The Best One Yet - Ghost kitchens are having a moment, the new mini Trade Deal, and Papa is the “grandkids on demand” app

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Rachael Ray and GrubHub just teamed up. Uber Eats launched one last week. We’re looking at the “trend of the week” — Virtual Kitchens. Stocks popped Friday because of the latest (kinda) trade deal, so we’re looking at what it includes. And Papa raised $10M and snagged major partners as it becomes the “grandkids on demand” app.Learn 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, October 14. Happy start to the week. Guess what? What are you thinking over there?

Best one yet? Best snacks daily we've ever done. Markets rose at the end of the last week because of some big-ish news. Not that big news, actually. This one's better than what we did on Friday, I think. Yes, thank you. Third and final story? Actually, let's start with the first one.

The trend of the week is virtual kitchens. Very true. Grubhub just launched a virtual kitchen. Uber just launched a ghost kitchen. They're both having a moment. We'll explain what a virtual kitchen is. Hint, you can't make a reservation. Second story. Stocks popped on Friday because of not a trade war. Not the trade war. Not exactly. A de-escalation in the trade war, aka a tiny trade deal. It's like the opposite of a trade war. We'll explain what you need to know. Third and final story now. Papa. What? I'm not calling you Papa. Papa is the name of a new company, which is also known as the Grand Kids on Demand app. It has a little more flair to it. It raised $10 million, snagged a bunch of big partners, and it's taking the gig economy to elderly care. It's a

surprising markets, we jumped into its snack style. Now snackers, before we get into that, there is a top 10 list that is the first of its kind in a long time. This is like BuzzFeed worthy, listical extravagance. But here is the insane thing. In order to appreciate this top 10 list, you have to see it. So we're going to just do it on a podcast. Yeah, you can't see it. We'll describe it to you. So for the first time, the Unicode Foundation, which handles emojis. Great group, great taste, like the world. Really nice people. It's also the universal language. Really good bagels. is for the first time. The top 10 most frequently used emoji. Okay, so here they are. I wish I could like it.

I guess this is part of the challenge, right? The first one. The first one has 9.9% of all emojis are this. That's pretty high. This is the one with the laughing crying face where the eyes are shut and the tears are going out in like a 12 degree angle. Number two is just a big red heart. Yeah, it's just a heart. Pretty simple. Number three kind of combines those first two. Smiley face with the hearty eyes. Exactly. Number four? Number four, not that different than number one. rolling on the floor laughing, which is just a tilted sideways smiling face with tears coming based on this so far, like the only text messages out there are absolutely hilarious or absolutely adorable. Number five is just a straight up smiley face. Now, you got to look at this. We're not

yeah, but we will tweet it out so you can see what the top 10 are. And in case you're wondering, the bottom, the bottom, the bottom of the list, flags. Sorry, New Zealand. National flags. Let's at our three stores. just so you know we're not recommending any securities. Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible.

Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, our trend of the week, Ghost Kitchen. Are we starting with that? Ghost Kitchen. Can you say it a third time? Ghost Kitchens.

They're popping up a lot of places. We noticed it happening more this month, and it's virtually really a reality thing. It's actually happening. So virtual restaurants is the other name for ghost kitchens. A.k.a. Headless restaurants. A.k.a. Dark restaurants. A.k.a. Delivery-only restaurant.

This sounds freaky. It does. So we're going to explain to you what virtual kitchens are. Jack, you pop open your Grubhub app. You got home late. You just finished the snacks podcast. You're hungry. And you want to get, you notice this like really attractive looking,

I'm going to call like an autumn and themed chickpea soup. Okay. That sounds lovely. Incredible. You notice there's a whole lineup of soups on your app from this one restaurant. You check it out and you're like, oh my God, this is a Bon Appetit Restaurant, just like the Bon Appetit Magazine. Bon Appetit has a restaurant? You're like, I didn't know they had a restaurant, but this is incredible. They're making the best autumn soup separate town is the restaurant. Doesn't matter. You order it, you're tired, you're exhausted,

and it gets delivered. Guess what? They didn't have a restaurant. Bon Appetit didn't have a restaurant. What they had was a ghost kitchen that was on a delivery app. Okay, a ghost kitchen is also known as a virtual kitchen. Let me give you the Webster's definition. Actually, this is the snacks definition. Can you use it in a sentence? I guess we did that. Is it a noun? It's a kitchen with no physical location, no tables, no chairs. You can only get delivery food. It's like Narnia. You have to believe in it in order for it to be real. So Bon Appetit has a virtual storefront only within the Grub Hub app. You can only get it there, but it doesn't exist anywhere else. You can't go meet a friend and have dinner for two. So it's a kitchen that's set up just to do delivery. So here's

the way these ghost kitchens work. Sometimes it's just a single kitchen. Or just part of kitchen that they've rented out, like the corner. And they may be selling that food on different delivery apps under different restaurant names, even though it's all coming from the exact same like oven. Let's say you're checking out Uber Eats because you're hungry for some tacos and you don't want to go anywhere. I'm loving where these analogies are going. You find Ted's tenacious tacos. Incredible. Turns out that could be a virtual storefront that's actually on the eighth floor of a warehouse in Dumbo. So you open up caviar, the delivery app, and you notice that there's Fred's fajitas that looks pretty good, too. That could actually be the same eighth

floor kitchen in Dumbo, just calling itself a different thing. You're still not sold, so you open up a third app, let's call it DoorDash. And notice there's Maggie's Marks selling some really interesting Mexican food. The same eighth floor. Let that sink in. This is what a virtual restaurant can do. Just have one kitchen and act like it's a bunch of different restaurants across a bunch of different apps.

Now, when it comes to something like this, you got to wonder who's actually benefiting. And so here's the breakdown. Well, the ghost kitchen has lower cost than like physical brick and mortars restaurants. They'll also get a lot of exposure across a lot of different apps. And they can, like, test out new menu items and just, if it doesn't work out, change the name of the restaurant on the app. Sounds like a good business model. So if you're the delivery app, you're benefiting too.

Yeah, because customers get more options for lots of different kinds of cuisines. Options are stressful, but they're also fantastic. Yeah, it's going to drive more users to Uber Eats, Grubh, etc. And if you're the customer, more options. FOMO is freaky, but hey, you get more options. If I want Taco Tuesday, now I have more taco options. Now, Jack and I looked into this further, and we noticed this is particularly becoming a trend right now. Uber Eats launched a Rachel Ray virtual kitchen last week.

Can't get enough of her chillions. Last month, a company called Kitchen United raised $40 million to expand virtual kitchens across the world. And in case you were wondering what the ex-CEOO of Uber Travis Kalanick is up to, he just goes by Travis. Okay, well, let's say Travis. His next new thing post-Ur is ghost kitchens. He's investing in them and he's scaling them abroad. So, Jack, what's the takeaway? for our buddies who are real, but they've ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens are the next major disruptions

to restaurant, and it's going to create a lot of losers. If you're a restaurant, you're really relying on food delivery lately because it's an increasing portion of your sales. And most restaurants are failing already, but now they have to compete against ghost kitchens, which have lower costs and don't even need to have any human contact. Hey, let's talk about this from like the humanity perspective. It's fun going out to restaurants. They're physical places. I love talking to waiters. I used to be a waiter myself. Hey, Joe, how is everything going? What is the special today. I would love to know. Also, one of the great inconvenient truths for millennials, I know what you're thinking. Our delivery food and our Amazon deliveries,

yep, creates a lot of waste. Oh, great. I got 14 packs of soy sauce. Do you need eight sets of chopsticks? I had my own syraccia. I don't need the many things that I can't even open. Now, our take, the apps should label these ghost kitchens within the apps. Yes. So that us humans can decide, do we want a restaurant delivery or a virtual kitchen acting like a restaurant? For our Second story, big thing developed on Friday. The U.S. and China had trade talks and gave markets a gift. This was a trade war de-escalation and the first one we've seen in ever? De-escalation.

Yeah, we usually don't get to say that. Now, the context, investors have been nervous. It's been scary. Economists have been upset. Not happy with things. And voters are wary of the trade war. And then President Trump said on Friday there was a quote-unquote very substantial phase one deal.

What does that mean? So Jack and I jumped in because that wasn't totally clear. It basically means we are undoing some escalations from the past few months of the trade war. It's basically a total control Z situation. Or anyone here out use like Google Docs? You know in Google Docs you can go back to a past version? Oh, yes. Is that what you're feeling here today?

Yeah. That's the vibe of getting it. We're going back to like two weeks ago's virgin. We're restoring the version from two weeks. Exactly. I couldn't articulate it that well. So the USA has promised not to increase tariffs next week, which were planned. And China has promised to buy more U.S.

agricultural goods like soybeans, which are. like $50 billion worth of soybeans every year. Yeah, that's a lot. A lot of adamami. And it had completely stopped buying our crops early this summer. Also, China gave its word. It promises it'll open up its financial system to international economies, which is kind of vague, kind of nice.

Super vague. Yeah, we'll see where that goes. Now, it's not signed yet. The White House says it'll take three to five weeks to write and sign this thing. It also doesn't include some other, like, pretty big stuff out there. Theft of American IP when U.S. companies do business in China. Right. That was kind of a sensitive one of China.

companies literally taking trade secrets. Right. Chinese currency manipulation. Right. China devaluing its currency so it's more attractive to other countries to buy that. Now I get to use my favorite word. Lack of reciprocity. I think we didn't we do a Webster's Dictionary joke earlier today? Lack of reciprocity in terms of openness. Like Chinese companies are allowed to operate in the U.S. but a lot of U.S. companies like Facebook and Twitter can't operate in China. Now in case you're wondering about the other tariffs that are still out there, because remember this only scales back a few of the tariffs. Those increase are still planned, but after the shopping season.

I think December 15th, the big round of tariffs, which hit like the other half of Chinese stuff, that is still scheduled to happen. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for why this was such a significant development on Friday? This deal wasn't a solution, but it makes a comprehensive deal somewhat more possible. There was a lot of bad will out there lately. American media and politics has been labeling China, enemy number one. And China's been doing the same thing. We already told you about the NBA.

a drama from last week. So this is a small gesture. It eases tension a little bit. A little bit more more relaxed. It's like here, let me put my hands on your shoulder for a second. Jack's doing a massage thing over here. Hey, it looks great. I'm not, I think it's cool. The hate like comes down a couple decibels and it makes compromise in the future more politically feasible. But the next key trade war points, they're going to require a much more substantial discussion. But they needed this step first. Nonetheless, Wall Street was pumped about the easing of tension. Good way to go into the weekend. For our third and final story, we're talking about Papa, aka Grandkids on Demand.

I don't know which one's kind of weirder. I don't like the name at all. No, but they did just raise $10 million, and they're helping senior citizens who live alone, not feel like they're living alone. They're also hoping college kids make some extra cash. They're also based in Miami, which is just kind of cool. I haven't heard of any tuck companies based in Miami.

No, I haven't, but this is pretty impressive. What's going on here with Papa? Here's how it works. A grandparent can book a grandkid for a couple hours using a mobile app. That's right. And you could, can you book the grandparent? Well, there don't have to be actual relations. Okay, all right, that's cool.

And I don't think the grandkid can book the grandparent. But here's the most charming thing that Jack and I found out. Not every grandparent knows how to use a smartphone. Right, so they have a phone number you can call too. If you don't know how I use the smartphone. And it's probably not even just a radio phone. It's one of those ones where you have to move it with your finger. You know what I'm talking about?

Any grandkids knows that, you know, grandparents can use a hands in things. I call my grandma like every week. So here's how Papa's use cases apply. I still don't like that name. Why is it gender specific? I don't know. They have to change that. All right. So one, companionship. Right.

There's a picture of a man reading a grandparent, a book on a park bench. Wait, just a nice thing to do. Good way to spend both of your time. This is straight from the website, by the way. The other one is technology lessons. Yeah, there's a guy showing another old man how to use a smartphone. So this is like version, step up from the, from the just hanging out. This is teaching. This is a big one, rides.

Right. Old people, you know, the seniors, they need rides to like the doctor's office, the grocery store, whatever. And we've talked to our snackers before about how there are startups that want to do that with self-driving cars. We're not quite there yet, but this makes sense in the meantime. Other reasons why seniors could use Papa for house help, for chores, or for like giving a dog a bath because that's hard to do. So here's the core question. Who is the gig here? Who's doing the gig? The gig is done by Papa pals. Again, not a fan of the name. That's what Papa calls the college students who need to make some extra cash and sign up to help old people. Obviously, you got to pass some background

checks here. You don't want some con man coming to the Nana's house. No. And stealing the Crown Jules. Got like a 40-year-old guy dressed up in like a 14-year-olds clothes. Not cool. Now, it's also a smallish company. Right. They raised $10 million. That's not a huge fundraise for Snacks Daily Standards. But when Jack and I jumped into this one, we were curious about who the strategic partnerships were and the recent ones really got our attention. Melinda Gates. Yes. Is behind this company of the Gates Foundation. They also were graduates of like the very well-known accelerator program Y Combinator. Y Combinator is now an investor in this latest round. But listen to this. Their most recent partnerships are actually some really major health insurance companies.

Humana, Etna, Priority Health. These have millions of elderly people who are members, and now they can get referred to Papa if they need like a youngster around. Who wants to talk to Papa? It just doesn't work, Jack. It just doesn't work. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Papa? The elderly care industry is one in most need of innovation. In the United States, Japan, Germany, the most economically advanced.

countries in the world. There's also a huge aging population that they're dealing with. Right. There are more older people because people are living longer. And there are fewer younger people because the birth rates have fallen. You're also sadly seeing a loneliness epidemic. 28% of older adults in the United States, is like 14 million people. They live alone. That means more elderly folks are going to need more help. It's a huge opportunity for businesses, entrepreneurs, companies to find ways to help these old people we love who need a little extra help. And before robots start doing a lot more of this work, in the meantime, humans can via gig apps. Like, Papa Pals.

Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us? Virtual kitchens are disrupting the delivery industry and could take out some real restaurants. They don't take reservations, but they do deliver, and they should indicate if they're a ghost kitchen. We're just saying that. A mini trade deal was agreed to Friday between the USA and China. And this makes a more meaningful trade deal possible in the future, but you kind of had to have this one first. Papa, he's a new gig app helping elderly people. who are living alone.

And elderly care is a huge market for innovation. The name poppa not also needs some innovation to it. Snackers, time for our snack fact of the day. This one's sent in by a great snacker in lovely Los Angeles. Gully. Gully. Gully, flowers.

Gully points out something we should all remember. You're more likely to be killed by a deer, a female deer, a doe. Yeah. Then sharks, bears, or alligators combined. I think the moral of the story is just be careful this week. Yeah, but also don't hate on sharks so much. Yeah, like bears are awesome. These are majestic, awesome, incredible animals.

But you really are. No, deer are a great deal. We're fans in the way. Either I have a safe week. And in the meantime, guys, it's almost T-Boy Tuesday. Yes, tomorrow is T-Boy Tuesday, and tomorrow we'll have a poll of who has the best idea for a Nobel Prize for Business. We kind of made up that category. But we're running off last week.

A couple people won Nobel Prizes for inventing the lithium ion battery. Tweet at us today, who you think should win. We'll figure out the finalist and the poll will be up tomorrow. And here's the challenge. You only have five words to make a nomination. It's going to be hard. Tweet your answers today. At Robin Hood Snacks. We'll catch you tomorrow. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell. any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC,

member FINRA, SIPC.