The Best One Yet - “Just rub some Cheetos on it” — SpaceX’s space wifi. Applebee’s influencer kitchen. Texas’ emergency stocks.

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly worth $74B, but it’s not about rockets… it’s about Starlink internet wifi. Applebee’s is launching a virtual brand that we think sets the future for Influencer Kitchens (spoiler: Cheetos chicken wings). And the brutal freeze in Texas reveals a sector that doesn’t get any attention — emergency preparedness. By the way, Lone Star Snackers, we’re sending you warmth and love.$DIN $WMTGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkSend us your Black History Month SnackFact here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Hu00HOlQ-qb6S7Jx4CgnGOfzrA67_j_SLFqxvFKinEQ/editWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn 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, the new Friday, February 18th. I don't know what you are doing in January 2020, Nick, but I bet you spent 5% more in January 2021. It was actually my birthday, so I did. I did. Retail spending Snackers jumped 5% in January. Good sign for the economy. Everyone's spending those $600 stimulus checks hoping for another $1,400 stimulus checks. Jack, how are we feeling about this pod? More good news. This is the best one yet. For our first story, Elon Musk's SpaceX has reportedly hit a $74 billion valuation. Okay, here's the key. It's not about the rockets.

It's about your home Wi-Fi. For our second story, Applebee's is launching a virtual chicken wing brand just for the delivery app. Jack, I got four words for you again, Cheeto-flavored chicken wings. For our third and final story, the deep freeze in Texas reveals a sector that deserves more attention. It's a mouthful, but don't forget about it, emergency preparedness stocks. By the way, loan stock. Snackers, we are sending you warmth and love right now. Yes, we are. But before we jump into that, honestly, Jack, wonderful mix of stories today. Snackers, this young 2021 year has seen a whopping

131 companies, SPAC, the special purpose acquisition company. Okay, so the way Jack I like to think of these, think of SPACs as like eloping instead of doing the like traditional IPO wedding commitment. If you're a pre-IPO company, you could commit to. to the rigorous process of an IPO. It's a commitment, or you could let a SPAC go through the owner's IPO process itself and then let that SPAC acquire your company. Vala, with a SPAC, a private company becomes public at a much lower cost and with less scrutiny than an IPO. Love the voila, jack. Now, before that SPAC picks a company to acquire, technically, it's just a blank check company. It's a mystery box out there.

Pre-acquisition, a SPAC is a company that's going to buy something, but you have no idea what. It's a mystery box. S-P-A-C, it is the I'm-feeling lucky Google search version of a stock. But the real twist with 2021 is sports spacks. Little trend, Jack and I noticed, we're calling them Major League Spacks. Steph Curry, Serena Williams, A-Rob, they've all got their own spacks. Jack, you want to play a little rhyme game here? Shaq?

Jack's got a spack. He got one, too. Colin Kaepernick? Yeah. Colin Spackernick. The Oakland A's executive Billy Bean. Jack, does Billy Bean have a spack, Jack? He does.

It's called the Moneyball Spack. Yeah, he does. also the New York Islanders owner, the Red Sox, they got a SPAC board as the Red Sox guy stole the signs from the other guy. The only team that doesn't have us back, Nick, the Nick and Jack's back. It's a Snacks back. 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. 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. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, SpaceX is reportedly hitting a $74 billion with a B valuation up 60% from last year. But the real story here is SpaceLink. Yeah, which is Space Wi-Fi.

Space Wi-Fi. Now, if you want to invest in Elon Musk Space Company, SpaceX, You can't. You just can't. You're sumo. You're straight up missing out, unfortunately. Yeah, unlike Tesla, SpaceX still private. Stock isn't available to us regular retail investors. But CNBC spoke to some people familiar with the matter, and now we know that that private stock has boomed.

Yeah, apparently SpaceX sold $850 million of fresh stock last week at a price that values it 60% higher than last August. Now, everybody is distracted by the razzled down. of SpaceX's rocket chips. I mean, Jack, they're rockets. They are rocket chips. It's understandable why everyone pays attention to the rockets. But the real business model behind SpaceX, it's actually pretty simple. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi. Yeah, this is what Jack and I find fascinating about. SpaceX, their other major business that doesn't get a lot of attention is something called Starlink. SpaceX has already launched over 1,000 of these incredibly powerful space Wi-Fi routers.

Now, it sounds highly technical. Basically, they're just, satellites, which means something that just orbits the Earth spinning around the Earth. That's all the satellite is. It just means it's running laps around planet Earth without even trying. Now, the goal for SpaceX is to send up enough of these Starlink Wi-Fi router satellites that eventually there's enough so that you will never lose internet service ever. Anywhere on the world. The North Pole? Yeah. Point Nemo. Talk to me. Machu Picchu? No, Jack, all good five stars. Can you hear me now? Thanks. Yes, I can. Thanks. Starlink's global Wi-Fi. Also means no more excuses for not being on that work call.

That's true. That's a major bummer, actually. Now, a funny thing, Google thought about this exact problem just a few years ago. They wanted to give everyone in the world unlimited access to Wi-Fi. Yeah, it was called Project Loom, and they beam down Wi-Fi, not from satellites, but from super fancy high-tech hot air balloons. But after 16 years just last month, Google decided this would never become a profitable business, Project Loon, so they actually, they just shut it down. But Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, does think that Starlink will become profitable, and then he's planning to spin it off from SpaceX into its own company with its own publicly traded stock. So eventually, SpaceX is planning to spin off Starlink stock, which means

you can become investor in space Wi-Fi. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at SpaceX? The Tesla playbook is how Starlink can become mainstream. Okay, so if you're interested in Starlink, you can actually subscribe today for their beta testing internet service for a huge price. Yeah, here's what you got to do. Spend $499 on the Starlink kit, which includes a tiny satellite dish you need to carry around. Great, okay.

A router and a power pack. Oh, okay. And then you need to pay $99 per month for every month of service. I feel like you just kind of squeezed in the fine print there, Jack. Now, you could do that or you could compare that to the $60 a month pretty standard T-Mobile service and basically get the same thing. 30-year mortgage for Starlink or $60 a month and probably get like a free phone. Now, we've seen this playbook before because Tesla was also overpriced at first and only

accessible to rich early adopters. That was their game plan. Back in 2008, the Tesla Roadster, the first car, was an absurd $100,000 for a two-seater that you could barely charge anywhere because we were so early in electric. But over time, after selling to those rich early adopters, Tesla made enough money to start producing the product at scale, and then they could start lowering the price

and then making the product more practical. Today, Starlink is impractical and extremely expensive, but it could go downmarket tomorrow, just like Tesla did. When you hear SpaceX, think Starlink, but then really think Tesla. For our second story, Applebee's is launching its very first virtual brain. Grand, big deal. Ghost, Cheetos, chicken wings could mean a lot for the future of restaurants. Applebee's is, if you think of Applebee's, it's the Olive Garden of other carbs. Applebee's is olive garden, but its allegiance is to ketchup.

Yes. Yes. That's well put, Jack. Now, Applebee's also happens to be owned by Dine Brands Global, a one and a half billion dollar publicly traded company that also owns IHOP, so more carbs. Now, restaurants didn't do well last year. No, they didn't. And sales for Dine Brands Global only fell 13%, which is kind of impressive. Yeah, but the stock fell 20%. It's time to mix things up. They're trying out this thing called Cosmic Wings. Okay, Cosmic Wings is their new thing.

This doesn't exist physically. You're not doing a first date at Cosmic Wings. Cosmic Wings is a virtual brand that only exists on one delivery app Uber Eats. Now, Snackers, we have talked about Ghost Kitchen concepts before, but when Jack and I heard about Cosmic Wings and jumped in Snacks style,

we noticed this is different. This one's a lot different. Applebee's virtual brand swallows up every trend in restaurants right now. In fact, Cosmic Wings has created an entirely new checklist for the great pandemic restaurant experiment. Jack, feels like we should do the checklist. Well, we actually created this checklist based on what Cosmic Wins is do. We did. We think they've got this hidden somewhere, but Jack and I have it on a whiteboard over here. Item number one, Ghost Kitchen.

Cosmic Wings has no storefront, no tables, no waitstaff. It is only on Uber Eats. Frankly, they're able to operate a whole lot cheaper by just doing one thing and one thing only. They only deliver chicken wings. The second trick they're using is Airbnb. Cosmic Wings shares a corner of unused Applebee's kitchens at 1,300 of their Applebee's locations. How clever is this? They're leveraging the underutilized space to operate even more cheaply than every other ghost kitchen out there, which was already operating cheaply.

Next up, they optimized and simplified the menu. Yeah, they do. Because Cosmic Wings knows pandemic tastes have changed. You want the salty, you want the fried, and you want something that's going to arrive, delivery, anti-Soggy. That's why they're doing just wings. It's efficient, no-wasted ingredients. They're giving

people what they want. Yeah. In the styrofoam container, they didn't want. Styrofoam friendly. But the fourth and final part of this is what we haven't seen from other ghost kitchens out there. Jack, I'll give you the honors. The fourth and final part of the checklist is virality. Cosmic Wings just launched

Cheetos flavored wings. It was like they were born on an Instagram story and dipped in a TikTok real. Jack, your fingers, they just didn't get orange enough when you were eating regular wings. I always licked my fingers after Cheetos. We have to repeat again, their core product is Cheetos flavored wings. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are doing some innovative stuff over at Applebee's? After virtual brands, we expect to see influencer kitchens. Okay, Snackers, digital restaurant chains like Cosmic that exist only online. They're taking over and you didn't even realize how much they were taken over in the last year. According to trade publication restaurant business online, there are 100,000 virtual brands launched

in just the past year with similar elements as Cosmic Wings. A hundred thousand ghost kitchens. And it's not just that they have a more efficient business model. It's that these ghost kitchens lowered the barriers to launching a whole new food concept. If you follow the four point cosmic wings checklist, any brand can jump in and launch a virtual brand. Take Beyond Meat. They could supply the ingredients, stick their brand on the name of the kitchen, and have their very own virtual restaurant brand without ever owning a restaurant. They could go direct to consumer cooking plant-based burgers to perfection for first-time plant-based burger buyers.

Okay, that's on the corporate side. What if you're an influencer like Kylie Jenner, Jack? You could lend your name to a virtual restaurant brand. Offer only avocado everything. Suddenly, Kylie could have her own restaurant chain, promote the brand on Instagram, swipe up to order on Uber Eats, that avocado roll. Snackers, launching a virtual brand is way easier than launching a physical restaurant. So Jack and I are thinking, expect influencers and non-restroant brands to start using this cosmic checklist next. For our third and final story, winter storms in Texas have basically shut down the country's second biggest economy. And extreme weather highlights the opportunity for the emergency preparedness industry. Okay, this seems to have escalated ridiculously

quickly over the last week. Since Monday, millions of Texans have been cold without power. Some cases, they don't even have water. In just about all of the country, it's freezing outside right now, but in Texas, it's also freezing inside because the electricity and the heat has been out statewide. And then you got another Arctic blast that hit Wednesday. You got Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, all facing outages to. And while Texans are trying to stay warm, businesses are shut down. Okay, huge numbers, Jack and I noticed yesterday. 500 Walmarts and nearly 1,000. and CBS Walgreens pharmacies are closed. They're just closed. Plus, the oil and gas refineries in like oil fields, they're on hold too, which is caused an oil price spike. Okay, so you've got this

50-year storm. Basically nothing in Texas was built to handle this kind of a storm. But we also noticed a trend within a trend. It's not just extreme weather we're seeing more in this country, but extreme weather is leaving more and more Americans powerless for more and more days. Okay, so that second part is the key here. Go back to 2017. You got hurricanes and flooding. on the Gulf Coast, leaving Americans powerless. 2018 and 2020, you had wildfires in California and the West, which led to lots of electrical blackouts. And now you got 2021, extreme cold and snow in Texas. Again, it's leaving Americans powerless. Now, there's always been hurricanes, wildfires, and snowstorms, but not this

frequently and not this severe. So you got public officials and grid operators preparing for like what to do next. Interestingly, investors can do the same thing. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are looking for the trends within the trends. Emergency preparedness should be considered an industry. Okay, so you got more severe weather, which means more risk of going more days without power, without internet, without water, even access to hospitals. That's the reality. We see an opportunity to equip Americans with disaster gear and emergency kits. The first type of disaster staple, Jack, and I noticed, the backup power. Tesla makes a huge battery called the power wall. You put it in your garage and it provides like a couple of days a backup electricity if the power goes out.

Yeah, maybe you need something smaller. They got versions like Jackery or Ecoflow, which can power up phones or can power up lights for you. The second disaster staple is a generator. Yep. Honda and Generac will let you create your own electricity by burning gasoline or diesel fuel. Oh, and both of those, Honda and Generac, both are publicly traded companies. Nick, if you look at Ready.gov, it's like a government service. They recommend that families have 28 supplies and food and water for three days to be prepared for an emergency. It's like a three-volume list. Can one company just provide a single tote that includes all the disaster staples? That would be nice, and that seems like a business opportunity. When you add this all up, Snackers, it looks like it's

time to consider emergency preparedness and industry. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? SpaceX's private sumo stock has jumped 60% in the past year thanks to rockets. Yeah, but space Wi-Fi, that's the real profit puppy. Applebee's is whipping up. Applebee's is whipping up ghost chicken from the ghost kitchen. I love the way you put that jack. Now, first we have the ghost kitchens. Next, we're expecting influencer kitchens. For our third and final story,

nearly three million Texans suffered days of no electricity. Emergency preparedness should be considered an industry. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Sam Burgunder in lovely Baltimore, Maryland. Also, lovely Baltimore accent, Sam. What's up, Snackers?

So Louis Latimer was a son of a skeet sleeves, and when he was 15, he enlisted in the Navy. But when the Civil War ended, he returned to his hometown of Boston. There, he taught himself mechanical drawing while working at a patent law firm. With this skill, he drafted the drawings that Alexander Graham Bell used to patent the first telephone in 1876. Then, in 1881, he created a carbon filament that extended the life of the light bulb, making them the famous invention we now know them as. Snackers, keep these snack facts coming about Black History Month.

We have a Google form in the notes of this episode, do your thing. And remember, snacks grows when you share your snacks. So ask your friends, have you had your snacks daily? HY, HY, YSD, Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. If you know, you know. And before we go, a whole lot of wedding anniversaries, Jack. I think it's a Valentine's Day thing. Andrew and Kim also just adopted a dog in New York City.

Congrats to Gori and Charlie for getting engaged in Venezuela. And Susie and Rick, who had their anniversary in New York City. Naomi and Henry, happy anniversary in New York City. One uptown, one downtown, Patrick and Ashley, anniversary in Chicago. And congrats to Tanner and Todd celebrating their anniversary in Cincinnati. Also, we got some birthdays, happy birthday to Derek Barilski in Denver. And Pranav Kushik in San Ramon. And DJ Ramirez in Boise, Idaho.

And Michael Steven Hagen in Nashville, Tennessee. And Jacob Schneider, a brown bear in Vienna, Austria. And Dan Grossman from Rochester, Minnesota. And Michael Savoski in Walden, New York. And Jake Whitney from Derek Jeter's hometown, Kalamazoo. Michigan. Thought you thought that, Jack. Now, anyone else who is celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Beyond Me. 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, 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.