The Best One Yet - 🤐 “$3 per moocher” — Netflix’s password punch. Instacart’s TikTok tomato. Costco’s gas hack.

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Netflix may be ending the password-sharing era with a new $3/month mooch tax. Last week, gasoline prices spiked, so this week people are joining Costco… because gas is the only price tag we see every day. And Instacart’s newest partnership is with TikTok to turn Stanley Tucci’s carbonara recipe into a 1-click ingredient delivery.$COST $NFLXGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Remember when I wore those horrible tank tops? A flannel tank top? Flannel tank top. That's what you need. I'm going to find you a flannel tank top. All right, this is my mission now. Here we go. Three, two. This is Nick.

This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Friday, the Real Friday, March 18th. Quick macro update. Wednesday, the Federal Reserve, as expected, raised interest rates for the first time since 2019. Okay, not as expected. Investors, pretty okay with this. Okay.

The SMP 500. it's up three days in a row. Pretty pretty good, Jack. A nice little 6% climb across those three days. I'll take it. We don't even have to round up. But today's pod, it's feeling those vibes. TBOI, the best one yet.

For our first story, heads up to the 36% of Americans using their ex's dad's Netflix password. Because Netflix is testing out a $3 per moocher per month thing. For our second story, with gasoline at $4.29 a gallon, people are joining Costco.

Get this, Snackers. Gas has become Costco's hero product. We did the math. We did. On the gas break even. It wasn't that complicated, but we did the math anyway. Our third and final story. Imagine seeing an incredible carbonara on TikTok.

Delicious. Extra pecorino. Now imagine a one-click button that gets all the ingredients for that carbonara delivered to your door. Instacart's not just delivering your groceries. It's influencering your dinners. This is a fun mix of stories. You catch the influencer ring. Yeah.

Okay. It kind of works. It kind of works. It kind of works. It kind of works. William Webster. We got one more for you. Yeah.

We're going to maybe have to edit that one out. Snackers, before we hit that wonderful Megs, the last two years weren't true St. Patrick's Days because of COVID-19. Yeah, it was more like self-patrick's Day, not St. Patrick's Day. You couldn't crush corned beef with Timmy because there was a pendant. Yeah, he's like, I know I'm Irish, but please don't kiss me. Don't kiss me. But this year, St. Patrick was back with authority.

So Jack and I jumped in snack style yesterday on St. Patrick's Day. When we looked at the markets, stocks rose. That's like finding. extra marshmallows in your bowl of Lucky Charms. Okay, but get this, Snackers. Over the last 25 years, the stock market actually rose on St. Patrick's Day about 75% of the time. Is that the luck of the Irish or is that statistical significance?

I think it's the latter because Snackers, here's the stranger part. Nick and I also checked the opposite of St. Patrick's Day and how stocks did on that day, aka September 17th, anti-St. Patrick's Day, six months after St. Patrick's Day. It turns out stocks fell on September 17th, anti-Stan Patrick's Day. In fact, stocks actually fell about 75% of the time on all those anti-State Patrick's days for all those years. I started getting afraid as I read all this data. That's not a coincidence. That's a curse.

So St. Patrick's Day is historically great for stocks. But anti-Stan Patrick's Day is historically awful for stocks. Snackers, the Apostle of Ireland is also a saint for stocks. Yeah, let's bless our three songs. We spoke to the lawyers. It snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family.

It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robohood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, if you want to keep mooching that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 password,

Netflix is about to make you pay. Netflix needs bucks more than it needs buzz right now. First of all, using someone else's password to stream Netflix. What a marketing hack by Netflix. It's so prevalent. It's become something you talk to your coworkers or your first date about. I mean, this is classic first date material, Jack. Who are you bumming off?

Who are you bumming off? Now, Netflix says that they have about 70 million American subscribers, but we think that's a joke. Yeah, it's a joke. Because in 2021, Netflix accounted for, of the top 10 most watch shows on planet Earth. Yeah, that's why we think there's at least three times that 70 million number who actually watch Netflix in America.

Yeah, including your ex, he still uses your dad's password. Which is a lot of listeners right now are looking at the other. Like, where did we get that password again? Here's the problem for Netflix. It's a problem. Their latest earning show that 2022 is the worst start for new subscribers in at least five years. So Netflix is going after those 140 million Americans who are flixin, but not Amexin. I know what I mean.

I know what you mean. Here's the news, Snackers. Netflix is testing what they're calling legitimate password sharing. This makes me feel illegitimate, Jack. This is a painful word. And by legitimate, they mean paid password sharing for three bucks per moocher. By the way, the best part about mooching, I called my mom the other day. She didn't even know her Netflix password.

So you mooched her email password to get the reset button? Reset it. Now we all know the password. It's like a whole thing. It's only in three countries that Netflix is testing. this legitimate password share. Yeah, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru. Here's the deal.

The main account holder in one of those countries, they're about to get a little message from Netflix. The main account holder is going to get a message that says, your son's ex just logged in in Uruguay. Yeah. She can't do that anymore. Unless you pay three bucks a month for her. That's how she can stay on the plan.

So basically, they're letting Netflix subscribers share their accounts with up to two people who they don't live with for the little price of three bucks a month. Right. They're going to use the IP address that you're streaming from to determine whether you live with the person or not. If you live with the person, great. As many people can stream as you want. Enjoy.

Fantastic. But they are cracking down on those outside your home who'd be logging in with the different IP address. Yep. Two shares, three bucks a month. Now, we know what you're thinking. What is this coming to the United States? No guarantee this comes to the United States. No, Netflix is a tech company.

So they're testing this out in three countries in South America. If it works well, they'll expand. You're not a tech company unless you're testing company. But moochers, be warned. The end of the password share era could be upon us for the one third of all Netflix users who moot your password. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all of our buddies over at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Netflix password? By the way, a quick shout out to Tuck. Yes.

I've been bumming off for like 11 years. I'll be honest, Tuck. I may be involved in that too. I'm a shareholder and I don't even have any. actively hurting the earnings. Here's the takeaway. The buzz may not be worth the buck anymore for Netflix. Snackers, the term Netflix password sharing has become a cultural institution.

Netflix could stop password sharing in a second if they wanted to. But Netflix has benefited from the brand awareness in a way inventing Anna could have never pulled off. That's right. For 20 years, Netflix has let your ex keep using your dad's password because of the buzz that it generates. Honestly, Jack and I were thinking about this. The term Netflix password share may give Netflix more brand value than a TV commercial every single day for like forever, could have. But Netflix doesn't need brand value right now. No, it doesn't.

They need bucks more than buzz. Netflix IPO 20 years ago, their stock, it's down almost half from the record high. It's time for three bucks per mooture. More bucks, less buzz. For our second story, last week, Jack and I were telling you how gas prices had surged. But this week, people are joining Costco. Because gas prices are the only price tag you see every day. The magic price tag.

I wouldn't call it magic. I'd call it the dreaded price tag. This is straight out of that scene and load of the rings. The one with the ball and the guy and the orb. Snackers. I thought we were talking about gas prices. The evil guy. The evil guy.

Oil prices. They surge, but they've actually fallen a bit. But still, gas prices, not the same thing. The average price of gas. America is 74 cents more per gallon than just one month ago. Yeah. What's the average right now, Jack, in the U.S.? Four dollars and 29 cents, according to our buddies at Triple A. Northern California, if you do like a little trip up north from here in San Francisco, $9 in parts of Mendocino. I ordered a gallon of gas, not a pour a peanut.

Now, more and more people as a result of these high gas prices are doing what my mother-in-law has been telling me to do for years, join Costco. Yeah, discount clubs, snackers, discount clubs like Costco or Walmart Sam's Club, they're selling gas at up to 30 cents cheaper per a gallon. It's viral on TikTok. People are bragging not about Costco's like super low-priced bulk chicken thighs, but about Costco's slightly lower-priced gasoline. Now, here's what we find fascinating about this.

Costco gas story. Move over 12-pack a crest 3D white toothpaste. Who buys toothpaste by the 12-pack? Costco, your mother-in-law, Maria. Well, gas is now Costco's hero product. Maria is a fantastic mother-in-law, let me say. She is. Well, here's the problem, Snackers.

You can't just roll up to Costco and start pumping the unleaded like everyone else. No, you must be a member, and that costs at least $60 a year as a membership fee. So in the last week, we're seeing consumers do the math to see if it's worth it. So we're going to do the math to see if it's worth it. All right. So you save 30 cents a gallon. Okay, let's say. 15 gallons in your car.

Right. You fill up four times a month. That's the average American fill up frequency. Simple multiplication. That's $216. per year of gasoline savings if you fill up at Costco at these prices. But then you do have to subtract the $60 you got to pay to be a Costco member every year. Boom.

Just on Costco regular unleaded, you could save up to $150 a year. This isn't an ad. It's just the math. Costco's fine, though, not profiting off gasoline because you're probably going to go into the store for that 12 pack of Crest 3D white strips. One thing to be careful of those snackers is the line because now in the last week, There are Costco lines. Yeah, the Costco gas discount.

It's not a secret. No. Again, this went viral on TikTok. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies pumping gas over at Costco? Gasoline is the only price tag we see every day. Jack, your jeans, you actually do have great jeans. How much for those jeans? I'm a 5-11 guy.

Okay, there we go. And I'd have to go check. Yeah, Snackas, you don't know the price of your jeans because you got to go into the store to see the price. Actually, wait. How about the price of milk? Pulling a Logan Roy here. I'm not in the grocery store right now. It's not because you're not hanging out in the dairy.

twice a week. You don't know the price of milk every moment. Gas prices, however, you may know the price of, because you see the price of gas in real time multiple times per day. And honestly, you can't even avoid gas prices if you don't even drive. It's the only thing you see the price up, even if you don't drive. And you live in a city, you probably walk by a gas station and see that big sign. You're in the West Village. You got no driver's license. Boom, you're still seeing that Exxon mobile sign off a 10th half. Gasoline is the only price we all see every day. And we see it in big numbers. So here's the thing.

Gas prices have become a psychological reflection of all prices. If gasoline prices are crazy high, which they are right now, consumers start feeling like everything is really high. Jack, your Levi's jeans. The skim milk, they must be high too. And we actually have data to prove it. The consumer sentiment poll in the United States just dropped. And it's at the lowest level since 2011.

Now, that's probably because of gas. Because it's the only price tag we see every day. For our third and final story, Instacart's newest move is to make TikTok recipes instantly cardable. How does one TikTokify grocery delivery? That's the question. You know what? We actually haven't talked about Instacart in a while. Instacart grocery delivery?

Big numbers right now. It's a $39 billion valuation for this pre-IPO company. There's a third most valuable startup in the United States. The third most. But here's what Instacart started noticing. They started noticing that TikTok. is now the food network of Gen Z. It's the barefoot contessa of clicks.

Yeah. If you're looking for Flavor Town, Mr. Fieri, it's on TikTok. You can just go to TikTok. And according to an Instacart poll, nearly half of Instacart shoppers have attempted to whip up a recipe from a food video they saw on social media. Yeah. Have you seen that Mary Berry Scone from like Great British Bakeoff? No, I haven't either.

But I've heard a lot of people attempt today. I don't bake. I sizzle. But Snackers, here's the problem with that experience. it requires commitment and it requires friction. Right. If you see something on social media that you want to cook, you have to screenshot the moment it shows the recipes, so you get the number of teaspoons of oil,

write it down on your own grocery list and then go to the store. Oh, and then inevitably realize you forgot the cilantro. So Instacart's trying to make it easier with their new thing, they're calling shoppable recipes. Basically, they're going to drop a TikTok recipe right into your Instacart. You're watching a food fluencer video on TikTok, and with just one click, all the ingredients, are brought into your shopping cart.

Which also brings with us some risks because that could be too easy when there's a one-click. Oh, yeah. One fat-fingered mistake and you fetched yourself some frittata fixing. Snackers, tech platform partnerships are super rare. So let us explain how this one's going to work out in real life. Let's say you're watching Stanley Tucci. Whip up a beautiful Bucatini Carbonara. Watching that all day.

Stanley Tucci, he's basically Bobby Filet but poured through a decanter. Stanley's doing his thing. He cracks two eggs into a big bowl. You need a cup of fresh grated pecorino, a couple of Parmesan, a couple sticks of butter, a full pepper, some garlic, some heavy cream. And no cream, no cream, though. You shouldn't do the cream. Sorry. Yeah. No, because you got the eggs.

You got the eggs and they got the parlor. I'm not a tag. That's fair. It's a TikTok video brought to you by Stanley Tucci. And with this new feature with just one click, your Instacart app pops up with all 11 ingredients needed in the shopping cart. And because this is Stanley Tucci, maybe you get the Vermuth and Campari too with one more click, which he happens to have a recipe to as well. Yes, because the Bucatini Carbonara pairs very well with the Tucci Nogroni. Exactly. And that is the new product rolling out right now on Instacart,

one-click recipes from TikTok. So that's the news. But we looked into it further. Instacart's also dabbling with their own social media in their own app. Okay, Snackers get this. That Stanley Tucci video, it's on TikTok. It's not on Instacart. But if you check out Instacart right now, you're going to see some videos that appear quite TikTok. If you go to the Explore tab in Instacart, you're going to see videos of casserole and cake being made. Is this a grocery app or is this flavor tab?

It feels... You got, take it. It looks just like TikTok. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Instacart? Can Instacart go from function to fun? Yeah, Snackers, existential question for some apps. Are you just a tool or can you become a destination? The goal is to go from a means to an end to an end in and of itself.

Yeah, well, right now, Instagram. Cart and other gig apps, they are utilities. You open it up for one purpose to order food and you close the app as soon as that's accomplished. But on the other end of the spectrum, social media apps, you enter for discovery, for inspiration, for ideas, for connection. You open the app for many purposes, including boredom and you stay in the app for a while. And because you stay for a while, you end up buying stuff you really didn't end to buy. Oh, haven't we all been there?

Yeah, Instacart, it is blurring the line between food function and social media fun. Because being a destination is more powerful than being a tool. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? Netflix is ending free loading in South America, $3 per mooture per month. Because Netflix needs bucks, not buzz. Costco is seeing big demand for its gasoline. Gas, it's the only price tag we see every day. And our third and final story is Instacart, which is collaborating with TikTok so you can

boot Coutini Pomodoro in one click. This nudges Instacart from function to fun, from tool to destination. Indeed. Now, time for our snack fact of the day, which is actually a correction that Jack and I are issuing because we made a mistake. We're going to say it. The correction was highlighted by Carol with a K and Nathan Vogler on Twitter. And I got to say, daylight savings is so complicated.

Honestly, we need to take like three watches out to cover that story yesterday. So the correction is to our story on daylight savings time about the Senate voting to make daylight savings time permanent. Right. They want to make it so we never lose an hour of sleep again. We eventually fixed this in yesterday's pod, but you may have heard us say yesterday that the sun would rise in New York City at 4.30 in the morning in the summers. That was a mistake. Right. Because with permanent daylight saving time, our summers won't change. What will change is our winters in the future if this bill becomes law, specifically from November to March. Yeah. So this bill becomes law starting next year, our winters will be darker in the morning, lighter in the afternoon.

Because permanent daylight savings time means no falling back in November. We just stay sprung forward, where we are now. You're just out. We needed one more napuccine our yesterday. Yeah, we did. Snackers, you looked fantastic the entire week. Stocks actually rose this week and we should definitely, actually, Jack, should we share our Netflix passwords on three?

Okay. Three, two, one. Let's have Adam bleep it out. We'll see you Monday. And before we go, congratulations to legendary snacker, our podcast editor, Adam Macias, who edits this pod every single day. Without Adam, this pod would be trash. Adam's got the best ears in the game and the softest hands in the game. And congrats to all the medical students matching today like Grace Kark and need a win.

And Brittany, congratulations on getting that Adobe promotion over a North Beach, San Francisco. Happy birthday to Chang-Jun Lee. in Nanjing, China. And Carlin Dixon down in Fort Worth, Texas. And Michelle Peterson in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. And Ross Cruz, enjoy the 27th over in Salt Lake City. Happy birthday to Ahmed Martin in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And Kristen Smoloski down in Denver.

And Daniel Drabkin in Brooklyn, New York. And Jared Dallas, happy birthday in Teaneck. And Ruby Revamante in Los Angeles. And Dana Eiffel enjoy the 26th down in Houston. Happy birthday, Solomon Betash in San Diego. And Eddie Chan and Kirkland, Washington. Ethan Ward in Warsaw, Missouri. And happy 27th to Morgan Melendez over in Lake Tahoe.

Happy 21st birthday to Stephen Delgado McCollum in Arizona. And Ali and Colin, enjoy the eight-year anniversary over in Cleveland on the lake. Congrats to getting married to Jordan Rosenbaum and some lucky person. And Jay, enjoy the disc golf tournament over in Petaluma. Oh, and we got a big shout out to the Illinois Consulting Academy at the University of Illinois, the proud fighting alina. And Anthony Kalu, have fun on the... Italy vacation in Boko al-Luca.

This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix. Robin Hood Snacks, newsletters, and podcasts reflect the opinions of only the authors who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and do not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. They are meant for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, cryptocurrency, or investment strategy in any account. This is not an offer or sale of a security, not a research report, and is not intended to serve on the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial, LLC,

or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. I don't beg. I sizzle.