One of history’s most expensive boardroom fights — activist investor Nelson Peltz’s bid for multiple Disney board seats — will come to a close today when shareholders vote on which absurdly wealthy people they trust most to direct the absurdly wealthy Walt Disney Co. The only true losers here will be consumers: The board will face pressure to set stock prices soaring — for a company already charging up to $1k for a family of four to simply get into Disneyland.
In today’s email:
Burger and fries: A very ordinary meal, except it was made by robots.
Razors: Thieves are always stealing them. Why?
Botox: Young people are driving most of the demand.
Around the web: Organize your ebooks, listen to a typewriter orchestra, and more.
👇 Listen: It’s not just your imagination — big streamers are offering less and less content.
The Big Idea
We tried a restaurant where robots cook the food
CaliExpress by Flippy is both a functioning restaurant and a test kitchen for kitchen robots.
2024-04-03T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
CaliExpress by Flippy’s menu is simple — burgers and fries — but it’s a little different from your standard fast-casual affair in that its staff includes two robots.
CaliExpress by Flippy serves as a test kitchen for Miso Robotics, which builds robots for use in restaurants, currently including White Castle and Jack in the Box.
How it works
Customers order at a kiosk powered by PopID — a biometric payment startup that lets users upload a selfie, then pay, access loyalty rewards, and more using their face.
Those orders are received by the kitchen, where two robots get to work:
Miso Robotics’ Flippy is essentially a fry cook. At CaliExpress, it makes up to 150 pounds of fries per hour, but it’s capable of other recipes — chicken tenders, onion rings, mozzarella sticks, etc.
Another robot, made by Cucina, grinds wagyu beef, then grills up to six patties at a time.
A human employee salts the fries, grills onions, assembles the burger, and serves the orders. They’re also responsible for “managing” the robots.
Elsewhere in the restaurant, other Miso Robotics bots are on display, including a pair of earlier Flippy bots and Chippy, a robot created to fry and season Chipotle’s tortilla chips.
It’s a fun novelty to watch the bots at work, and the food comes out just like you’d expect — a standard burger and fries, on par with similar fast-casual restaurants.
Where else are robots in use?
You’ll find them at various fast-food and fast-casual chains, including:
Chipotle, where a bot from robotics startup Hyphen makes up to 180 bowls an hour, ~6x faster than human employees.
Sweetgreen’s Infinite Kitchen restaurants, where bots make 400-500 dishes per hour, 50% more compared to staff.
Some restaurants employ robot servers that run food to tables.
What about humans?
Humans are still needed, but robots can:
Decrease restaurants’ overhead costs and alleviate labor shortages.
Streamline food prep and service.
Replace humans at more dangerous stations, such as fryers or grills.
Meanwhile, workers can learn new skills related to managing and troubleshooting robots, and focus more on customer-facing tasks.
While the full impact of automation in the restaurant industry remains to be seen, please enjoy Michael Sheen as Arthur, a robot bartender.
BTW: If you really love Flippy, Miso Robotics is currently open to investors.
Free Resource
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Times Square is about to hit peak kitsch: A 65-foot-long hot dog sculpture will be installed on the NYC tourist trap’s biggest plaza later this month. Hydraulics will lift the massive glizzy into the sky at noon every day, at which time it’ll shoot confetti. Everyone’s gonna hate it at first, but that’s just how the city starts its greatest love affairs.
SNIPPETS
The General Electric empire has officially split up. GE, the world’s most-valuable company as recently as 2005, already spun off GE HealthCare and, as of yesterday, energy arm GE Vernova is trading solo; GE Aerospace will retain the “GE” ticker symbol.
Tesla stock dipped 7% on Tuesday following news that it delivered 386.8k vehicles in Q1, short of an estimated 450k. Causes include factory shutdowns in Germany, poor demand in China, and increased demand for plug-in hybrids.
Yahoo is acquiring AI news app Artifact, built by Instagram’s co-founders, for an undisclosed amount to bring its proprietary tech to millions of readers.
You can now use ChatGPT without an account. OpenAI will no longer ask you to log in to use the tool, but users without accounts will lack certain features, like saving and sharing chats or using custom instructions.
United Airlines is asking its pilots to take “voluntary, unpaid time off” in May. The airline said Boeing’s recent problems have led to delayed aircraft deliveries, reducing flight forecasts during what’s expected to be United’s busiest summer travel season in 10 years.
Gossip: Jon Stewart claims Apple told him not to invite FTC Chair Lina Khan on his podcast, nor do a skit mocking AI. This news comes as the DOJ levels antitrust claims at the tech giant.
Aloha, a plant-based protein bar maker, received a $68m infusion to scale its retail and ecommerce operations. Expect to start seeing them everywhere.
Later, boss: A proposed California law would give workers the right to ignore work communications outside of work hours. Similar laws already exist in countries including France, Ireland, and Portugal.
Don't miss this...
Silver sneakers? More like a gold rush. Boomers who are time-rich (and rich-rich) are underserved in this $112B industry. Check out the opportunities in this week’s Trends.
Getting nicked
Why are razors such a hot item for thieves?
Ask anyone what product has been identified as the “single most frequently stolen retail item” in the US and Europe, and you probably won’t get the right answer back.
It’s not makeup… nor is it clothing… and no, we’re not talking Skittles here either.
That title belongs to none other than Gillette’s Mach3 razor.
Thieves absolutely love ‘em, but really, they love razors in general — they’re an item that gets stolen from stores up to 2.5x more than other products.
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This company just survived its busiest season, a 40-day stretch that ended in March, during which this brand and its competitors moved ~83.5m people.
Clue 2: Its logo depicts a “beautiful and lucky magic bird,” which is described so poetically on its website: “Its neck is like a snake, tail like a fish, chin like a swallow, beak like a chicken and back like a tortoise with stripes like ones on dragons which are colorful when looking from afar.”
Clue 3: This will probably never apply to you, but if you ever find yourself working as a Beijing-based head of state, the aviators behind this flag carrier are your ticket out of town.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Data Point
No wrinkles here: The noninvasive beauty business is taking off. The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery’s most recent global survey found that the number of nonsurgical cosmetic procedures jumped 57.8% from ~11.9m in 2018 to ~17.6m in 2022. And there’s one demographic in particular driving the trend: young people. Before their wrinkles even form, millennials and Gen Zers are flocking to plastic surgeons to freeze time. According to the survey, more than two-thirds of those who went in for a Botox procedure were 50 and under — and 24% were between 18 and 34 years old. Australia saw spending on cosmetic procedures top $1B for the first time in 2023, a likely sign of things to come.
AROUND THE WEB
⚖️ On this day: In 1996, the FBI arrested Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber. The former mathematician was accused of sending 16 mail bombs over 18 years.
