🍸 The slow death of bar tabs

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👋 Good morning. Next time someone responds to your complaints by threatening to bust out the world’s smallest violin for you, wish them luck. It’ll be hard to beat the physicists at Loughborough University who have debuted a violin narrower than a strand of hair, built with nanotechnology. The whole narrative of you being a whiner will immediately dissipate… into one of you being a “Well, actually…” know-it-all, but hey, we’ve all gotta take progress where we can get it.

🎧 On the pod: Scaling unsexy businesses into real profit with special guest Codie Sanchez.

NEWS FLASH

The exterior of a Bucc-ee’s convenience store location.

🦫 Your latest reminder to never mess with possible copyright infringement: Buc-ee’s, the Texas-based convenience station chain with a cult following, is suing South Carolina clothing company Born United for selling “Tac-Bucc” apparel featuring a beaver similar to Buc-ee’s logo — a cartoon beaver in a red cap — but in tactical gear and holding a gun. Buc-ee’s has been litigious in the past, suing another convenience store brand for using a beaver logo, and preventing a chain called Bucky’s from expanding into Texas.

🎮 Feast on this, gamers: The gaming industry generated $187B in revenue last year and that was all before it had a Wu-Tang video game. This weekend’s Summer Game Fest featured several announcements including “Resident Evil 9 Requiem”; a “Game of Thrones” strategy game (apparently, you can play as the Night King); a new trailer for “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach,” which comes out this month; and yes, “Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver,” in which players "fight alongside the Wu-Tang Clan, calling on their powerful skills and timeless wisdom.” Okay, sold.

🍕 Pizza and vodka? Sure. Pizza-flavored vodka? Umm. We love to celebrate big ideas, ambition, and local businesses here, but Rhode Island distillery Industrious Spirit Company puts that to the test with its new Pizza Vodka, which it claims is the first of its kind. The spirit’s wheat base is macerated with herbs, spices, and tomatoes, distilled, then infused with mozzarella. The recommendation is to serve it in a martini garnished with pepperoni (no, thanks), or using it in a Bloody Mary (actually…).

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Two businessmen engaged in a public disagreement over the weekend. The spat could imperil multiple billion-dollar companies you may have heard of. That’s that.
The shoe drops: Legendary UK footwear brand Dr. Martens could really use its famous yellow stitches to stop the bleeding as its profits have fallen by more than 90% over the last year.
Another proud brand in a bind: BowFlex recalled 3.8m+ adjustable dumbbells after weights dislodged and led to reported concussions, contusions, and broken toes.

SMOOTH LANDING

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Time-to-publish: Instead of taking days or weeks on copy/design/development, execute in < 1 hour.
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Blockers to implementation: Most guides only provide theory, not the full package for production.

Thankfully, this one has both. Bookmark these prompts to crush research, copy, and visuals again and again.

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THE BIG IDEA

A credit card is run through a machine while 6 hands hold up glasses of beer in the foreground.

How Gen Z’s bad bar etiquette is hurting businesses

Gen Z doesn’t know how to act — at work, in gyms, in movie theaters — and apparently not at bars, either.

Their latest social faux pas? Not opening bar tabs, according to The New York Times. Instead, Gen Zers, many of whom are now old enough to legally drink, are opting to close out after each drink, no matter how many rounds they order or how long they stay.

The phenomenon was first noted in 2023 and, to the dismay of US bartenders, it hasn’t lost its buzz.

Why are youths anti tabs?

For several reasons. One being that they’re drinking less — a 2023 Gallup poll found the number of US adults ages 18-35 who said they ever drink dropped 10% over the past two decades, to 62% — so keeping a tab open may seem excessive.

They’re also:

More accustomed to quick tap-and-go digital payment options, which have become commonplace across bars and restaurants.
More cautious about their spending: One 20-something bargoer told NYT that closing out “does a lot mentally to stop you from indulging,” while another said keeping an open tab increases their anxiety.

This has real business implications

Opening a tab is standard bar etiquette in the US, and Gen Z’s aversion to the practice is doing more harm to businesses than just annoying bartenders. Per Adweek:

Bars incur an average fee of 34 cents per credit-card transaction, based on NerdWallet data, which quickly adds up after hundreds of swipes.
It stretches bartenders thin, eating up time they could be putting toward serving other guests by having to run back and forth to ring up the same customers over and over.
Plus, (as the kids have figured out) running a tab usually leads to more drinking — up to 35% more, according to Visa data.

What can bars do?

One option: cater to older customers. The same Gallup poll found drinking among Americans ages 55+ increased 10% over the same period, and Gen X in particular reportedly consumes more alcohol than any other generation.

Or scold them — bartenders who spoke to NYT said being direct with Gen Zers about starting tabs can help inexperienced barflies, who might not know any better, be better patrons.

After all, someone’s gotta teach these youngins how it’s done.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How far away a laser device developed by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China can be from a book and still read its text.

This James Bond-worthy device uses eight infrared laser beams to recreate an image of an object in the distance. It’s similar to a technique used in astronomy to measure stars, but different because stars produce their own light and, well, books do not.

The team suggested their tech could be used to identify space debris (also not a natural light emitter) — which is a lot less creepy.

AROUND THE WEB

🦆 On this day: In 1934, Disney debuted Donald Duck in The Wise Little Hen.

🎮 That’s interesting: Why you can play 1993’s “Doom” on nearly any platform.

💻 How to: come back to work after a vacation, according to a productivity coach.

🗞️ Newsletter: The AI Report supplies daily AI insights, tools, and strategies to 400k+ professionals. Subscribe here.

🐕 Aww: New bandmate.

QUOTE OF NOTE

When I started a year ago I thought, 'Blind suffers from selection bias, etc... it will be just fine and like any big tech company.' Nah dawg. It be bad.

Between tech hiring plummeting, salary caps stalling, and AI threatening coders’ livelihoods, tech workers aren’t doing too hot. On Blind, a social media platform where tech workers can post anonymously about their employers, Business Insider found people scrambling to find work and others miserable in the jobs they have.

And morale, it seems, is particularly low among Meta employees — like this one, who probably wishes he’d listened to his fellow Blinders right about now.

SHOWER THOUGHT

The laws we are expected to live by are never actually spelled out clearly for us at any point, without paying to consult a lawyer with specific questions. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Ben "Violins is not the answer" Berkley.

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