🚗 Drive-thrus rev up

👋 How about those Eagles?… is exactly what we’d have said if we didn’t instead get so fixated on the gobsmacking amount of tortilla chips eaten yesterday. Mind you, this is just tortilla chips, not all chips — Americans have previously purchased ~34m pounds of salsa-scoopers for Super Bowl Sunday. Why we’re having trouble wrapping our minds around this: The entire Eiffel Tower weighs ~22m. We are unwell.

🎧 On the pod: Dive deeper into the battle of the LLMs: DeepSeek vs. OpenAI.

NEWS FLASH

🍳 Cracker Barrel is serving up some beef. The restaurant chain fired shots at competitor Waffle House for recently adding a 50-cent surcharge on eggs. In a press release, Cracker Barrel said: “A surcharge on eggs? Well, there’s nothing hospitable about that.” Instead of charging extra, the chain is offering Cracker Barrel Rewards members an incentive of double pegs (rewards points) on all egg orders through Feb. 12. Annually, the chain serves ~162m eggs to ~230m guests.

📱 Maybe you’ll learn something: App developer Isaac Gemal launched WikiTok, a new site where users can endlessly scroll through Wikipedia, learning nuggets of info and interesting facts, unlike TikTok, Instagram, X, and myriad other apps and their ad-driven, doom-centric feeds. Each surfaced stub contains a blurb, an image, and a “Read More” button for users who want the whole article. Stubs are surfaced at random, and Gemal has resisted requests to tailor them to user interests, telling Ars Technica, “We’re already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our everyday life; why can’t we just have one little corner in the world without them?” Ahh, refreshing!

♻ Your recycling bin may look a little less blue today: MacroCycle Technologies, a biotech startup boasting a patented emission-free way to recycle plastics, announced a $6.5m seed round. Why it matters: Only 15% of plastics are currently recycled, so if it can scale, MacroCycle’s method of upcycling bottles and other plastic crap into clean “virgin-grade” plastic could spare landfills and help the ozone — and make the startup’s collection of chemistry-loving dweebs filthy rich. CEO Stwart Peña Feliz says there’s a “$700B linear plastics market opportunity” here.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Putting the “micro” in Microsoft: Japan’s SoftBank plans to invest $40B into OpenAI, which would wildly surpass the $13B Microsoft famously has sunk into the AI firm — and put the, ahem, “nonprofit” ChatGPT maker’s valuation at ~$300B.
Sorry, gamers. Some had a frustrating Friday night after Sony’s PlayStation Network went down, preventing many of its ~116m monthly users from using games, apps, and features for ~24 hours.
GoFundMe has seen $250m+ donated so far to victims of the Los Angeles fires and relief charities. That’s $20m more than it collected for all natural disasters worldwide last year. The funds came from 1m+ donors across 160 countries.

LONG LIVE BLOGS

Why you should still build a blog

No matter how much AI slop is out there, the people who need expertise are still out there looking.

Case in point: Of the 500+ marketers we surveyed…

65% of their businesses continue to blog.
Half of that group said they saw higher ROI in 2024 than 2023.
And about 9 in 10 of them are posting at least 1x per week.

So what kind of content is winning? And how are teams adjusting to the times?

See all our findings on the blog, which is still going strong, no matter what some armchair experts tell you.

Build trust blogging

THE BIG IDEA

A worker handing a paper bag to a customer in a car.

Buckle up: The fast-food industry is going all in on drive-thrus

If you enjoy getting an ice-cold Coca-Cola and a large fry without leaving the comfort of your car, you’re probably American — but you’re also not alone.

Some 43% of US fast-food orders are placed at drive-thrus, according to data from Circana, totaling ~$140B annually.

Now, fast-food chains are chasing those billions by optimizing the humble drive-thru, per The Wall Street Journal:

McDonald’s beverage-focused spinoff CosMc’s is built around multilane drive-thru service, with some locations offering no indoor dining at all.
Shake Shack, which started as a Madison Square Park hot dog cart and has since expanded to 300+ stores, has opened dozens of new drive-thrus with dedicated kitchens.
One in four Chipotle Mexican Grill locations have drive-thrus — AKA Chipotlanes (cute) — where customers can pick up their prepaid app orders at specific times, maximizing efficiency. Locations with Chipotlanes see 10%-15% higher sales than those without, per Barron’s.

A pleasant drive-thru experience is especially important when considering it’s the main event for many: 27% of orders are consumed while still in the vehicle, per WSJ.

The Chick-fil-A play

You know what’s really easy to eat with one hand on the wheel? A chicken sandwich.

Chick-fil-A sure knows it: 60% of its sales took place at drive-thru windows in 2024. But the success hasn’t come without some trial and error:

In 2012, Chick-fil-A shifted entirely to face-to-face ordering at its drive-thrus, with iPad-touting workers taking orders from car windows.
In 2020, the chain launched a Film Studies unit that uses drones to capture aerial footage of its drive-thrus to study traffic flow and identify pain points.
It’s also innovating in its urban restaurants, experimenting with locations that have little to no seating and dedicated areas for bike delivery workers.

The recipe seems to be working: In 2023, Chick-fil-A made $21.6B in US sales, the highest per-restaurant total of all American fast-food chains — despite being closed on Sundays.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Amount the average Massachusetts adult spends on lottery tickets annually, per NPR’s Planet Money. That’s a lot, especially when compared to other states:

Wyoming, North Dakota: ~$50
California, Illinois: ~$300
New York, Michigan: ~$500-$600

That’s because Massachusetts is where the scratch-off ticket, invented by computer scientist John Koza, first took root in 1974. They were a hit, selling $6m (~$40.6m today) in the first year. If you’re in the mood for a fascinating tale involving the mob and the acidic power of Fresca, this episode’s worth a listen.

AROUND THE WEB

🧑‍🎤 On this day: In 1972, David Bowie’s alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, debuted at a concert in London’s Toby Jug pub.

🍝 That’s interesting: “Threads of God” is the world’s rarest pasta, made in the remote countryside of Sardinia.

🦟 Game: You’re a mosquito. Be annoying.

🎥 Useful: Search by movie quote.

🐕 Aww: OK, I’m impressed.

SHOWER THOUGHT

If the robots take over the world and the internet, captcha will be used in the exact opposite way as now. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman.
Editing by: Ben “[garbled drive-thru voice]” Berkley.

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