to be used as evidence. I don't know. We're looking at a picture of the bowl behind us. Like, it doesn't really look alike. The ingredients aren't the exact same. Also, the container that Sweet Greens is in is a rectangle. I didn't know that was a fit. Does that have to come into play in this?

It's, this is an interesting, like, it actually, the market did react. to this news, though, so it's not insignificant. So Sweet Green stock was down 11% on this news coming out because I guess Sweet Green investors want to see them expanding their offerings, expanding just beyond the salads they typically offer. And if they're foray into barrito bowls, it gets shot down before it can get off the ground, I could see how that's concerning. Sweet Green did not do a good job about rolling this out because Chipotle is not just the restaurant. It's a pepper.

I know. Yeah. You should be able to offer a Chipotle chicken bowl. Chipotle is actually a jalapeno that has been left on the vine to ripen until red, and then it's smoked and then dried. I did not know that. That's a good fact. We also have to talk about Chipotle, though. It is crushing it.

It's up 22% this year. Its market cap is now $46.8 billion. I had no clue. It's bigger than Capital One, Electronic Arts, Kroger, Prudential, and eBay. Wow. And it's hiring 25,000 more workers. Chipotle, so hot right now. Wait, before we go, National Burrito Day is today.

So you should Google whether there are burrito deals around you because I think a lot of burrito chains are giving out free burritos. Neil is news you can use. God's work today. Thank you for that, Neil. I will do that. Okay, that's the first half of our show. Before we jump into the next half, we're going to take a quick break.

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It's three interesting stats that I've read in the news that will make your jaw drop or do other things. Our first one, Toby, if you're selling a house and you've rigged your kitchen into an iron chef arena. You should definitely make note of that in the listing. So New Zillow research is out and it finds that listings touting chef-friendly amenities such as steam ovens, which I don't know what that is, pizza ovens, and professional-grade appliances can sell for as much as 5.3% more than similar homes without them. And that adds about $17,400 to a typical U.S. home. You know, when I saw this, that, I thought people are so over-optimistic on their cooking abilities. they're like, oh, we got to get this house.

It's got a pizza oven. We're going to be making pizzas like every night for dinner. They probably, I would love to see the usage stats of those high quality appliances that they paid extra for. But yeah, that is interesting. It, like, preys on this unique, like, human psychology moment. I invested. The most fancy kitchen appliance I have is a lot cruet Dutch oven.

Yeah. And you use it a lot, right? I use it all the time. Okay, maybe I'm... I would not use a pizza oven. Yeah. Let's move on to our second number. It has to do with basic.

baseball. The changes MLB made to speed up games and generate more offense so far, I think we're less than a week into the season, appear to be working really significantly. Through Sunday, games average two hours and 38 minutes, which is down a whole half hour from the 308 average from the first couple of games last year. Stolen bases have doubled. The batting average has jumped 16 percentage points. So these changes appear to be working and maybe delivering a more compelling product and doing what baseball wants to do. Yeah, the offensive increase was something that was super surprising to me. I guess the shift rule also is playing a part in this, but the fact that batting average

jump, because I guess pitchers are maybe a little bit more rushed, we went to a game. We were like, oh my gosh, it's the fifth inning already. It was fun. So I'm all for sports leagues changing rules. Like we talked about, remember the NBA used to not have a three-point line. They used to not have a shot clock. So, like, sports can evolve and the rules can evolve. And if it looks like it's improving the product, then, yeah, I'm all for it.

Right. There was, speaking of the shot clock, in 1950, there was the lowest scoring NBA game on record. It was 19 to 18. Fort Wayne Pistons defeated the Minneapolis Lakers. And then 1954, this is when the NBA introduced the shot clock and delivered this product that we know and love today. I love it. So make changes. That's our, don't be afraid to make changes.

Yeah. People don't care. after the first few games, they just forget what happened last year. Right. All right. Final number is about Atlanta's airport, Hartsfield Jackson International Airport,

retained its title as the world's busiest airport last year, welcoming 93.7 million passengers. That is a 24% increase from the prior year, but still 15% less than 2019. Yeah, post-pandemic bump. Right. I'm from Florida, and I have flown through Atlanta more times than I can count.

You were telling me about everyone has a core memory of like sprinting while sweating, trying to catch a delay or connecting flight. Connecting flight in Atlanta. It's huge. It's a big one. So rounding out the list are number two, Dallas-Fort Worth, number three, Denver International, big United Hub over there, and Chicago hair is fourth, and then LAX comes in at number six. What's your favorite airport in the U.S.? Tampa? Tampa's the best airport. It's my home airport. It is the quickest airport on record. It's a Hidden gem in the south. All right.

Mine, I've only been there once, but Raleigh, Durham. Oh, yeah. It's nice, right? Just like nice, small, modern. Southern airports are nice. LaGuardia just got this $9 billion renovation. Everyone cannot stop talking about it. It's got a good facelift, yeah.

Okay, I tease this at the beginning, but we're going to talk about Barbie. So I don't know about you, but 95% of my social media feed this week has been completely drenched in bubble gum pink. And that's because anyone seems to be talking. talking about is the upcoming Barbie movie. They dropped a new trailer and also did some other marketing gags that we're going to talk about to build hype for this film. It's directed by Greta Gerwig, and it's coming out July 21st. I have some thoughts on this movie for sure. So first of all, I have thoughts on why it kind of took over social media is one, they release these very memeable

pictures. And the reason why I think they're so memeable is because people were allowed to create their own like Barbie posters. Right. And that handmade feel, goes so far on the internet, as opposed to Barbie releasing these very polished materials. As soon as you let people participate in it, it's obviously going to send it into meme culture. So they crush that. Number two, there's this huge nostalgia factor with Barbie. A lot of people have that core memory of their sister or themselves playing with Barbie growing up. So there's this nostalgia.

But I think the biggest thing, and this is indicative of a wider cultural moment, is we are living in a stuck culture right now. So that's a term that... I don't know what that means. That a writer, a sub-sac writer, the Lindy man coined. It basically means that we haven't... We can't move on from the mid-2000s and later.

Some of examples of this are the fact that these old artists like Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, they're all selling their catalogs because their music is so popular right now. That's not mid-2000s. I know. Mid-2000s in backwards. And backwards. And backwards.

And then, of course, the biggest example of stuck culture, is obviously Hollywood, where sequels and reboots have just been crushing the box office. I mean, we have Top Gun, obviously, all these superhero movies that are just reboots. I was just looking at last week's box office. It was John Wick 4, Creed 3, Scream 6. Right, exactly. Like, we're in the double, we're almost in the double digits. We just saw news that Shrek 5 is in the works.

So there has been very little new. There's been this looking past. And so there's this narrative that we're living in a stuck culture. And I think the Barbie movie is an example. But I feel like it's kind of pushing us forward in certain ways. Again, you can definitely think that this movie in particular. Yeah. What's interesting about this is the cast.

I mean, that's what's really getting people hype because there's all these different variations of Barbie, you know, Barbie Cowboy, Barbie Mermaid. And so they've invited just every, you know, big actor to come in and play all these various types of Barbie. Yeah. So it's coming out July 21st. And I think their marketing game is just, exceptional. Right. And we saw, we just flashed a chart on our YouTube channel of Barbie sales had actually

dropped in the last year. I would venture to guess that we're going to see a big uptick after this because it just started dominating the cultural narrative again. So yeah. Okay, Neil, our final kicker of the day, it's the Masters kicks off today, the first golf event of the year. And we're both huge golf fans. Everyone in the studios, big golf fans as well. So this is a big deal for us. But maybe you're not a golf fan. Maybe you don't like the watching the, I've heard from people that they don't love watching golf. Right. So we're just going to give you a few tidbits, a few little nuggets that you can take to Masters Week. And it might change your mind a little bit. It might make you like the event a little more. So I'll go first, Neil. My first tidbit I wanted to share is that the merch tent at the

Masters is legendary. So the reason is legendary is because you can't get Masters merch except for on premises during master's week. So there's this really, really high supply and demand thing going on. And when I say the demand is there, listen to these numbers. The merch tent allegedly does 850,000 an hour. That is crazy. That's over 50 million over the whole week. Those are insane numbers. What kind of merch? Like polos? Polos, towels, towels, Walmart. They're selling them for a pretty penny. But the most impressive thing is how quickly the line moves. They're just funneling. It's like a maze.

The logistics masterpiece. It truly is. Like, it's amazing. It's a sight to behold. And then on the other end of the spectrum, people love to talk about the concession prices, which are dirt cheap. Inflation does not seem to apply in Augusta, Georgia. The beer is $5. The chicken sandwich is $3.

Pimento cheese sandwiches is the classic. It's only $1.50. You can buy all 25 items on this menu for $66. dollars. The problem is getting there because it is impossible to get a ticket. Which is crazy because that's two sweet green burrito bowls, I think. But the big picture here is this is the first masters since this schism, this civil war in golf. There is a Saudi-backed league called Live Golf that drew a lot of the best players by paying them upwards of $200 million to come play on this tour. So those live golfers for the first time are being allowed back to the Masters.

So it's kind of this moment where you see in these war movies where the both sides lay down their arms and come together for a Christmas meal or to play soccer on a holiday. That's kind of what's happening at this Masters. And that's kind of narrated the larger conversation around what's been happening in golf, this huge schism that's been going on. Yeah. I'm so excited. Like, I love it. The weather's not. Hopefully we talk about it.

Who do you got? Who do you have winning? I have Scottishuffler. You can't bet against them. 7-1. I think Bryce, in our control room has Brooks Kefka or?

No, I think he is Tiger. Oh, yeah, Tiger. Tiger. It's the emotional pick. Yeah, there you go. All right, that's our show. You can always reach us at Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com, and we'd love to hear from you.

Let's roll these credits. The show's producer and editor is Emily Milliron. Our technical director is Justin Orlando. Michaela Heck is the show's associate producer. Our supervising producer is Bryce Belloff, Dan Bousa,

as our Master of Sound, hair and makeup is at the masters and didn't invite us. What the hell? I hate them. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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