The Best One Yet - “I can’t believe it’s not Chunky Monkey” — Perfect Day’s animal-free ice cream, Twitter’s subscription plan. Walmart finally zucks Amazon Prime

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Some sneaky sleuthing on a Twitter job posting indicates that Twitter may be whipping up paid subscription… for something. Walmart whips up an anti-Amazon version of Prime called Walmart+, coming this month. And our “Almost Unicorn of the Day” is Perfect Day, which snagged $300M to make milk that’s neither plant-based, nor animal-based. But tastes exactly like milk.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. It is Thursday, July 9. Markets rose yesterday. We don't know why. But Nick, I do know why I'm excited for Friday afternoon. T-B-O-W-W.

Oh, yeah, we're playing golf together. We're playing golf on Friday afternoon. It's socially distant. It's going to be incredible. Lincoln Golf Course, San Francisco, California. Jack's on hole 8. I'm on hole 3. It's extremely socially distanced.

Jack, what's up with the T-boy? Let's get to our three stories. Watson! Whip out my magnifying glass cape and grab me a pipe. The game is a foot dachshund. Some sneaky sleuthing on Twitter's job website reveals that it's working on something big. Yep, subscription Twitter. Second story jack. Amazon Prime is Amazon's purebred profit puppy. Walmart's sick of hearing about how cute Amazon's profit puppy is so it's adopting its own. It's called Walmart Plus. It arrives this month for

98 bucks a year. You could do better on the name. Third and final story jack, what do we got? The almost Unicorn of the Day is called Perfect Day. Great name. Way better than Walmart's. You know about animal-based food? Yep. You know about plant-based food? Yep. Well, they just raised $300 billion because they figured out a third food group. Animal, identical,

dairy, but no animal products. Doesn't roll off the time. Pretty confused. We're working on that one. It's pretty confused. They're going to work on that one. But Nick, before we hit those stories, let's talk about schools. Will they open? Will they not open? Some will, some won't.

The Ivy League canceled football. A lot of stuff going on with schools. My dog ate my homework. Does that still count? It can if you send a picture, but now you've got to send it online. It's kind of weird. Well, Snackers, the frontline worker heroes that we've been talking about for a while now are the doctors, the nurses, the delivery people, and the people who couldn't work from home who've had to put themselves on the front lines of COVID-19. This fall, though, frontline workers could be teachers. And it got us thinking, there's so much innovation going on in this economy. How about we use some of that innovation to help students and teachers. So wild for us to hear about Google's next big thing, library books

delivered a la drone. This is pretty exciting. We're talking about Google's wing division and their drone delivery, which just partnered with a local school district in Montgomery, Virginia. Well, that's exciting if you're kind of like scoot your way out of the summer reading requirements, though. Nick, we're talking about drone delivery of Mrs. Leighton's summer reading list. Watch out, Jack. The Giver is flying by at 70 miles per hour. Oh, that was Lois Lowry, I think. Middle school librarians have started putting books in this county in a drone, and then the drone brings up to 600 kids in the radius of the drone,

who now have no excuse not to read this summer. The librarians, they put books in a little basket, much like a stork. Adorable. Delivers things in a basket as well. Love what they're doing here. One catch, one asterisk. The book has got away less than three pounds. So if you're all quiet on the Western Front, that is drone friendly.

But if you're Anna Karina, you will probably break. the drone. No, 900 pages, not drone friendly. Leo Toastoy, not a friend of the drones. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The 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. 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. Robberhood Financial LLC member FINRA slash SIPC For our first story, Twitter's job posts suggest they're looking into paid subscriptions.

Investors think that could be awesome for Twitter stock and potentially awesome for the world. The rare, rare product launch that is good for humanity, usually Jack and are covering like a plant-based extension co-branded partnership that's self-driving. Yeah, plant-based subscription boxes aren't going to. to change the world. This story actually might. Online, offline retail. Now, sometimes Wall Street behaves like Sherlock Holmes. They investigate evidence to reach a conclusion. A little bit of Hans, a little bit of Gretel, following the breadcrumbs, boom, you get a story, then there's a takeaway. Buried in a Twitter job description that was just posted to Twitter for a senior engineer was the quote, we are building a subscription platform. Let a lot out of the bag there. Sounds like

someone posted something before someone else signed off on that something. Yeah, it's like, really? That's how you're going to announce that Twitter is launching a subscription platform? And we could do a press release or we could hire for all the people critical to this job. Now, we're going to paraphrase the rest of the job description. We basically said, we need someone to figure out how to collect monthly paid subscriptions to users for access to something. Something keyword here. Something. That's not a thing they said, but we don't know what that something is. So Jack and I had fun whiteboarding this thing. Maybe you'll have to pay to see tweets from certain celebrities who decide to

put up a paywall for their tweets. Yeah, or maybe you'll be able to scroll Twitter for free, but actually tweeting will require paying a subscription. Or maybe the most consequential and profound and like kind of crazy version, maybe Twitter will put up a paywall requiring all users to pay three bucks a month or some other number. We just made up the three bucks a month. I like it. But before Jack and I could come up with a fourth, uh, option here, there was an update from Twitter. Twitter changed the job post to eliminate any reference to paid subscriptions. But the cat is so far out of the bag, this thing's up in Toronto. Yeah, we don't think...

That's great. Nick, we don't think them changing the job post means they're not working on a paid subscription. We think it just means they weren't planning to announce it this way, so they're going to, like, hide it for a while. This is big snackers, and that's because ad dollars dictate social media. And subscriptions could completely change that. Twitter could be the first social media company that is not completely free. It requires paid subscription. Which is huge implications for like society and media and society.

It could mean that some people stop using Twitter because they don't want to pay for it or they can't afford it. But it could also mean something which happens to be our takeaway. So check what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Twitter. Subscription-based social media could dramatically improve the health of social media and that would be good for Twitter stock. Snackers, on social media, all posts are not treated equal. There's a journalist named Kevin Ruse who posts on Twitter every day. what are the top performing posts on Facebook? Don't even have to check it out right now.

Spoiler alert, the answer? They're all extreme political posts. They're all sensationalist, outrageous, and provoke like anger because that is what drives engagement on Facebook. The algorithms behind Facebook and Twitter and even Instagram, they boost the posts that provoke the most engagement. That's because the most engagement means the most eyeballs, and the most eyeballs means the most ad views,

and the most ad views means the most profits for Twitter. Facebook. A vicious circle of life, something from like a paranormal version of the Lion King. But if Twitter puts up a $3 a month subscription instead, then they don't need to rely on ads for revenue as much, and they can rejigger the algorithm to stop provoking, provocative posts. By the way, Jack, I think that is the official term. Engineers just rejigger. They should use that in their vocabre. They should use that term. Engineers out there, please make that a thing. Now, if Twitter starts to rely on subscriptions instead of ads, that could potentially reduce the amount of of abuse, trolling, misinformation, and all the other bad stuff that dominates social media

conversations. Snackers, you add up all this potential and Twitter stock ended up rising 7% on Wednesday. Yeah, Twitter could become the first and only social media platform where ads aren't completely running the show. For our second story, Walmart is reportedly launching a $98 a year Amazon Prime rival this July. It's called Walmart Plus, and Walmart Plus's secret weapon is groceries. Snackers, let's jump in the time machine. Travel back to lovely 2005, Jack. What was not going on? Uber was not going on.

iPhones did not exist. Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift. Classic had not come out yet. Wasn't even filmed yet. But Amazon Prime was born. We thought Amazon Prime must have come out in 2015. It came out in 2005 when you could only order books. Anna Corinida was delivered by Carrier Pigeon Jack.

Since then, back in 2005, Walmart has been watching, waiting, and falling behind. Snackers, that 15-year prime head start is a big reason why Amazon is worth, get this, for Walmart's translation jack? That's right. Amazon is worth $1.5 trillion. That is the value of all of its stock combined. And that's for Walmart's or 150 lifts. Oh, speaking of 150, 150 million people are paying $119 a year for Amazon Prime's,

free shipping, Whole Foods discount, Prime Video, and a bunch of other little perks. And Prime has been penetrating hard at Walmart's customer base. Snackers, get this fact. Half of the top spending families at Walmart also have Prime subscriptions tempting them every time they visit their computer. That is awkward down in Arkansas, Jack. Now, the time has come for Walmart to finally suck the Amazon Prime concept. So thanks to PFWTM, aka people familiar with the matter, Recode interviewed them, and we've learned that Walmart Plus include some funky things. Well, first of all, it's coming.

This month, according to PFWTM. It's launching at 18% lower price than Amazon Prime at a mere $98 a year. Compared to Amazon Prime's $19 a year. Now, there's a couple surprises in the perks included in Walmart Plus. Yeah, a stronger version to triple-digit prices. The first perk that surprised us discounts on gasoline at Walmart gas stations, which apparently are a huge deal. I've only been to a few Walmarts in my life.

None of them had gas stations, but they're somehow cranking out $1.1 billion in sales every quarter on gas. Looking for diesel? Yeah, aisle six, not too shabby. So you're probably going to get like 20 cents off a gallon or something with Walmart plus. But get this. All right. So here's the one that really blew Jack and I away. Walmart is launching an online family entertainment program called Camp All Capital Letters, C-A-M-P. This isn't just some rando-straming service like foodoo, voodoo, huboo, and ju-boo. No, it's not. This is a digital summer camp experience with a bunch of all-star camp instructors. Yeah, you're not like, you know, jumping on the tramboline and like doing field hockey at this camp. They got LeBron, Neil Patrick Harris, and Drew Barrymore entertaining your kids in front of the TV.

Perfect for the Corona Economy summer. Also perfect if your parents and you want to escape for a weekend. Because if you put your kids in front of a TV with Neil Patrick Harris as a camp instructor, you can go all weekend and he'll still be there when you get back. Neil Patrick Harris is like Benjamin Button. This guy only gets cuter with age. Nobody I'd rather have the godfather of my kids than Neil Patrick Harris. It's so true, Jack, we'll hold you to that one. He's a snacker. He'll probably do it. Unsurprisingly, Walmart Plus will also come with a credit card pretty soon if you want, and of course, free shipping on Walmart. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Walmart? Walmart plus's loyalty hook is groceries. Snackers, the key to digital commerce success is winning customer loyalty and

winning customer habit. If your customers are comparison shopping with other places to get the lowest price, then you are losing. Amazon's annual fee keep shoppers loyal, and Walmart will have that and groceries. Right. Groceries are a habit-forming thing. You have to eat. You have to get a roogla every week to put into that little place in the garage. No arugel in the fridge, no happy jack. Walmart, shockingly, is the biggest grocery store in America. And grocery sales lead to sales of everything else. You come in for the corn in granola, you leave with the bathing suit, the baseball, and the Mad and 20.

Sounds like a great weekend. It's fun. So core to Walmart Plus is this last perk that we saved for the end. This is key. Unlimited, same-day grocery delivery. If it can keep Walmarters buying groceries, damn it can keep them from Prime. For our third and final story, this one's wild. Animal-free dairy ice cream, perfect day, just raised $300 million.

Big number, big check. This company's name went through a metamorphosis from a hideous slug to a beautiful butterfly. All right, get this, get this, daggers. First name for this company, moo free. M-O-O-F-R-I. It's ugly just looking at it. Technically, move-free, so there was no cow, you know, cow-free kind of. Yeah, move-free or die-hard.

kind of a thing. But Perfect Day just sounds a lot nicer. It's also a reference to a Lou Reed song from 1972. But every time Jack and I are thinking to this company, we're thinking more of like Lovely Day, the Chicago song. A song you can actually swing to as opposed to Lou Reed's Perfect Day, which I've never heard of. The early takeaway of this podcast is Jack likes to swing, baby. You've heard of animal-based food. Yeah, that's what carnivores eat. You've heard of plant-based food. Yeah, that's what herbivore eat. Perfect Day has created The third circle of food. Non-animal, identical to dairy, but without using any animals in the process to get it to you.

Through an extremely scientific process, they turned flora into something they say it's exactly like dairy milk, but there was no cow, no goat, no lamb involved. Not in it. That flora, though, is like yeast or fungi or another microorganism. So this is milk, but it's not milk. Right. It's not plant-based, though, according to their marketing at least. It's a little confusing.

If it sounds scientific, Nick and I actually put on lab goggles before telling this story. Full disclosure, this is Nick and that's Jack, and neither one of us is medically qualified to comment on how this works. But the frequently asked questions of the website said it mentions DNA, it mentions fermentation, cassine, way, a bunch of other things. What we are qualified to talk about, though, is the business here, because beyond meat, let burger lovers have beef without environmental impact. Perfect Day is doing the same exact thing with dairy because we're, Raising cows can have a big environmental impact. We're kind of getting, I can't believe it's not butter vibes minus the Fabio. I can't believe it's not dairy.

Somebody sign up Fabio. First, they figured out the taste. Now they're using a $300 million check to double capacity, get that price down, and start pumping out this good stuff. You're used to be able to buy a pint of perfect day, Blackberry ice cream, and you can probably find pictures of it on Google Images. It was direct to consumer, focused on consumers. It was all about the consumer.

But now you can't. Now you cannot buy a pint of Perfect Day ice cream. So Jack, interesting pivot, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Perfect Day? Perfect Day is pulling an Intel inside. You don't buy their animal-free dairy. You buy something else that has their animal-free dairy inside it. Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, they are the Apple computer of plant-based food snackers. They make a plant-based meat product that you can buy from the grocery store. But Perfect Day wants to really be the Intel Inside computer chip, of the industry. Right. You don't buy Intel inside computer chips. You buy the computer that has the chips inside. So Perfect Day is hoping that Ben and Jerry's ice cream comes along, or Red Bear and Frozen Pizza

comes along, or old El Paso Ksadillas come along, and they'll sell versions not with real dairy cheese and real dairy cream, but with Perfect Day cream and Perfect Cheese instead. So Perfect Day is strategically made its logo a discreet but identifiable, very clear black logo that you'll spot a mile away. Expect to see this little black logo on Ben and Jerry's ice cream, we're guessing, when people want ice cream, but they want to be dairy and lactose and vegan. Stick a perfect day logo on a domino's box so that you can trust that it's dairy-free, lactose-free, and vegan. It'll still taste, though, just like mediocre domino's cheese pizza. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways force over there? Twitter stock jumped 7% because it's looking to add subscription revenues. Not relying 100% on

ads could make social media and society way better off. Walmart has waited 15 years to finally Zuck Amazon Prime. It's going to keep your shop and loyalty, though, with free same-day grocery delivery. That's what it all comes down to. Our third and final story, perfect day, knows that even vegans crave ice cream sometimes. So it's whipping up some, I can't believe it's not chunky monkey. It's perfect. Now, Snackers, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent it by Jackie who hometown, she just went with Chicago suburbs. Yeah, pretty funny. We were expecting Dayton to be the hometown. And the reason we were expecting Dayton is because this snack fact is all about lovely Dayton, Ohio. Yeah, Dayton, Ohio, which is known as the birthplace of aviation. Yep. Because of

LeBron James. Because apparently the Wright brothers did their first flight in North Carolina, but they were born in Ohio. Ah, just like Kentucky claims they're the home of Lincoln when we all know it was Illinois. It's awkward. Now, what Jackie points out, though, is that Eden, Ohio is actually the Silicon Valley of before Silicon Valley. Yeah. Yeah, they're the Silicon Valley of like metal. Because they invented the mechanical cash register, the self-starting car ignition, so you don't have to run outside in the cold, Nick.

You wouldn't know. Okay. But Vermonters would. They also invented the step ladder and get this, the soda can aluminum opener tab. I hope the city of Dayton, Ohio, wins a Nobel Prize of some sort. Honestly, because that's impressive. We're proud of this place. Now, before we let you go, Snackers, want to say a happy birthday to Cassie in San Francisco.

And Casey from Scottsdale, Arizona, a fellow podcast host of Rise of the Young. And happy birthday to Katie O'Donnell in lovely Charleston, South Carolina. And finally, Mia from New York City, your turn in 19. You guys are a mother-daughter snack's power couple. Mothers and daughters who snack together also probably occasionally argue about what their weekend curfew should. Mom, it's the weekend. I'm quarantined. Snackers, please ask your buddies for us, H-Y-H-H-W.

Let's spread the snacks. Have you had your snacks daily? We'll see you tomorrow. We can't wait, but if you know, you know. This is Nick and both Jack and I own shares of Beyond Meat, Jack owned shares of Amazon, and that's it. 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, 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.