The Best One Yet - 🙈 “1 year without shopping” — The No-Buy-2025 trend. Chick-fil-A’s champagne drive-thru. Spotify’s Spice Girls monopoly.

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

“No Buy 2025” is like “Dry January”… But instead of no alcohol, it’s no shopping.Spotify hit all-time high after its 1st full-year profit… because it found musical monopoly.Chick-fil-A��s drive-thru is #1 thanks to military-like precision... Drones, game-tape, & champagne.Plus, the Philadelphia Eagles linemen are the largest in history… and the most profitable.$SPOT $AAPLWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Monopoly 🎩. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Wednesday, Sanviche Wednesday, February 5th. And today's pod is the best one yet this is a T-boy. Nick and I are whipping up the top three pop business news stories you need to know today. And Jack, I have my second piano lesson later this afternoon after the recording today. I'm ready to go. It's your New Year's resolution to learn how to play the piano. Although I've seen you play. You're already pretty good. That's so nice of you, Jack. I forgot my C chords. I got to work on it. In the meantime, my goal is to play you a Beatles song. by the end of the year. How romantic. I'm going to serenade you on this show.

But Jack, three stories for today's team boy. What do we got on the pod? For our first story, the reason Chick-fil-A is the most successful fast food chain in America is its drive-thru. Chick-fil-A teaches us how to turn a bottleneck into a bottle of champagne. For our second story, Spotify stock surged 11% to an all-time high

after reporting its first ever full year of profits. But Spotify is worth $100 billion because Spotify got a $1,000, musical monopoly. And our third and final story is the new spending trend of the year. It's going viral online. Try to buy nothing. Buy nothing. Like, you don't buy anything. It's called no buy 2025. And after one month, if you haven't bought anything, we're impressed. So the new spending trend is not spending anything. And guess what? One out of five of you are trying it this year. But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories, fantastic mix of stories, wild mix today. The biggest part of the this Sunday is not the chicken wings.

Although a record 2 billion wings will be eaten this year. And it's not the TV commercials either. Although a record, $8 million was spent per 30 second ad. The biggest part of this year's Super Bowl is the offensive linemen. Yeah, like the five players

on the Philadelphia Eagles offensive line, they're the tallest and heaviest in Super Bowl history. The tallest and heaviest. Get this, Yeties. The starting 5-0 linemen that protect the Eagles quarterback, they average 6'4.36, 38 pounds.

Jack, could you whip up the math over there for us, please? That is 2,028 total pounds of human beef just in those five players. Okay, Jack, that's not just a ton of dudes. That is literally a ton of dudes mathematically. Each of those Eagles is one inch and 26 pounds more than the Kansas City Chief's offensive linemen. In fact, Jack and I jumped in T-boy style, the Eagles offensive line weighs as much as a hippo as a great white shark, as four ponies on a scale. Can you imagine if a fully grown

hippopotamus was replaced for an offensive line? Honestly, I'd rather be with the hippo than have five of these guys staring down to me, Jack. Now, the biggest one of these guys is actually six foot eight, 365 pounds. Oh my lord. He's actually three times the body mass of Simone Biles, the gymnast. This one eagle's offensive lineman weighs the same as a Harley Davidson motorcycle. By the way, one dude, he's actually an Australian rugby player. But Philadelphia converted him to play American football. Now, economically speaking, this Eagles offensive line is also the best financial investment in sports. Because they got the Eagles into the Super Bowl, and yet not one of them is in the 10 top highest paid linemen. So, Yeties, when you're watching the Super Bowl this weekend,

you cannot miss these five football players. No, no, you can't miss them. No. They're taking up half to screen. Yeah. They're not Eagles. They're awesome. Riches. Jack, let's sit down three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice.

50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. First story. Drones, roaming waiters, and watching game tape, Chick-fil-A has created the most profitable drive-thru in America,

inspired by the military. And by solving one problem that every business faces. Yet is, at the beginning of the pot, Jack and I mentioned that a record amount of chicken is going to be consumed this Super Bowl weekend. Good news for Chick-fil-A. Which is the most lucrative fast food chain on a per-store basis, despite being closed every Sunday.

Not too shabby, but the greatest success at Chick-Flea, Isn't their special sauce, the breakfast biscuits, or the marketing with the cows, which is a little confusing, but it still kind of works. It is the drive-thru. For the third straight year, Chick-fil-A boasts the fastest drive-thru in American fast food. During peak hours, they deliver food to one car every 13 seconds. Are the cars even stopping? That's four cars a minute. I mean, they must have multiple lanes or something. I assume they feed you the chicken while you're driving through with the window down. A real surprise for us wasn't just the speed, it's that this drive-thru is a profit puppy.

Over at McDonald's and Shake Shack and the rest of the fast food industry, 43% of sales, on average, are drive-thru sales. But at Chick-fil-A, 60% of their business is actually a drive-thru. So a majority of Chick-fil-A is car-based. It's not a restaurant. It's a parking lot delivering poultry. Oh, and Jack, do you notice that their new Chick-fil-A location in Atlanta doesn't even have a driving room.

It's just four drive-thru lanes. That's it. We covered this on the pot. They prepare the food upstairs and then send it down to the four drive-through lanes. They're serving one car every five seconds. Why did the chicken cross the road, Jack? Why? Because it's about to get eaten.

It's a Chick-fil-A drive-thru. These guys are more efficient and quicker than a pit crew at the Indy 500. It's a highway serving chicken. But Jack, what's the wildest part about this Chick-fil-A drive-thru story? That Chick-fil-A's drive-thru is inspired by the military. Follow us on this one, Besties. So, with so much drive-thru-pour-pothed... popularity, Chick-fil-A was actually causing major traffic issues. So in the past, Chick-fil-A managers would

climb onto the rooftop of the restaurant to watch the traffic, like a sniper with binoculars. Basically, they would prep the chicken based on the number of cars they'd count on I-95. But then, Chick-fil-A created a traffic analysis team with drones like the Air Force. And this team would capture aerial footage to prepare for the drive-through lunch rush. They even renamed one part of the kitchen, the cockpit. Yeah. with a manager watching game tape of the live drone footage. And when demand gets too high, they send the waiters into the drive-thru lanes to take orders by hand, like walking on foot.

And what does that remind you of, Jack? The infantry. Actually, all drive-thru orders today are taken by Chick-fil-A waiters holding iPads, braving the hot or the cold in the outdoors. And they happen to be wearing military-grade uniforms, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yes, sir, agreed, sir. Chick-fil-A is not operating like a food business. They're operating like the seventh branch of the U.S. military.

Yeah, Chick-fil-A's drive-thru. It's like the CIA, but run by Bill Belichick. And all of that military precision is how they broke the bottleneck problem. Ah, the bottlenecks. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Chick-fil-A? Every industry faces bottlenecks, but every bottleneck can become champagne. Yeties, Chick-fil-A's drive-thru revolution started 20 years ago, when drive-thru was actually just half of the business.

it is today. Back then, Chick-fil-A's drive-thru was limited by the number of friars they had in each restaurant. So the friars were the bottleneck. They couldn't serve more drive-through because they didn't have enough chicken friars. That's when they made a massive four-year renovation. They added more friars to all Chick-fil-A locations. Now, let's think about the strategy here. Chick-fil-A could have hired more people, or they could have added more drive-through windows, but neither of those options would have solved the core problem. The bottleneck that capped the store sales potential wasn't the number of people or the number of drive-thru windows. It was the number of fryers needed to fry the chicken. Jack, it's like we learned in business school. In our business school

operations classes, we'd look at a business and we'd identify a bottleneck. And then we'd solve it by adding resources to that bottleneck. Solving a bottleneck is key to unlocking revenue growth. And when you do, it's time to celebrate. That's why we like to say that when you see bottlenecks, what you really can see are bottles of champagne. For our second story, Spotify just announced that one out of 12 humans on Earth are now Spotify users. Here's how Spotify became a $100 billion company. They outlasted the competition.

But Yeti is, who is Spotify's biggest competitor? Like, we were wondering that before the show, and honestly, you're probably scratching your head, too. Who is it, Jack? First thing that comes to mind is Apple Music. Sure, Jack, but Apple Music doesn't have podcasts. Apple, you know, they separated their audio into three different apps. All right, how about Amazon Music?

Well, Amazon Music doesn't report numbers, but its estimated user base is 80 million, which is one-eighth as big as Spotify. YouTube? Okay, YouTube, their music app, it has 100 million premium subscribers, but most of them are overseas, not in America. You also got Sirius XM, Pandora, and Title. Yeah, yeah, but Jack, those aren't serious streaming options. Those are like the Hanson brothers of music right there.

I'm sorry, it's kind of one-hit wonders. Here's the news. Spotify has 675 million monthly users. Not too shabby. That's one out of every 12 human beings on Earth. Listens to Spotify every month. Add it all up and it led Jack and I to this observation. Spotify does not have competition.

Spotify and Jack, maybe this is just my recent piano lessons talking, is like the Spice Girls from 94 to 97. There were just no other girl bands. But what's the best way to test the theory that Spotify has no competition? What is it, Jack? By raising prices and seeing what happens. Get this, Yeties. In 2023, Spotify raised prices for the first time in a decade.

And guess what? They didn't lose subscribers. They actually gained subscribers. In 2024, they raised prices again. They didn't lose subscribers. They gained subscribers again. Well, guess what? Spotify just jacked up subscription prices 20%

in the last two years and what happened jack they grew the number of paid subscribers by 28%. Why is Spotify growing despite raising prices? Like we said, there's no real competition for Spotify. And just yesterday, Spotify stock jumped 11% to a new all-time high on a huge earnings beat. Those price hikes helped Spotify flip from a loss in 2023 to a huge profit in 2024. The stock in those two years, it's up almost 10x from 75 bucks a share to 600. bucks a share. Spotify is now a $100 billion company because it found its monopoly. It's monopoly on music. Actually, it's monopoly on all of audio in one app. Basically, spice girls after they dropped wannabe. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Spotify? When you find your

monopoly, you can call the shots. Yeties, our best career advice to people, it's to find your monopoly. Figure out the particular set of skills and circumstances that you bring to the table that nobody else can. Spotify found its monopoly. It did. It's the only global audio app with music, podcasts, and audiobooks. And knowing that, changed the company.

Here's how. Two years ago, Spotify was afraid to raise prices. Instead, they spent huge money on marketing to try to get in front of you. Remember, Spotify became the jersey sponsor of Barcelona Soccer Club? They paid a huge amount of money to promote their brand globally like that.

But then, interestingly, Spotify reversed that strategy. They cut their marketing budget and raised prices. And what was the result, Jack? They've grown 10% every quarter in the last two years. Honestly, if Spotify were like an employee human being, this would be like demanding higher pay, but working fewer hours. And it's kind of awesome. Kind of awesome if you can pull that off. So besties, when you find your monopoly, as an employee or as a business, you can call the shots. Spotify found theirs. And you can see it in their record stock price. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story.

The newest shopping trend to hit the economy, zero shopping. It's called No Buy 2025 and a hit an all-time high. It's a challenge to buy nothing for the whole year. And a record number of Americans are going for it. Now, yet is you probably just finished dry January with health from alcohol for 31 days. So, you know, take it easy in this first week of February. Well, here's a new sobering trend. No buy 2025, which is buy as little new stuff as possible this year.

As in no new Stanley Mugs, no new cute tops, no more manny petties. Hey, honey, pause the Amazon Prime because we're going cold turkey. It's a no buy boom. Get this, besties. According to the fintech startup chime, one out of five Americans tried a no-spent challenge last year. According to Google, searches for it no-buy challenges? are up 40% from last year to an all-time high. Basically, a record number of Americans are buying nothing new.

Now, we should clarify the rules. Yes, we should, Jack. You need to buy some stuff to physically survive. Yes, yes, yes. And you may need to pay for Netflix to socially survive, too. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But still, the concept is clear. Only buy essentials. Spend less, if not nothing.

Buy nothing new if you can. It's basically a personal challenge. How long can you go without adding baggy-daddy jeans to your wardrobe? When you open up Instagram, the ads are going to tempt you to buy stuff. They're going to get you. The challenge is to resist those temptations and just live with what you have. The sirens. Now, why are people trying this out, Nick?

It's partly about financial literacy and conscious consumerism. But the reason it has surged so much is mainly that it's a reaction to inflation. For two years, we had higher and rising prices. We have more debt than we've ever had before. And interest payments are higher than they've been in our entire lives. Again, egg prices are at an all-time high. You're broken to your 401k to buy an omelette. Plus, over the holidays, you spent $75 bucks on that white elephant sweatshirt, and the person didn't even want it. No, they didn't. But what Jack and I found the most fascinating here is that the no-buy trend goes across the income spectrum.

Economic uncertainty is at an all-time high right now. And that's true whether you're rich or you're poor. Grocery prices are up 28% in the last five years. And that's true at both Aldi and at Arrowon. Now, we should point out, we haven't heard any public companies mentioned No Buy 2025 in their earnings reports yet. Yet. But remember, dry January, that started off too, right, Jack? It was pretty small at first. But now it causes a 15 to 20 percent drop in alcohol sales every January. Full disclosure, by the way, Yetis. Jack and I are not participating in No Buy 2025. We've already done a little shoppy, shoppy. Last week, I did something uncharacteristic. What did you do, Jack? Late night, I was swiping on my phone.

Okay. I ended up buying customized Air Force One sneakers for myself. Super random, but I'm very excited for them to arrive. Well, like we said, Jack, there are some things one needs to physically survive. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies doing? No buy 2025. If you're not ready for no buy 2025, try out the seven-day delay. The seven-day delay.

Yeties, one of the best ways to decide if you should buy something or not buy something is simply to wait. Carnegie Mellon University calls this the cooling effect, and studies show it works. Here's basically the concept. The most regretted purchases are impulse purchases that are unplanned, but the sudden urge to splurge, so you regret it. To test whether you should actually buy that thing, make a note of that thing, and then revisit the note seven days later.

There's a great technique, one woman mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. She takes a photo of a product she wants and puts the photo in a folder and then open that folder after one week. If over the course of that one week she thought about that item, then she should buy it. She really does want it. If she didn't think about the item, then forget about it. You don't need that thing. Delete the photo and forget about it.

So, Basties, this seven-day delay, it creates a helpful threshold for regrettable impulse purchases. You may or may not try No Buy 2025, but you could still try the seven-day delay. I like the way you said it, Jack. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for Suffice Wednesday? Chick-fil-A's drive-thru is so efficient. They can serve one car every 13 seconds. They got military precision.

Because Chick-fil-A identified the bottleneck, fix the bottleneck, and opened a bottle of champagne. For our second story, Spotify just announced record profits, record users, and a record stock price. Because just like the 97 Spice Girls, Spotify found their monopoly, so now they're calling the shots. And our third and final story. No buy 2025 is akin to dry January. Instead of no alcohol, it's no shopping.

And if you're not ready to go cold turkey on spending, we like the seven-day delay. I should have waited seven days before buying those air force ones. No, they're going to look interesting. They're going to look interesting. Honestly, I've been thinking about them every day. So they would have passed the seven-day delay test. Whatever you've got to do to justify that purchase, Jack. But yet is this pod's not over yet.

Here's what else you need to know today. First, Walmart just bought a shopping mall. Walmart acquired the Monroeville Mall just eats of Pittsburgh. Walmart paid $34 million to acquire this mall, which is still in business as a mall. So like the tenants still include department stores like Macy's and American Eagle and Cinemark Movie Theater. Walmart owns him now. It's not clear what Walmart plans to do with this 186 acre property at a podcast studio.

And second, on Monday, President Trump wrote an executive order to create America's first sovereign wealth fund. Other countries have this. Norway has the biggest sovereign wealth fund, and Saudi Arabia has a huge wealth fund as well. Now, one big problem here is that unlike Norway and Saudi Arabia, America is massively in debt. So we'll see if Congress approves a taxpayer-funded Robin Hood account for the White House. And finally, Apple just made a surprise, shocking product launch. They just announced Apple invites. You know the startup Partifle, which lets you text people invitations to a party really? conveniently? Well, Apple's zucking that idea. Yeah, basically, if you're planning a party,

you can now send an invite to anyone in your phone contacts using Apple invites. So next time you're invited to a bachelorette party, it might just be an eye message from Mary. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Scott Schiller from lovely Vancouver Canucks, British Columbia, up in Canada. Now, we did a story on Monday about how Yahoo.com email addresses are becoming cool again. Before that, Story, Jack, if someone emailed me

from a Yahoo email address, I assumed they were trying to kill me. But yet is, have you ever wondered why Yahoo has purple branding? Yeah, like, is it branding genius? Is there deep psychology?

Why is Yahoo! Purple, Jack? It's because that was the cheapest color of paint. Basically, Yahoo's team, when they opened their first office, bought paint for the headquarters in California,

and the cheapest paint they found dried up into the color lavender. So they decided, yeah, let's just make that our color. Yeah. It was Sherwin Williams decision, not Yahoo's. And honestly, it's become one of the most differentiated colors in all of tech. Yetis, you look fantastic today, especially if you find the time this evening to sit down on a couch and buy custom gold-plated sneakers.

I didn't say gold-plated. Must be nice. There is gold in that. I know where you're buying sticking, Jack. After this show, Yeties, go check out our weekly show, the best idea yet, because we've got a fantastic deep dive interview on the game. Monopoly. We got a link in the episode description. And Nick and I will see you tomorrow. If you know, pass go, you know. And before we go, a happy big 4-0 birthday to Yvonne Laura celebrating down in the capital of D.C. And happy birthday to Lindsay Murray in San Diego,

California. And Nina Beltran's turned in 14 years old in the Hague of the Netherlands, future veterinarian right there. She will fix and help any pet. And a big thank you to April Spignolo, who gave us a yak sweater recommendation that I assume Nick is going to act on. Testing out some samples, we'll get back to you shortly, Jack. Make sure they match with Air Force ones. Besties, if you want to get a birthday shout-out, or if you want to give a buddy a shout-out, click the link in our episode description, or go to t-boypod.com slash shout-outs. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon.

Nick owned stock of Shake-Shack, and we both own stock of Apple, Spotify, and Robin Hood.