The Best One Yet - Shopify’s customer service game-changer, WeWork acquires Waltz, and General Mills falls on snacks vs. pet food

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

We noticed WeWork is on an acquisition tear, and it just strategically added Waltz to its list. General Mills shares fell 4% because its snack biz is underperforming, while its fancy pet foods are winning. And Shopify powers your go-to boutique ecommerce options, and its new Apple iMessage feature is a new level for customer service.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. This is snacks. Daily, this Thursday, June 27. We got the best one yet. Actually, this one's a lot better than anything else. Markets dip a tag. A little bit, just not even worth mentioning.

Yeah, yeah, we went there. But we got three great stories. Wonderful mix. What do we got? General Mills just fell 4% the other GM. I know you're talking about. After earnings reports that showed everything has to do with dog food and snacks. It's kind of meta.

I can't believe we're getting into this. Snacks on snacks. Max on snacks. Not good snacks. Second story, Shopify is the best friend of your go-to boutique e-commerce company. that one your friend told you about. And it just added an iMessage feature.

This is a huge step in the customer support industry. Third and final story. What do we got? The unicorn feast of the day. Serve it. Wework. Just acquired another office startup. It's called Waltz.

It's part of a trend we're noticing with WeWorks, and we've got to talk about this. Waltz and with WeWork. Now, before we get into that, let's do a little, what do you think, reverse situation? Go back here a little bit. I think it's just called an update. Yeah, let's do that. Last week, we talked about Airbnb, which has launched adventures and experiences. That was like, you know, the five-day $5,000,

Nairobi Warrior Training Experience. Exactly. And experiences, which was like night photography classes in San Francisco for San Francisco. Well, Airbnb just launched a new feature coming out. It's called Airbnb Lux. That's Lux with an E. You know what that means. It's special.

You pay for that extra E. We're talking $1,000 a night minimum. It's five-star everything. Everything. Honeymoon sweet situation. And if you want to list your place, your pad, and get onto Airbnb Lux, you can't sit with it. I need to check 500 boxes of supreme luxury criteria.

Ridiculous amount of criteria. Quote unquote, chef-grade appliances, you better have them. I'm expecting sub-zero refrigerators, a gas stove, and a Bosch dishwasher. Another one here, quote-unquote, premium materials and finishes with unique features. I'm picturing like... Oh, I know where you're going with this. The big place on Alpine Drive from dumb and dumber. We're talking the big shower doors that are actually seethru.

They've got noise when you open? Seriously elevated and beautiful designs. The only places in the U.S. where you can get an Airbnb luck so far. Yep. Hawaii, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, which is Coachella. Very nice. Park City, Vail, and then Utah, just to emphasize the Park City. That's where I think the Restoration Hardware Customs Sofa with the plush duck leather pillows would fit perfectly.

So Airbnb being no longer like, I can't afford a hotel. No, Airbnb is upgraded very nicely. Airbnb, you're doing very nice for you. Very nice. Now we'll hit our first three stories. and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks about the hearing food is 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. Robohood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, General Mills just fell 4%.

because it's missing on humans, but hitting it with animals. It's a good, bad. Huge hit with your pets. Scenario here. Our favorite part of General Mills' Zermings Report because we love diving into this thing. It's Innovation section. It has a whole page on innovation. What is it highlighting over here?

Well, General Mills owns Cheerios. It's had Cheerios forever. It's highlighting its Cheerios Oat Crunch Cinnamon. As their point of innovation. Well, Cheerios has always been made of oats. It's always been crunchy. So they just sprinkled cinnamon. You can do better, General Mills.

You can do better. The company's based in Minneapolis. It owns Lucky Charms. It owns Yoplay. It also owns a lot of cereals. And in case you're wondering, cereal sales were fine. They didn't do anything. They held steady. It was flat. Serial sales were like the equivalent of being cereal, essentially. Outside of that core product, though, it was very good and very bad. The bad. The really bad in this case, snack food sales.

Snack food sales fell by 2%. We're talking Fiber 1, Nature Valley, gushers, fruit by the foot. Yeah, these are all snacks that are highly processed and have fallen out of favor. It's a choking hazard with customers. I don't even think that works. Fiber 1 bars in particular, we find this fascinating. They actually frame this. as a like a nutritional thing. Fiber? It's good for your digestive system. They sprinkle a little bit of fiber on that thing. I looked at the website.

It's a candy bar with some fiber spring. It's a candy bar. In fact, General Mills came out and said, look, when it comes to our fiber one bars, we've quote unquote, fell out a step with diatrice. Now, the CFO said something that probably in part caused the stock to fall by that. Investors were like, where was this five years ago? He said, you'll see us invest in some really good ideas on bars and snacks. Again, where was this five years ago?

But also, that's a pretty vague promise. Okay. So that's on the bad end. snacking, which is a thing that's meaningful to us. But let's give General Mills some credit. They have hit on pet food. Pet food was big. Pet food sales jumped 38%.

A big 38%. That's not an apples and apples comparison to last year. True. They acquired Blue Buffalo, the pet food company last year. So this quarter benefited from that. Now, Blue Buffalo, we got to dive into this one. Because Blue Buffalo is unique. This is leading the luxury pet food trend.

It's lux with an e going back. So we talk about the pet humanization trend. With the chewy IP. The chewy IPO, which happened earlier this month. Right, we're talking about, you know, because you treat your pet better than you treat you. You do. Your golden doodle is getting the biggest piece of change. So, Jack, I jumped into the Blue Buffalo website just to check out what the food options were here.

Sign me up and take me on a date, fido. They've got a whole section that says that it's, quote, unquote, inspired by the diet of wolves. Okay. That is a bold claim. It sounds cool. Is it nutritionally legitimate? Does it matter? Because if you're feeding your pet, Blue Buffalo inspired by wolves, you get the

to feed them bison, rabbit, halibut, alibi. I don't even buy halibut. It's too expensive for me. I'm looking at a bag of blue buffalo cat food that has alligator in it. You get to tell your friends, though, that your cockapoo eats like a wolf. This is bizarre. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at General Mills? This earnings showed that General Mills is getting to know its customer, but it doesn't quite know yet. Not quite yet. Pet and snacks, they target the same exact demographic, millennials. And one of those categories is up. One of them is down for General's Turns out General Mills missed on the snack side. They got to work on that.

But they're hitting it on the pet side because they focused on luxury pet food. It's still getting to know this new millennial customer. For our second story, Shopify stock is close to a record height and it just added I-Message customer support, which is like a huge, huge innovation. Naturally, Shopify's ticker symbol is SHOP. We know where you go with that. I'm just shocked that that was still available for its 2015 IP. Did no one take that?

The stock market's been around for a while. A lot of companies do shopping. They deal with retail. that's a much cooler ticker. We're kind of surprised. Now, we got to talk to you guys, because maybe you have bought something here. From MVMT, Bombas, the sock company, Chubbies, the shorts, Le Sportsac, or even General Mills and Unilever, or even TB12, Tom Brady's situation.

Or the Obama Foundation. If you bought something from there, guess what? You were buying through Shopify, and you didn't even know it. Slogan for this company, you build your business, you've got the will, we've got the way. We're going to make it happen. They do the website design, the SEO. They've got a little dashboard that shows you everything that's selling well and everything that's selling terribly. They'll make your online presence look really good. And they'll also make it really functional because they partner up with Intuit. So like your whole bookkeeping and accounting is taken care of.

Then they partner up with Zendesk so your whole like customer service situation. Finally, I think this is the key. They partner up with Instagram. So if you want to sell stuff, put it on Instagram and they make it ridiculously easy to buy your stuff through Instagram. Now for entrepreneurs or big companies, this is basically the back end. They're saying, hey, do your thing. We're going to take care of all the legit. And that's why their stock's been on a serious tear since 2015. Now, here's the news, and this is why this is a big deal. They just made it so you can connect if you're a merchant, selling something online, through iMessage with your customers. And this is kind of thanks to Apple. It's a partnership.

Apple is letting businesses set up iMessage-based customer support, which is your text messaging via your iPhone. So Shopify stores will have iMessage built into, like, the website platform. Embedded, like, deeply involved. So now you don't need to email your question about your order. Right, because you know customer service. You either could email and never hear. back from them. Right. You could call and be stuck on hold for a while. Or you chat. Or you chat.

Try chatting. And that window has to remain open and you're stuck to your computer until the thing is resolved. We all know. You'll walk away for two minutes. You come back. Joe's gone. Debbie pops up says, Hey, I'm Debbie. How can I help you? You're like, everything I was talking about with Joe, I now have to retell you. Please just confirm your order number. And you're like, I don't even know what the order number is. It has an H and a Z in it. I'm going to need your mother's maiden. You're like, I have no idea. I try to call your mom. So now with this new feature, it's It's all through text message on your iPhone. Debbie's then like, you know, I need your zip code.

It's terrible. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Shopify? Shopify is e-commerce as a service. If you sell physical stuff, you need to be online. Otherwise, you are stuck to like the farmer's market crowd. And good luck with that. In a similar way that Square helps any business easily accept with credit cards. Shopify helps any business easily do online sales.

For our third and final story, we have got our unicorn feast at the day. We work just acquired a Waltz. And that reveals the key to WeWork's future. But first, the company's playing to IPO soon, right? Very true. They need a ticker symbol. Everyone does. Work just got taken by Slack last week.

The four letters. W.O.R.K. That was the obvious one. We work should take. So if you're Wework, what are you going to do? We'd love to hear from the Snackers what the ticker symbol should be. Now, our money is on D-E-S-K as the stock ticker symbol. But the X factors, if they go with work, W-E-R-K-K like twerk.

Very true. Snackers, if you got some ideas for what We-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-R-W. work's IPO ticker symbol should be. Let us know at Robin Hood Snacks. Now, let me give you the sales pitch for Waltz, which we work just acquired. Please. So let's say you have an office space. You need to secure the space so that only employees can get in.

Right. You don't want the riffraff. Now, what's the classic old solution? Oh, you got to set up that guy out front who's printing off the passes for everyone. The access cards. And you can either scan the access card or get that little printed barcode that lets you into the elevator. And then you're like, you're like, this go this way.

And then you've got to buy a machine that, like, prints these access cards when your colleagues inevitably forget them. And then it goes down on Tuesday and you're like, oh, we can't do it. It's a big, big pain. It's really expensive. So Waltz comes in and solves the whole thing digitally. Exactly. They've got a free app so you can enter properties with a single credential, a QR code.

It's all about the QR code on your phone. Boom, it scans once done. Just like the Delta QR boarding pass that gets you on to the point. Now, we love, we jumped onto the Waltz website here, and they put it very simply. We solved three problems. That's all they said. Three problems. I forgot my access card.

I don't have my access. card and where did I put my access card? It's actually a pretty bold comedic take. Very, very, very straightforward. So the customer is the builder. They're also going to provide you data on who's entering the building, when they're entering the building, when they're leaving, and they're going to save you money because you don't have to buy this whole security system. You can just use waltz. It's kind of big brothery because they'll tell you like, did you really work 40 hours last week? It's actually very creepy. So we work. We noticed something very interesting what's going on here with the co-working space. They're on an acquisition blitz. They bought 10 companies in the last couple of years

That we know about. Exactly. That we've kept track of. And then they recently bought Team for $100 million. This is that classic iPad at the front desk. You know we're talking about. You need to type in your email address. You need to sign something, which is an NDA, by the way.

It's kind of a pain. And you're like, I wish I were talking to a human being. Finally, another one we want to highlight is Euclid, which is workspace insights. They're basically going to go into your building and be like, you can optimize this space, fit another desk in there. Kind of go in the water fountain over there. Yeah, no one's using the room in the back because there's no sunlight and has a creepy smell in there.

Nicely named company because Euclid is the Greek father of geometry. Triangles. Have you heard of them? They walk in and they're like, oh, this is adorable. Clearly your architect was thinking Pythagoras. What an idiot. Go with Euclid. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over?

WeWork. Well, WeWork, it's another as a service situation here. This is Office as a Service. WeWork is becoming Office as a Service. They're moving beyond co-working to solve every single office challenge. They're optimizing their own co-working spaces, and they're optimizing. by serving as consultants for other companies that want better work spaces. And they're using these acquisitions to buy the best solution for physical workspace, physical offices, no matter what the solution.

If they find an office problem, they can acquire a company that can fix that problem. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? General Mills is feeding millennials boozy pet food, which is good, but still fruit by the foot. Which is bad. Shopify, the best friend for online businesses is bringing Apple's text messaging service to customer service. This is big. No more chat problems with Debbie. We work. If there's an office building hack, someone's trying to solve.

We work is probably acquiring. Why build it when you can buy it? It's so straightforward. It's so much easier that way. So, Jack, time for our snack back to the day. Thank you, Justin Kramm from Fort Lauderdale, FLA. Nice weather down there. Thanks, Justin. He points out that there's a lot of history to some of these corporate names that we know. We got some interesting brands here. Companies you know and love started out with completely different names. This is like your one friend who gets back from studying abroad in London, and suddenly Tom is Prince Harry.

Well, we got Virgin Records was originally called Slipped Disc Records. Best Buy was originally called Sound of Music. I love that one. That was a great one. Nike was Blue Ribbon Sports. Google was backrub. And Starbucks was Cargo House. There's a fun little story behind each of those, so feel free to Google.

We'll get into them another time. Feel free to back rub them yourself. Also, feel free to send us some snack facts of the day at Robin Hood Snacks on Twitter. We'd love to hear them, and we'd love to get your home to have. Also, check out our daily email newsletter, Robin Hood Snacks. We're covering Tesla. It already owns a battery plant, the Gigafactory. but now it's thinking about developing its own battery cells.

I like the shirt you're wearing today. It's not slim fit. In the meantime, it's from my college days. Love snacking with you guys. I can't wait until tomorrow. We'll be there. 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.