The Best One Yet - 🐠 “My tuna is a tomato” — Seafood’s plant-based surprise. FIGS’ nurse fashion. Marriott’s & Airbnb’s bleisure.

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Plant-based meat is getting all the love, but the next plant-based meal is faux fish. Marriott and Airbnb couldn’t be more opposite, but now they’ve got 1 new thing in common: “Bleisure.” And what Lululemon did to leggings, Figs just did to scrubs.$FIGS $BYND $ABNB $MARGot 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. Welcome back. It is Monday. August 16th. It is T-minus one week, actually. Wow, wow, wow.

Until we go on vacation for the end of August, Nick. Snackers, if you got Snack facts, we want them. We want them. They better be extra leisurely and relaxing snack facts, though. These snack facts better be wearing like short shorts. I am very excited for vacation. I'm also very excited for the next five pods, which will be the best five pods yet. What are the odds of that?

Starting with this one, this one, of TBLY. Jack, first story. We can put two billionaires in space. I think we can put plants into a paddy. Jack, plant-based beef was last decade. Foe Fish is right now. For our second story, Airbnb and Marriott couldn't be more opposite in the hospitality industry. But one new thing they now have in common? Belizeur. New thing. For our third and final story, Figgs. Their stock has popped 40% since IPOing in June. What Lulu Lemon did to leggings, Figgs is doing for nurses. What's Snackers, before we hit those three great stories to start the week. Honestly, this is a fantastic mix, Jack.

Horters Almanac, Week 74. Snackers, you know what? The things we're running out of because of the pandemic. Jack and I are keeping track. Last week, we told you about the opposite. Something there's way too much of right now. Weddings, the most since 1984. A whole bunch of invites.

Pent up demand for weddings. So there's actually not enough stuff to go in the weddings. Yeah, Snackers, weird, inverse situation here. The wedding surplus is causing a wedding item. them shortage. A shortage of caterers, of efficiency, of porta-potties. Jack, we're out of RSVP cards, multi-layered cakes, those novelty photo booths. You know the photo booths, those little married couple statuettes that you put atop the three-layered tape. Why don't they make those edible? Doesn't make any sense. The biggest short, they are edible. The biggest

shortage, though, is flowers. I guess I just had a bad tasting one. Snackers, there's a backlog of bouquets. There is a deficiency of daffodils. Because one-third of all flower farms were closed during parts of the pandemic. I mean, hey, you want peonies? Learn how to garden. Snackers, but as two guys who've gone through the whole wedding process from proposals to vows, there's one takeaway we can share. Love is patient.

It does not envy. It does not boast. And it does not matter if the napkins you ordered eight months ago, specifically to match the plates and the rest of the tableware, didn't arrive. It's going to be a great wedding. It's going to be the best wedding yet. This pod is for the soon-to-be-wed, Snackers. Let's hit our three lifelong swings.

You're tuned in to snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It snacks about to hear rain 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. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fembrah, For our first story, big food got disrupted by plant-based meat. They're not going to let it happen again with plant-based seafood. Jack, this is chicken of the sea of the tree. Snackers, one week ago, the United Nations updated us on how planet Earth is doing against climate change.

Ah, cliff notes here. Not well. Not well. Yes. Things will get really bad 10 years sooner than scientists. expect. Yeah, and a huge contributor here is something that, full disclosure, kind of had earlier this week, burgers and ice cream. It's an inconvenient truth for sure. But according to the United Nations, meat and dairy is responsible for 15% of all human-caused greenhouse gases. Yeah, literally, it takes a village to raise a steer. That's a fact. Yeah. And it shouldn't take a village just to raise like 30 burgers. Yeah. And then you got the farm raised, they get grass, they've got land, they're renting out land to other people. It's a resource intensive.

product. It's a resource hog. That's why three disruptors recognize this in advance, and they have surged in the last few years. Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Oatley. They're all worth about $10 billion. They are. And they brought plant-based meats and beverages from like the early adopter customers all the way through the mainstream customers. That's what they've done. You got the Impossible Burger available at Burger King. You got the Beyond Sausage of Pizza Hut, new thing. You got Oatley oatmeal creamer at all Starbucks. But Snackers, here's what Jack and I find fascinating. One of the fastest growing segments of the plant-based world is it on land. It's in the sea. It's in the sea. We're talking plant-based seafood. Now, seafood is not a major climate change contributor like meat is. True, true. The issue here is different. Our oceans are literally

running out of seafood. That's a problem. So, Jack, can I interest you in just a little taste of tuna made from tomatoes with a touch of algae extract? I see your vuna and I raise you crab cakes made of artichokes. Ooh, interesting. Snackers. we found a whole fragmented school of startups swimming around in this whole plant-based seafood world. Good catch, new wave, and Toneado. Three companies working on plant-based seafood products. Tadano, that was, you guys did really well, though. That was a good one.

Tadado is good, clean, family fun. Now, plant-based seafood sales are still just 0.1% of the whopping $15 billion U.S. seafood market. But it's grown fast, 23% last year. So it could be 1% soon. And Jack, the people who were like eating plant-based seafood. They're not just doing it for the planet. There's actually like a whole bunch of reasons for doing it right now. Some people are allergic to shellfish.

Yeah, they are. And women who are pregnant are told to avoid mercury, which means you have to avoid a lot of seafood. Can't do the sushi. Can't do the vushi. But funny thing going on, unlike the plant-based meat industry, which was disrupted by startups. Yeah, it was.

Plant-based seafood leaders aren't startups. That's right. Plant-based seafood is being driven by the disrupted. Big food is leading the plant-based seafood. food revolution. The disrupted, not the disruptors. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in plant-based seafood? You can be late to the trend, but still early to the opportunity. Snackers, the huge, ancient, slow, big food companies, they were late to plant-based meat and milk. But they're now early when it comes to faux fish. Yeah, case in point, the biggest food

company on planet Earth, Nestle, they just launched a vuna, which is a plant-based tuna. It gets me every time. Chicken giant Tyson, they invested in a plant-based shrimp company. Jack, the conglomerate behind Chicken of the Sea, they're doing a plant-based crab. It's like that great 1971 classic from The Hood. No what you're going for here. I love it. We won't get fooled again. Well, big food, they relate to the trend, so they're early to the next opportunity. For our second story, Airbnb and Marriott.

By the way, if we're covering Airbnb, I know it's been on your mind this entire time. I know what you're thinking. Shiplap. You're thinking shiplap. You're thinking shiplap. Snackers, have you got an Airbnb and there's shipwhip, Shiplap on a wall, Jack will pay double the price. Make sure you mention it in your description. Like, I filter anything that doesn't have shiplap. He filters visually by shiplap. Airbnb and Marriott, our second story.

They just showed us how they're the same and how they're different. The Delta variant makes it very clear. Snackers, one is the biggest hotel chain in the world. The other is an app that threatens it. One owns 7,600 hotel physical structures. Yeah, they leave the cookies out for you. You love that. The other owns pretty much one, the HQ building in San Francisco.

They just have really fast Wi-Fi. You couldn't have two more different companies operating in the same industry. Marriott and Airbnb. Jack, this sounds like the beginning of like a CW sitcom. That does. Both reported their second quarterly earnings this month and showed us very different results. First up is our buddies over at Marriott who are dependent upon business travel. And Jack, how's business travel doing these days? It's simply not back yet. No, it's not.

Carl isn't going to the conference. He's going to stay at home. He's not going to be in Albuquerque. The CEO did point out one place, Maine Manchin China, has fully come back business and conference travel-wise. Kind of a good sign for Marriott then, because it suggests when the pandemic is gone, U.S. business travel could 100% return. But so far, it hasn't in the U.S. And the U.S. is Marriott's key market.

Although revenue for Marriott did triple from last year, it is still down 41%. from 2019 before the pandemic. Let's turn things over to Airbnb, where they've never seen a briefcase before. Get on the scale. Get off the scale. Airbnb depends on leisure travel. And leisure travel is back. Oh, yeah.

You're spending the weekends with a swan pool toy. That's what you're doing at your Airbnb. Airbnb just boasted the most bookings on Airbnb ever last quarter. In fact, book stays on Airbnb quadrupled from last year. You got out of your house and you went to someone else's house at a cooler location. whatever looks closest to the cover of architectural digest. That's what we're going to buck. More importantly for Airbnb, their revenues are up 37% from 2019 before the pandemic. Okay, so Jack, we whip it all up on the whiteboard. Airbnb sales grew 37% from 2019.

Marriott shrank 41% over the same period. And that is a key reason why Airbnb is worth twice as much as Marriott hotels. One is an app. One is 7,600 hotels. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Airbnb and Marriott? There's one thing these two companies share in common, the bleisure trend. Bleasier, Snackers, not quite business, not quite leisure. It's bleisure. Both Airbnb and Marriott warned that the Delta variant of COVID-19 will disrupt business this quarter and in the fourth quarter.

But pandemic conditions have resulted in more leisure travel, which is a new thing for both. This is how the Marriott CEO described it. We're seeing more blending of trip purposes, and we expect that to continue. And here's how the Airbnb CEO described it. Our fastest growing category is long-term stays. Picture blezier is this. Instead of a two-night weekend trip to Charleston like you've been used to for fun, you can turn that into a three- or four-day weekend while you're remote working,

and it's a combo of working one day and playing the other three. It's a workplay cocktail. You're going to take the conference calls Thursday and Friday from the hotel bar. But then it's oysters all weekend. Marriott and Airbnb are the opposites in the hospitality industry, but they're both loving this bleasure trend. Bleasier, aka Lizness. For our third and final story, Figs has jumped 40% since its IPO.

Ugly name. Yeah. Fashionable product. You know how they got the name, Jack? Figs? Yeah. One of the co-founders just really likes the fruit figs. It's her favorite fruit.

Oh. Yeah. I thought it was French. Italian, German, Spanish. Now you're just showing off. What used to have no brand Snackers is now the company figs. Nick, fastest growing job sector in the U.S.? Healthcare. Worse dressed job sector in the U.S.? Yeah, healthcare. Snackers, you work a 16 hour day, indoors, there's body fluids everywhere. Brutal, and you're doing like heroes work. And yet you're stuck wearing scrubs that are baggy and boxy. And that is life in health care. When it comes to health care,

your choices are brutal blue or awkward aquamarine. Oh, wait, there's now a teal option. Fantastic. They saved the white for the doctors. Now, in 2013 Snackers, a handbag designer noticed that problem that we just mentioned, so she went about raising some money. From none other than Will Smith, a former Lulu Lemon executive, and started the company Figgs in Santa Monica, California.

Vigs basically is like Versaceous Scrubs when we're looking at this thing. It's a direct-to-consumer fashion brand for nurses and doctors. for their work clothes. It scrubs that actually look good. And in 2018, Figgs became one of the fastest growing startups across the entire United States. Last year was big for Figs because of the pandemic, and revenue doubled to $263 million. And they are profitable. Yeah, $50 million of profit and 60% of their customers are returning customers figuring out on Figs. And the way they pulled this off, Figs turned a functional uniform that no one cared about into a lifestyle brand. Yeah. Snackers, We can see an analogy here with athletic gear, which has gone through an evolution.

Right. Nike added style, underarmor added performance. Lulu Lemon added casual leisure fit for brunch. Well, then Figgs took all those concepts. They came along and they threw it on scrubs and then tweaked it for nurse life. Figgs's scrubs. We shouldn't even call them scrubs. They look so good. They're a sweat-wicking material.

They also have a pocket just for a stethoscope. Yeah, you don't want to forget that thing. Oh, and Jack, can we talk about like the scrub jackets? that we were just looking at online? It looks like a custom Patagonia jacket. It does. I would wear this out to dinner after a surgery that I'm incapable of performing right now. After seven years of PhD medical education.

Michael Kores would like wear figs and then operate on himself. Figgs is so fashionable that one fifth of their sales are limited edition versions, like special colors or limited supply. Look good, play good, heal good. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Figgs? Figgs branded and unbranded industry. Snackers, at work, everything defaults to function over fashion. You're wearing boring, soulless, brandless stuff in most industries.

Think about those black, no-slip shoes that kitchen workers wear. I know what you're talking about. Like, they're functional. Yeah, they are. But it looks like you stole the shoes from Mario and Luigi. Well, the Figs breakthrough was letting you have both. Fashion and function. In an industry that never even considered it.

The business breakthrough of Figs was applying a direct-to-consumer model to healthcare clothing. But the product breakthrough was applying athleisure style to healthcare clothes. Healthcare scrubs used to be unbranded. Figgs has branded them. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us

to start the week? Big food got disrupted by little plant-based meat companies. Yeah, they won't get fooled again. Meet the new plant-based boss, same as the old meat boss. For our second story, Airbnb is 37% stronger than before the pandemic.

Marriott is 41% weaker. But both are focused on bleacher travelers. For our third and final story, Figs does fashionable scrubs. And Figs branded an unbranded industry. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Matt Shapiro from lovely Plymouth, Minnesota. Take it away. Hey, Nick and Jack.

This is Matthew Shapiro from Plymouth, Minnesota. And here's my snack fact. One of the oldest snacks still eaten is the pretzel. It was first made in Italy during the sixth century by a group of monks who were also bakers. The monks created the pretzels' twisted shape to look like arms crossed in prayer. The monk bakers would use pretzels as a little reward for the young church patrons who learned their prayers. Interestingly, the word pretzel comes from the Latin word pretzola, which means little reward. Boy, the Germans really pulled a fast one on us. I thought they invented

the pretzel. Every time I see a pretzina, I'm just going to think of like a warm hug. Snackers, we want your audio snack facts. We do. Really, we do. There's a link to a Google form in the notes of this episode, you can submit yours. We got to get him on the pod. We got five days till vacation. See you tomorrow for T-Boy Tuesday. Thanks for snacking. If you know, you know. And before we go, congrats to Snacker Jason Brzeano, who passed his level two W-S-E-T wine exam. This isn't Jason's first pino. No, send us some pino wrecks. Happy birthday to Nick Neer in San Diego. And Samith in the Bay Area. And Jordan de Graas in Salt Lake City, Yurtah. and Anna Wolfenden in Holly Springs, North Carolina.

Happy birthday to Andrew in Long Beach. And Nate Mahoney in Austin, Texas. And Anna Ansela in Miami, Florida. And John Bradford Love in Newark, California. Happy birthday, Akash, in Oakland, California. And Josh Wilmore in Charlotte, North Carolina. Happy birthday to Kaylee Dykstetter in Chicago, Illinois. And Liz Bogdan just got the new job at United Airlines.

Congratulations to Alex Harsrick and Jonathan Bronson for closing, not their first, their second. Venture Fun. Must be nice. CJ Burns just had a baby girl down in Texas. Congratulations to Krishna Eyer for having a baby boy in San Jose. Kaylee and Connor married last weekend in Omaha, lovely. Big, happy 35th anniversary to Sabro and Marquita Foster in the San Bernardino Mountains. And Florian just passed the CFA level three in California, which could often take 35 years to get.

And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a tea boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick and I have both owned stock of Airbnb and Nick own stock with Beyond Me and Lulu Lemon. 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 Inc. 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 on the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc., Robin Hood Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. Nick, you are a superb, superb co-house. You're an incredible father.

You were carrying the baby while I walked through the story. That was incredible. Thanks, dude. I didn't want to say anything and disturb it in the moment because we had limited time, but, like, that was incredible.