The Best One Yet - 🙏 “FaithTech” — Hallow’s $40M prayer. Kroger’s crazy plan. Big chicken’s vax win.

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Hallow just raised money for its Catholic prayer app, but it’s got 1 big trend going for it and 1 trend totally going against it. Kroger’s classic grocery store has a crazy plan to expand to Florida… “because once it’s obvious, it’s too late.” And Big Chicken icon Tyson Foods managed to vaccinate 96% of its workers because it made a big bet — without data.$TSN $KRGot 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.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Friday, the real Friday, November 5th. Last part of the week. Here we go. This pod's the best one yet. It's a TV-O-I.

But Jack, are you kidding me? It's your Friday outfit. You're not wearing that turtle neck? Where'd that thing go? Dayton night was yesterday. It crawled back into its shell. Are you kidding me? Darwin was going to have a field day with that thing.

It went real literal on that turtle analogy, though. I got 50 more where that came from, but we should probably hit this pod. For our first story, How Low is a Catholic Prayer app that just raised 40. $40 million from Big VC. There is one holy trend going for Hallow, but there's one unholy trend going against Hallow. For our second story, Kroger is opening up in Florida without opening up in Florida. This isn't just about grocery delivery.

It's about being a little bit crazy, a little bit crazy. For our third and final story, Tyson isn't just Big Chicken. Tyson is the surprise leader of vaccination ink. Snackers, before you hit that great rundown. It's a wonderful rundown to end the week, Jack. I love this. It's been a long week. Yeah.

And it's actually been a long year. It's been a long kind of everything. Snackers, you want to lie down, you want to rest your head. You want to rest your legs. If you're sleepy, there's a new thing that might interest you. Yeah. Nap buses. Nap buses.

It's like a tour bus, but not for taking pictures. It's for taking naps. True story. It's happening in Hong Kong. There's one business driving around buses for naps. You can take a five-hour nap in the bus. You're like whip out your metro card on this. You're a sleep-deprived passenger and you get a chance to

snack some Zs instead. If you're stressed, it can be tough to sleep at night in your own bed because you're thinking about work and all that. Instead, you can snooze around the city at eight miles per hour. This is the adult version of falling asleep in the stroller. Now, Snackers, early takeaway here, self-care is not selfish. Self-care is also not always free, unfortunately. This nap bus, it ain't unisph. The pleasure of taking a nap trip on this bus actually costs $13. Jack, it's also going to be $51 if you want a seat on the upper deck where you're least likely to be disturbed, but you get the best few, but you are napping. Yeah, you're not looking at the V. Yeah, you're not awake for this thing. This company in Hong Kong, they also charge extra extra for earplugs and eye masks

if you want. Snackers sleeping, it costs you nothing. But going back to babyhood when you fell asleep to the bumps and turns of the road in the car. Yeah, that's going to cost you extra, just like the guac. Let's end on three stars. Let's go, baby. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something illegal out the way. It snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family. It's all informational just so.

You know, we're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robohood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Catholic Prayer app, Hallow, just raised a cool $40 million.

There's one huge trend going for Hallow and one huge trend going against Hallow. Jack, first of all, I'm looking down the street here and can confirm the Pew Research. Yeah, Pew Research says that San Francisco is the least religious of the big cities in the U.S. Which is why Jack and I found it absolutely hilarious that San Francisco is the headquarters for Hallow, a Catholic prayer app. Apparently, San Francisco is the heartland when it comes to what we're calling Faith Tech. Yeah, now here's the thing about Hallow. They're not telling us their valuation and they're not telling us how many revenues they've been bringing in. But they're backed up financially by Peter Thielsen, Big Venture Capitalists and the one American who's called to work at the Vatican Bank.

Yeah, it's unclear what his position is, but that sounds like a really nice internship to get one of these days. They do have one to half million users, though, so they have a community. Here's Hallows bet. You consume TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, all that content online. You're doing it all. Why not consume scripture online? too. But this isn't a social network. It's not like a church group that's meeting in an app together. And it's not a live stream sermon either. This is content for personal prayer delivered in an app. Which is why Jack and I were shocked to see this statistic. 30% of Hallow's Catholic prayer app users aren't actually Catholic.

I don't get that at all. But as a non-Catholic myself, that gave me permission to jump in snack style and check out the app. We downloaded the app. And, you know, Hallow we noticed it doesn't actually. describe itself as a prayer app. It leans into meditation in its marketing instead. It literally calls itself a meditation app instead. For example, they got a tab for meditation in the app. You can listen to a one minute Mary reflection. That's what they call. You look a little over to the right. You're going to see another tab. And this tab is for morning routines. Doesn't sound religious. There, you can listen to a gospel or rosary podcast with breakfast. And then the tab next to that in the app, it's not like a confession or communion tab, it's a tab for sleep and a tab for music. There you're going to find hymns that you might

remember from parochial school. Throwback tracks of Gregorian Chance. So we noticed the app has the same format as like Calm or Headspace, the mindfulness apps you've heard so much about. So it's just like the mindfulness apps, it's just a different type of content inserted in there. Right. Instead of a Matthew McConaughey serenade to put you to sleep, you can listen to the words of Genesis with bird and wave sounds in the background. It's lovely, but it's not zooming in. from some pulpit. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Hallow? Hallow faces a trend conflict. Yeah, Snackers, according to Gallup research, momentum is actually going completely against Hallow. Church attendance among Americans fell

to just 47% last year, down 20 percentage points in 20 years. But here's the shocker. The number of people identifying themselves as spiritual, that has been rising, according to Pew Research. And so has a broader mental health trend overall. So Hallow, founder, he says that there's a hunger for spirituality that is driving their growth, not a thirst for Catholicism. Religion has gone down, but spirituality has actually gone up. So here's what we're thinking. Maybe Hallow isn't Faith Tech after all. Maybe it's just a unique niche within the booming mental health trend. For our second story, Kroger, the grocery store legend is entering Florida, but without opening a store in Florida. Interesting strategy, Cotton. It's not an obvious move,

and that's exactly why Kroger is doing it. Let's see if it works out for them. Jack, Kroger, it is the Midwest grocery chain, baby. Cincinnati-based. They've been stacking cans in Islesix since 1883. Jack, if you've gone to a wedding in Cincinnati, two things happen. You get Grater's ice cream and you get a run to the grocery store at Kroger ASAP. It's a $32 billion publicly traded company that actually has the seventh most employees of any company in America. It's the second largest physical retailer after Walmart. Dang. Yeah. There we go. Cincinnati, Sin City. But Kroger has a non-obvious problem.

So it's a wholesome Midwestern company, but they just did the least wholesome, least Midwestern thing they've ever done. Kroger is not in America's third biggest state. Florida doesn't have any Kroger's going on. Florida is public's country. Every time you visit your in-laws, you're always telling me, we're popping over to Publix. We just went to Publix. I'm just back from Publix. Can we podcast from public? So Kroger's decided to launch grocery in Florida. without launching grocery stores. It's a non-obvious problem that required a non-obvious solution. Here's Kroger's plan they just announced this week. Robot sheds and roaming billboards.

Kroger's partnered with a British grocery delivery startup that builds giant robot-run sheds. We're talking huge fulfillment centers, like eight football fields long. These things are big. Okay, it's not a shed if it's eight football fields long. This must be like a British English thing. It's intense. But in the meantime, they fill that shed with robots.

that are packing bananas, thrown in avocados and dishing up the steak. And it's a fulfillment center. So no customers are allowed inside. It's just for bagging bags for grocery delivery. It's just for delivery, which is why Kroger also just hired 900 employees just in the state of Florida to work with these robot sheds. Yeah, the employees are doing delivery. They're not bagging the groceries.

That's for the robots. Now, here's where things get a little funky. They strategically chose huge delivery vans for delivery, not smaller, faster, more efficient vans. And they covered those vans in crows. Kroger blue-branded paint and the big Kroger name. Voila, you got yourself a rolling Kroger billboard while it's out doing deliveries. So Kroger is launching in Florida, but only with delivery. And they're promoting that delivery with their rolling vehicular Kroger billboards.

Jack, did you notice how many Kroger's are in the state of Vermont? Zero. I did notice. Did you hear what they're going to do after this experiment in Florida? The robots are coming. The robots are coming to New England. So, Jack, what's the sheds? The enormous sheds are coming. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at ancient Kroger's?

Once it's obvious, then it's too late. Once it's obvious, it's too late. Not our quote, that's a quote from the Kroger CEO on why they're expanding a physical chain in this freaky online way. Right now, less than 12% of U.S. groceries are bought online. That's it, under 12%. So doing 100% grocery delivery in one state with sheds and vans, that sounds pretty crazy, Jack.

But Kroger CEO thinks now is the perfect time for crazy. Because if he's right and everyone starts doing grocery delivery, then he'll be ahead of all the competition. But if he waited for the idea to become obvious, then he's too late. Once it's obvious, it's too late. For our third and final story before the weekend, Tyson Foods successfully got, get this, 96% of their workforce vaccinated. And starting January 4th, all big companies must have all their workers vaccinated. Okay, Snackers, I don't remember the exact statistic on this, Jack, but like the odds are if you had a fried chicken, sandwich this past weekend, probably involved Tyson foods. Yeah, they're the biggest chicken processor

in America, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, they've got a whole lot of employees who are the chickens. Well, early during the pandemic, those chicken producers were in trouble because meat packing plants were one of the most dangerous places. Honestly, feeding the country's carnivores, that was essential work and it turned out to be frontline work. A report from Congress that's been done since showed that 151 employees of Tyson died because of COVID they were exposed to in plants early in the pandemic. Yeah, while they're making and cutting up this chicken, they had an issue with like saturated masks, for example. Saturated masks. That was in the congressional report. That's sweat-soaked masks. They weren't socially distanced as they were packing that meat. That is literally how the sausage is made. In one Tyson plant, 50% of workers got the virus.

At another Tyson plant, Tyson refused to show. plants despite requests from local officials with all the virus rage. Well, after a year of the pandemic this past summer, Tyson finally realized they needed to lead not lag. And so Tyson pulled maybe one of the biggest 180s we've ever seen. Now, at the time this past summer, there were some companies that were mandating vaccines for their employees. There were. But they were mostly white collar companies. We're talking like your law firms, your banks, your financial institutions. They mandated that companies working at the headquarters must get vaccines.

And here's the thing, desk jobs in corporate, they're more likely to get vaccinated anyway voluntarily. But in August, Tyson said that they're 120,000 U.S. workers, even the people in the meatpacking plants, they must get vaccinated by November 1st or lose their job. And that's a huge deal because a great majority of those chicken cutting workers are blue-collar workers, front-line factory workers. And they were in states where people are more likely to be vaccine hesitant. So after all that, the New York Times just did a deep dive on. the big Tyson Foods vaccine mandate. And Jack, how did it go? It worked. Tyson is now at the top of the

vaccinated leaderboard. We repeat, Snackers, vaccinations over Tyson are 96% of their workforce. Over 60,000 workers got vaccinated since Tyson made them do it with their August announced. Tyson Foods, the legend of big chicken went from lagger to leader. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Tyson Foods? Making bets without data to support. them is bold. Snackers, led by the tech industry, the entire country right now is like drinking data obsessed Kool-A. We've all been at the interview when they ask, tell me about a time you use data to make an important decision. Julie, that's fantastic. Can you tell me about a third and a fourth time too? Because I know you have those. Data is huge these days, but sometimes you

must act without data because the data doesn't exist. Yeah, you got to use instinct and experience. And Tyson, they had a tough choice this year. They could risk having their factory shut down if They didn't mandate vaccinations. Or there's the risk that employees would quit and protest if they did require vaccine. So they took a calculated risk. They went with the latter. They mandated vaccines and it worked. And get this.

Perfect timing. Yesterday, the White House declared that all companies with over 100 employees must mandate vaccines of their employees or do weekly testing. The deadline is January 4th. And that affects 80 million unvaccinated Americans. So guess what? Other companies are scrambling right now. Tyson is not. Because Tyson made a bold bet.

Without data. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? Hello, a Catholic prayer app just raised big VC money. Church attendance is shrinking, but spirituality is growing. Kroger is entering Florida, public's country, with a delivery-only Roboshed strategy. If it's obvious, it's too late. For our third and final story, Tyson Foods mandated all their employees get the vaccine, and it worked. Now, all big companies must mandate vaccines or weekly testing.

Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Richard B from lovely Tulsa, Oklahoma. One Bitcoin, as of this moment, is currently worth over $61,000. But the term bit in Bitcoin, that first part of the Bitcoin, that bit actually has meaning. That's right. A bit is 12.5 cents. Because until 1857, merchants would often cut Spanish coins into eight pieces and each one was then worth 12.5 cents.

And then when the U.S. minted their very first quarter coin, it became known as a two-bit coin. Because a bit was 12.5 cents from those Spanish coins. And if you've ever been to a University of Florida Gators football game, you know two bits, four bits, eight bits, a dozen, stand up and holler. Oh, I forgot the last line of the sun. Great. On Monday, we'll be issuing a correction on everything Jack just said. Snackers, you look fantastic.

today, Jack, we got some, it's Friday. We've got to celebrate some wins here. Root for the Gators, stand up and holler. That's how it goes. There we go. Otherwise, just enjoy some cake. It can be cheesecake. It can be buttercream frosting. Snackers, we'll see you Monday. Have a great weekend. I'm going with the buttercream frosting, Jack. And before we go, just to congratulations to everyone running the New York City marathon this weekend. Fantastic event. One snacker, Sammy Yarlie is running. Who else is from? Let us know for Monday's pod. You guys earned it. You know you're going to touch all five burrows.

and millions of hearts. And dodge a bunch of nasty streetpies. Alberto and Miriam, congrats on the engagement down in Cabo. Send us the ring picks. Happy anniversary to Mucci and Lucy in New Jersey. And Kevin and Melissa just became Tesla and Ayers, which Jack means they either own a Tesla or they own a million dollars of Tesla stock.

I don't know which one. Or both. And congrats to Nora Lewin, who just had a baby girl down in New York City. And Chris, happy birthday in Wichita, Kansas. Happy birthday to Greg Jones in West Frankfurt, Illinois. and this is perfect. Gator gymnast Leah Clapper, happy birthday in Gainesville Flora. What are the odds? Leah, please tell us how that two-bit song goes.

I can't believe you basically cheerleaded what she cheerleads. Happy birthday to Edwin Mui in San Ramon, California. And Oleg Kislanski in Miami. Happy birthday to Madeline Hancock and her waterproof backpack down in Houston, Texas. And Whitney Flout, turning 21, down in Wake Forest. Happy birthday to Merriam in Salem, which is just outside of Boston. And happy birthday to Alice. Cronheim from Raleigh, North Carolina. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix and I own some Bitcoin

too. 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, 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 as the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinood Markets Inc., Robintov Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principle and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.

I'm just back from Publix. Can we podcast from Publix?