The Best One Yet - 🐔 “Chicken Finger Financier” — Raising Cane’s secret sauce. Mercedes’ “Alabama Discount”. Copper’s the new gold.

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Raising Cane’s has become the fastest growing chicken chain in the country, it’s 10x bigger than Sweetgreen — But their secret sauce is actually an app… that you can’t use.A Mercedes’ factory voted against unionizing last week, dealing the UAW a blow — But the real story here involves Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban and the “Alabama Discount”.And Copper prices are beating gold, crypto, and the entire S&P 500 this year — Because new technologies require new minerals.Plus, New York City has successfully cut its rat population by 14% — So NYC is hosting the first ever rat convention #RatCon.$MBGYY $YUM $SPYWatch us on YouTubeGet the Saturday Newsletter: tboypod.com/newsletter  Submit Shoutout Requests Submit The Best Fact YetFollow us: on InstagramAnd connect with us on Nick’s LinkedIn & Jack’s LinkedInAbout Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. 15 minutes on the 3 biz stories you need, with fresh takes you can pretend you came up with — Pairs perfectly with your morning oatmeal ritual. Hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, May 20th. And today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Jack, how's your weekend, man?

You're glowing over there. What's going on? Where are you eating? What are you up to? I hit up the first farmer's market of the season on Saturday. It was lovely. Jack, it's been Farmers Market season in California for 12 months now. Well, here in Vermont.

Farmer's Market is where Holsom meets Holsom. But then there's always like a dog, or two that really disrupts the flow. You know you're at a farmer's market when you have to use Apple pay six times for it to go through. I don't think the dog is working. Yet he's happy asparagus season. Enjoy the stone fruits. And Jack, what are the three stories for today's show?

For our first story, Raising Kane is the fastest growing chicken chain in the country. Get this, Raising Kane is 10 times bigger than Wing Stop. Ten times bigger. Yet he's Raising Kane has a secret sauce. And Jack and I discovered what it is. For our second story, workers at Marston's. Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama just voted against joining a union. And guess who's involved in this Mercedes story?

Head football coach, Nick Sabin. And our third and final story. There is one investment that's beating gold, it's beating tech stocks, it's beating AI, and it's beating the S&P 500. What is it, Jack? Copper. It's copper. Copper.

It's copper. Copper has become so popular that people are stealing it from their offices. But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Wonderful mixes stories. Love the mixes stories today. More asparagus. You have to mark your calendar right now for a special day, and that day is September 18th. September 18th, because September 18th is the first ever national annual international urban rat summit.

New York City is hosting the first ever national convention dedicated to rats. It's a rat convention that's two days long on how to eliminate rats. This is like Davos for people who hate rodents. Jack, it's like South by Southwest for exterminators. It's like Comic Con, but instead of Batman, it's rats, man. It's rats, man. Jack and I, we like to call it RatCon. That's what this is.

Now, yetis, let me sprinkle on some context, okay? New York City has a complicated relationship with rats ever since Henry Hudson founded the city. Jack, when I was growing up in New York City, our rat relationship, it was more stable. You were at peace with the rats? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, we had a mutual understanding. Like, if you saw a rat on the R train, you just, Wave.

You didn't freak out. But there's no kumbaya anymore. Because the rat population in New York City is now estimated at 3 million rats. Three million rats. Jack, could you sprinkle out a little more rat stuff onto that number, please? For every three New Yorkers, there's a rat living there, too. One added three New Yorkers also as a rat as a pet. Yeties.

Last year, New York City created a new job to fight that very issue. The rat czar. The rat czar has a $20 million budget and a $200,000. check in order to get rid of the rats. That's a real position, by the way. We're not kidding. There is a rat czar in the city of New York. And we also have an update from the ratsar, Jack, the numbers? The rat czar is winning.

Get this. Statistics from the city say that sightings of rats have fallen 14% in the past year. Ibso facto, that means there are 14% fewer rats in New York City. Or the rats have just gotten better at hiding by 14%. Jack, look under that pizza slice. I think it's a rat. Dad is honestly, Nick and I find rats. to somehow be a part of the charm of the city. Yeah, it's kind of part of New York's economy.

If you see a rat, honestly, that rat is probably commuting somewhere. Yeah, they're not being rude. They're just in a rush, okay? Yeah, you're being rude if you interrupt the rat. If you think about it, Jack. They're on their way to work. They don't have time to talk to you and take a selfie. So yet he's mark your calendars for mid-September.

RatCon is the new Comic-Con. But less jockstrapes, more mouse traps. See in September. If you know, you know, Jack, let's hit our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, Two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm They had an idea that caused a cultural storm It's the best one yet, but the best is an 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 For our first story, Raising Cains Raising Cain's, the booming nationwide chicken finger chain is about to hit $5 billion in annual sales. But the secret sauce to Raising Cain isn't their actual sauce. It's an app that you can't even use. Jack, can you pour out the jambalaya baby? Who is the richest person in the state of Louisiana right now, man? It's a man named Todd Graves.

Todd Graves. He's the most famous Louisiana since Bubba Gump. He's worth $8 billion. And he's worth $8 billion because he owns 90% of Raising Canes. Raising Cains, that means this man is a chicken finger financier. He is a chicken bone billionaire. And he named his restaurant chain after his adorable loving dog. Who's a good boy?

There's now a thousand locations of Raising Cains in 40 states. Now, as Todd Graves puts it, his restaurant chain is focused on one thing and one thing only. Their singular focus is chicken finger meals. The only thing you'll see on the menu is a chicken friend. A chicken finger sandwich or a chicken fingers on toast. Jack, did you hear that they may do it's Caesar salad? With chicken fingers on top? Did chicken fingers on top of it?

You don't get any croutons, man. Last year, this chain did $3 billion in sales, but they're growing so fast, they expect $4.5 billion this year. Jack, could you sprinkle on some context of those fast food numbers, please? Four and a half billion in sales is gigantic. It's nearly 10 times the annual sales of sweet cream. It's 10 times the annual sales of Wingstaff. It's seven times as big as Kava, and it's five.

times as big as Shake Shack. Sit down, stand up, and add fries to that, baby. If Raising Cains isn't big where you live, it will be soon. Jack, I just checked. The closest Raising Cains to me is like in Fresno, 300 miles away. But you know what? It's probably coming to your neighborhood sometime soon. Because Raising Cains is like Chick-fil-A, if Chick-fil-A, became obsessed with just the fingers.

So what is the secret sauce to this Louisiana-based sensation called Raising Cains? They actually do have a secret sauce, literally. They actually do have a little secret sauce. Their signature sauce is so secret. There's only one person at each location who knows the recipe. And that person is the manager. They are contractually sealed to secrecy. They squeal on those ingredients.

They get fried. We heard their official title is Keeper of the recipe, and they get branded the first time they learn the recipe. But that's the literal secret sauce that you eat at a Raising Canes. Instead, Jack and I have noticed that their business secret sauce is actually an app. Raising Cains has an app called. One Love Crew. Nick and I actually downloaded it from the App Store on our phones. Jack and I jumped in T-Boy style and we wanted to use the Raising Kane One Love Crew app, but

we couldn't. We couldn't get in. Because this app isn't for customers, it's for employees only. Yeties, what we're saying is that this is the only fast food chain we can find who has an internal app for all employees, from the CEO to the chicken fry. The app is for water cooler talk from the kitchen all the way up to the boardroom. For example, if you check out this One Love Crew app, you're going to see Jake in the drive-thru is getting a shout out for keeping cool during the cooler crisis. And Lorraine has her last day of work at the Dallas location so everyone can celebrate her win. Or Jack, a cashier at the Nashville Raising Cains just got promoted on her birthday. Hey, let's all send her some love.

According to the company that built this internal app, it has the highest engagement of any app they've ever built. So Yeties, Jack and I just discovered that Raisin Cain has an internal app that we can't use That is bigger than any other restaurant app out there. And that made us think about something we said last week. Jack, can you please whip up the takeaway for us? That's Jack Kramer. Can you please whip up the takeaway for us on raising canes. Cash isn't king.

Culture is king. Yeties, last week, we did that exact takeaway. We did a whole big story on this surprise about job satisfaction. There was a surprise in a job satisfaction study. Pay is no longer the driving factor of worker satisfaction. Culture is. Because yet he's in an age of inflation, pay raises are fleeting. And in an age of remote work, culture is what you crave.

A day after Nick and I did that story, we found the perfect specific example in Raising Cains. It's Raising Cains because a key driver of Raising Cain's success is a satisfied workforce. A satisfied workforce who is all up in that app. That app connects employees at every level. It fosters a sense of culture. company-wide, and it's created loyalty for the company, too. Because Raising Cains has one of the lowest turnover rates in an industry that has a whole lot of turnover. So last week we told you, cash isn't king.

Culture is. And Raisin Cain is the perfect case study on culture. For our second story, Mercedes-Benz just narrowly won a huge union vote. But this story is also about football coach Nick Sabin and the Alabama discount. The old Alabama discount. But Jack, at 89 years old, can we talk about the Detroit-based auto workers union, please? What's going on, man? The UAW is looking in its prime right now.

Even though it's been around 89 years, because Yeti's last year, the biggest union in the United States got big wins for workers at Ford, at General Motors, and at Chrysler. And then in April, it won a landslide victory at Volkswagen factory in Tennessee, which was their first big union. in the South. So the auto workers union had all this momentum over the last year, but then on Friday, that momentum hit the brakes. On Friday, the UAW lost. 5,000 voters at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama voted no. We do not want to join the union. Jack, can you open that chassis and tell us the final numbers on the Mercedes Union vote, please? 44% voted yes to joining the union, but 56% voted no. Yeti's Mercedes workers voted against letting the car union negotiate their salaries and benefits for them. Instead, Mercedes workers will remain on their own, negotiating mono-imano with their boss.

And that also means that Mercedes, the aspirational vehicle of every mom in Greenwich, Connecticut, will not be union-made. It also means that Mercedes will- Sorry, Mrs. Reed. But Yeties, here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this story. This historic vote also means that Mercedes will continue something wild. Mercedes will continue to benefit from the Alabama discount. Yet he's last year, Mercedes produced 300,000 cars in the great state of Alabama. They sold those cars for a premium, but they paid their workers a discount. Get this, a General Motors worker in Detroit makes $40 an hour making cars.

But your typical Mercedes worker in Alabama makes only $2650. So an Alabama car worker is making $4. A whole lot less than a Detroit car worker, and that is the Alabama discount. And that was the main argument from the union organizers. They said it was time to end the Alabama discount by joining the union and negotiating higher pay. But those organizers lost the big vote. So Jack and I had to ask, what might have swayed all these undecided workers at Mercedes in Alabama? None other than the hometown hero, Alabama's former head football coach, Nick Sabin.

This was wild, but apparently Mercedes forced all 5,000 of their factory workers to listen to coach Nick Sabin talk about teamwork in the car factory. The not so subtle message from Coat Sabin was that everyone here is on a team. A union would divide us, so you should vote no. And if you don't vote against the union, you're probably an LSU fan. Now, the seven-time NCAA championship head coach, he actually owns multiple Mercedes. Mercedes dealerships on the side. Which made this situation a little awkward. And the factory that we're talking about is in the same county as the University of Alabama. So everyone in that factory voting is a huge Alabama fan, which made this new story even more awkward. So it looks like it was a

combination of Southern anti-union politics and Coach Sabin's pep talk that won the victory for Mercedes management. What we're saying is that roll tide voted against the union. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies over at Mercedes. The macro shows what the micro wants. Yeties, in the past 25 years, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP have doubled from 5% up to 10%. Over that same period, wages as a percentage of US GDP have fallen from 46% to 43%. So looking at this situation at a macro level, companies across the country have reduced wages

while boosting profits. They've moved money out of workers' pockets and into shareholders' pockets. And that underlying angst is what's driven this comeback of the unions in the first place over the last year. And we see that macro stat in micro examples. Workers are voting for unions

in various industries across the country. Because workers are trying to reverse that trend. They want to win back some of the pie from the CEOs and the shareholders. Because the macro shows what the micro wants. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, commodity traders, countries, and criminals are all clawing for copper.

Copper is the new gold because it fuels two of the world's megatrends. Jack, take us back to last Friday. We were celebrating the wins. What kind of good stuff was going on, man? Well, the Dow hit a record 40,000 points for the first time. Stocks are at an all-time high. The Dow has defied expectations. and risen 14% in 2024.

Guess what asset, though, has risen by twice as much over the same period? Jack, I'm going to venture to guess it may be copper? Copper, as an asset class, is doing better than bonds, oil, gold, or even tech stocks. Yet these copper prices hit a record last week of five bucks a pound. They're up 30% since the start of the year. Copper is the new crypto. Copper is the new Coco, Jack. The price of copper is so high that organized criminals,

are stealing copper wire from trains, from buildings, even from utility cables. Yetis, the price of copper is so high. The last time Jack was with me in San Francisco, I caught him trying to sell our microphones on the street. That's false, but what's true is that Nick and I are both worried about the Statue of Liberty. We are, we are. Lady Liberty's like 100% copper, man. And now Tony Sopranos going after her. Yeah, you're going to start chipping away on her feet and you sell that over in Jersey. You can make a quick buck jack.

She needs a secret service detail ASAP. But Yeties, besides... our fear for the Statue of Liberty's copper goodness. Why is copper in such high demand right now? For reasons that are actually deeply important to national security. The first reason copper is crushing it right now is artificial intelligence. The magical answers that chatbots spit out depend on physical computers. So tech giants are investing in physical data centers where the brains of AI can do their computing.

And their crucial ingredient to a modern data center is copper. So AI basically runs on copper. Apparently, Sam Altman wakes up in the morning, doesn't have cereal, has copper. The second reason copper is crushing it is electric cars. Jack, I'm surprised that Sam Altman line didn't get more of a rise out of you, but I'm cool with it. I'm cool with it. Yet his copper is also crucial to batteries. So they're vital to electric cars.

The average electric vehicle has 200 pounds of Sam Alman. I mean, 200 pounds of copper. Yeah, you can't build an electric vehicle without half of the periodic table of elements these days. including a whole bunch of copper. And that is why China and the United States are investing in African infrastructure to win the hearts of locals where they get a lot of copper. And that's also why the U.S. and China are making offers on African copper mines. They're trying to win mines to win their wallets. Copper. So hot right now. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies over in copper? The tech of tomorrow requires new rocks today. Yeties, transitioning to sustainable energy and

developing AI are two megatrends for the whole global economy. And minerals that enable those megatrends are spiking in price and importance right now. And actually, when we look back on history, we see this is a pretty common theme, don't we, Jack? When the U.S. economy became fossil fuel dependent, oil, gas, and coal were the minerals of the day. Well, now that we're moving on to clean energy, copper, lithium, and cobalt are the minerals of the day. One set of minerals is replacing another. This is the clean energy transition. Now, historically, wars have been fought to secure access to oil, and the goal now is to avoid the same for copper. But the tech and energy of tomorrow requires new rocks today. Jack, can you and Sam Altman whip up the

takeaways for us to kick off the week? Raising Cains is the fastest growing restaurant chain. There are 1,000 locations in counting. For employees right now, cash isn't king, culture is king, and Raising Cain's is the perfect example of it. For our second story, the UAW lost at Mercedes-Benz's Alabama plant, but they could try again in a couple of years. Because the macro shows what the micro wants. And our third and final story. The price of copper has risen more than the price of bonds, gold, crypto, or the whole stock market.

Copper is at an all-time high. Copper, because the technology and energy of tomorrow require new rocks today. But yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, we were on Reddit over the weekend, and we noticed that Reddit stock is up 60% in the last month, and it's all thanks to two things. First, the return of meme investing shows continued cultural relevance of Reddit. And second, both Google and OpenAI are paying Reddit for access to their content to train their artificial intelligence. So Reddit's basically an AI meme stock now.

And second, Figma, one of the largest startups in the U.S. is allowing show. shareholders to sell their company stock at a $12.5 billion valuation. This comes after regulators blocked an acquisition from Adobe that would have sold the company at $20 billion. Employees thought that this acquisition would have been a huge payday, but this is a good alternative. And finally, the Michelin Restaurant Guide is giving their first star to a taco joint. Daugaria El Califah de Leon in Mexico City is a tiny taco spot with the world's

apparently most prestigiously awarded award for Mollay. It's awesome they're giving a star to a taco joint. Nick, I actually have been to this place. I was going to say, I thought you done this. Right before we went to a Mexican wrestling match in Mexico City a few years back, I went to this place. So good. Yeties, there's actually more to Jack's Mexican wrestling story,

but that is for another pot. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by our Canadian Yeties. about Victoria Day in Canada. Today is Victoria Day. They're celebrating the British sovereign's birthday. It falls on Queen Victoria's birthday because she happened to rain when it became a holiday in Canada.

Queen Victoria was the second longest reigning English royal in history, topped only recently by her great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. And to all our Yankee Yetis out there, Queen Victoria was barely five feet tall. She clocked in at 4-11, but... She was a giant in shaping... the modern British monarch. In fact, if you wore a white wedding dress on your wedding day, you can thank Queen Victoria. She started that tradition a couple hundred years ago. Not too shabby. So apparently Billy Idol was singing about her in white wedding.

Yeties, you look fantastic to start the week. And if you have the best fact yet, we want to get your voice on this podcast. So click the link in the episode description to send us the best fact yet. Drop us a voicemail and we'll get it on the pod. In the meantime, Jack and I will see you at Ratcon. You already bought tickets, right? I got his two tickets. I don't want to miss out. And before we go, a shout out to Yeti Ryan A, who's moving from New York City back home to the Philippines. And maybe getting down on one knee, we'll wait for the shoutout. And congratulations to Alana Karatova in Atlanta, Georgia, who just landed a new job. And congratulations to Dung in San Francisco. I just met him on Market Street, Jack, and he just got a new job down to

Street. And congratulations to Rianne in Palo Verdez, California, who just graduated and is now a Yaleie. And we're going with the Bulldog train because Cynthia and the whole 2024 Yale SOM MBA class is celebrating a huge graduation win. Congratulations, Cynthia. You and Rory Gilmore are now alumni together. And Sedes Jad of in Green Bay, Wisconsin has got a 37th birthday and a first wedding anniversary, Rachel and Heson. him are celebrating it fantastically. And happy birthday to Jake Bryant, Esquire, of Monroe, Louisiana. This man is celebrating with his beautiful wife. And some raisin cans. And David Knockman, happy 50th birthday over in Morristown, New Jersey. Happy birthday to Clary Yang. In Chicago,

this is an O.G.T. Boy. And Oliver Suggs in Cincinnati, Ohio, is not just a dog dad, but also a woodworker celebrating with one heck of a wooden cake. And to anyone else, Celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Kava. Nick owned stock of ShakeShack, and we both own ETFs of the S&P 500.