Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - May 29th, 2026

24:28And I know my doctor will look at him and get back to me, but now I know what he's going to say. So I guess if Claude is correct, that's the question. Hey, making sure that the AI is actually trained, because we did cite a study earlier this week that said a good portion of what you get back on chat GPT when it comes to medicine is not actually that accurate. What's the right way to have the guardrails up that actually make sure you deliver the right information? Just 30 seconds left. Yeah.

24:54Carol Massar:So from our perspective, the most important thing is to know when the confidence of that model is high or low. So if you just think about the way cloud responds to you, it's as if it knows all the answers and that everything it's saying is correct. For us, we actually look at confidence scores of the responses and use that to escalate care in what we call a harness of guardrails to make sure that no patient gets the wrong care at the wrong time. Dr. Dhanesh Nagda, got to come back soon. Appreciate you taking the time and joining us. He's the CEO and the co-founder of Resilient Health. He joins us this afternoon.

25:28From paying up for health care to paying up for groceries. Here's an interesting story that you could have missed. We know farmers worldwide have been under pressure due to the Iran war. It's disrupted supplies of conventional nitrogen fertilizer. It's forcing these farmers to improvise ahead of this crucial fall planting seasons. One of the ways they're improvising is actually using human urine as a fertilizer. 2P Organics is a French startup. This was in Bloomberg News last week. It converts human urine collected from schools and festivals into a bacteria feed that helps plants grow. The Bloomberg News piece also said that since late February, sales have jumped about a quarter for the product.

26:04There is no end in sight to rival U.S. and Iranian blockades in Hormuz. Fertilizer disruptions are expected to persist. A prolonged conflict could mean weaker harvests and higher grocery prices. This is what Dr. Michael Swanson looks at. This is his specialty. He's chief agricultural economist at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. He joins us from Maryland. Dr. Swanson, good to have you on the program. The disruptions that we've seen as a result of the on fertilizer, as a result of the war in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz closure, we spoke at the top of our program about what an open Strait of Hormuz could look like and when that could happen.

26:41Hint, we're still no closer than we were three days ago, is what our Bloomberg news team says, Chris Kennedy over at Bloomberg Economics. If the Strait were to open, how quickly, soon, how quickly would we then see fertilizer prices drop and that actually hit worldwide agriculture?

27:01Carol Massar:You know, it's interesting. The prices would drop quickly, even though the supply itself would be delayed behind it. But these are markets that are always looking forward. So the same thing that drove them up quicker than the product disruption would take the prices down faster than the product actually arriving to the markets. Dr. Swanson, one of the themes that we've been talking about a lot is this idea that consumers are trading down on certain items. They're trading down on staples, but splurging, for example, on certain categories. Where are you seeing this when it comes to food trends? You know, it's interesting.

27:34Carol Massar:You can see it clearly in the protein space. I mean, when you look at the value of chicken and pork relative to beef right now, clearly it's really bidding up that demand in a big way. But on the flip side, when you look in the beverage categories, some of the probiotic soft drink replacements, they are super premium pricing, but they're not finding any problem looking for good demand. They have plenty of product demand, even at that super premium pricing. You know what I noticed over the weekend? I was buying some chicken and it said 20 grams of protein per serving on it. And I'm thinking to myself, is this a result of the protein craze coming from GLP-1s that even foods that have had the same protein content in them for generations, like forever, are now advertising that protein because that's what at least American consumers want to see?

28:20Carol Massar:That's exactly what you're seeing. So we're seeing across every single category. If you have a protein component, you're going to highlight that first on your packaging. And it's interesting how packaging really responds to that question that's on the consumer's mind. But you're exactly right. This is something that's going to continue and it's going to be very prominent. I think you're going to see it clearly in every single category. Is this protein craze? Is it like other food crazes in the past where we've seen people, you know, consumers are fickle and Americans are fickle when it comes to sort of what we follow, or is this protein craze here to stay?

28:52Carol Massar:You know, it's a great question and it's here to stay. I mean, you and I can all name diets that have come and go, paleo, Atkins, things like that. But when you're talking about medicine that's going to be prescribed, it's going to be the new statin. When you think about it, there's like 90 million prescriptions for statins out there right now, this is going to be the new stats. And since Americans are pretty good at taking their pills, this is going to be one that's going to stick around. This is not a fad that's going to walk away. It's going to be here for a long time. Consumers are very much feeling the sticker shock of prices when they go to the grocery store, even as some agricultural commodity prices have actually come down.

29:29Carol Massar:At what point do consumers feel some of that relief in the stores? You know, it depends on the category. Take eggs, for example. Last year's avian, highly pathogenic avian influenza was just an enormous shock. But we're actually below the price starting that cycle right now. But we're not seeing consumers really take away a lot more eggs, even at these really low prices. So it takes an awful lot to shake an American out of his particular diet that they really like. But we will see some relief as we, for example, the dairy industry right now. they're chasing more cows to produce more beef, which means more milk.

30:05Carol Massar:So we're seeing good dairy pricing as well. So the consumer does have some opportunities if they're willing to look for them. As we head into the summer months, are there any categories in food that might see inflation pick up any that you're expecting for it to be worse than others? You know, right now what we're seeing is a little bit in the vegetable and fruit category. We started out the year with a tough spot with the freeze in Florida, which really put up the price of tomatoes. And we're going to wait to see what happens with the labor, with the transportation costs, because diesel is a major cost for moving around the country and bringing it into the country.

30:40Carol Massar:So probably fruits and vegetables will probably be the most pressure thanks to the recent events we've seen. So my same question to you about fertilizer has to do with diesel prices. If the straight does open and diesel prices come down, will we stop seeing those price increases in fruits and vegetables? You know, probably not because the bigger driver is going to be that long-term availability of wages and wage inflation is probably still running at a three, four percent range right now. So diesel would be a nice relief factor. Don't get me wrong on that. But the wages are going to be a bigger piece of it for the longer term.

31:15Carol Massar:Once they go up, they almost never come down. What about our farmers, Michael? There is a disconnect between how much farmers are earning and how much consumers are paying? Are American farmers getting squeezed right now as grocery bills remain elevated? You know, it's a great question. It really is farmer by farmer. You know, when we look at the micro data that we have, last year we saw some amazingly good returns in the same year as very bad returns. And I think what they're really driving a lot of it is the technology. What we're hearing from the farmers is technological change is so rapid and so difficult.

31:50Carol Massar:They're having a hard time implementing it if they're not on top of it. So yeah, we're seeing some squeeze. It'd be nice for them to get some price relief from the higher crop prices, which would be inflationary, or lower input prices, which would be great. But what's not going away is a vice of technological change, which is just really putting them in a tough spot. You mentioned the rising prices of protein. The story in the Washington Post over the weekend got my attention about how the Texas barbecue industry is struggling due to rising meat prices, the cost of brisket increasing 28 % over the past year.

32:23Imports coming from outside the United States, I mean, that is what an import is. Is that going to put a dent in rising beef prices?

32:31Carol Massar:You know, not really for that type of category. So grind that goes into hamburger, absolutely. This industry has discovered that Brazil is a goldmine of hamburger, and they're going to mine it for the foreseeable future. But when it comes to identifiable cuts, steaks and brisket, things like that, no, we don't really have another source because we want a certain quality. So this industry is pretty bullish right now about their ability to keep prices high. And it usually is a sign that things will change when they think nothing will change. Michael, going to have to leave it there. But this was a great chat.

33:07You got to come back soon. We appreciate you taking the time. Michael Swanson, Chief Agriculture Economist at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, joining us from Minneapolis this afternoon.

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36:02Sometimes we get the stuff ahead of time to try it and just like see or just like check out the product.

36:07Carol Massar:Scarlet food. Yeah, she gave me. She gave me some of the chili crisp. I didn't get any. It was on his desk. It was on my desk. And it said, you don't need to refrigerate it. You can just open it. And then so every day I just take a little bit and put it on my eggs. Poof. Yeah. And then suddenly I ate both of them. But fortunately, Brian Goldberg brought more. He's founder and chief chief growth officer over at Mr. Bing Foods. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. I'm glad you brought, I'm very relieved you brought more because I was really worried that I had, you know, really messed this up.

36:35You have a really interesting story. You had this food truck. You spent some time living abroad where you had this love of street food. You wanted to bring this back to the U.S. How did you end up with a project line that looked like this?

36:48Carol Massar:So, yeah, it started back in the late 90s in China. Study abroad with my co-founder in Beijing. Ate these amazing street foods, in particular, yinbing. It's like a savory Chinese crepe that we would have for like breakfast every day before school. And then one day we decided to bring that, you know, to Hong Kong and then to the U.S. And the sauces in there is what our platform is now. So we had a whole restaurant, kiosk, food truck life in Hong Kong and then in New York for almost 10 years where the brand really built itself up as a street food forward pan-Asian street food brand. The sauce is basically, we were doing pop-ups inside a lot of the corporate office cafeterias in New York pre-pandemic, partnering with Compass, Aramark, and Sodexo.

37:32Carol Massar:And the chefs noticed that we had this chili crisp that we had created. Chili crisp has existed for a long time, right? Laogama in China. Basically, we wanted to make a version a little more accessible for the American market on our own, the right particulate size to spread in the food, a mild version of it, a little bit of a different flavor profile, a little more. versatile with Mexican, Korean, Chinese flavors to make chili crisp more adaptable to so many other cuisines. The chefs at those places like at Goldman Sachs and at Morgan Stanley and at Google, LinkedIn, where we were doing all these Bing pop-ups, loved it and asked us to put it in a big size that they could use in other foods.

38:11So I'm holding a, there's a big size here. This is, I don't think they have the actual, oh, 64 ounce version of this, which is a typical is

38:20Carol Massar:seven out. So yeah, that's, that's a big, that's for their use in their kitchens. Yes. They wanted to use it like to mix with ranch, to mix with Mayo, to make what they call plus ones or sauce hacks where you, I mean, you can use it straight up like on eggs, rice, pizza, pasta, burgers. It was a big trend. I mean, it trended a lot during the pandemic, right? It's become much more mainstream now when it was much more niche before. Well, it's, it's interesting because I see it everywhere now, just chili crisp. There are a lot of different companies make it. And it was, it was first on my radar, like, I guess maybe two years ago my wife bought it at the store brought it home and now it's like now it chili crisp is a condiment that we always have interesting home and we have bought there are a lot of different versions of it i mean momofuku does a version there's like some classic versions uh as well from from other companies it's a really crowded space at this point well chili crisp definitely saw like a massive growth during uh the pandemic it's grown over 700 on menus nationwide in terms of the mention of chili crisp right which is sort of our real strong forte is on the food service side as well.

39:21Carol Massar:We're basically the leading brand in the country in food service, Chili Crisp. If you go to a restaurant, hotel, college, stadium airline, if they're using Chili Crisp. They're using your stuff. That's so interesting. Most likely it's ours, not necessarily. Is that like 70 or 80 % of your business or what's? Chili Crisp, Chili Crisp itself is about 85%, but within our overall business, almost 50 % of our revenues is food service. Okay. Right. So that, so our products are very chef driven. I mean, like it was kind of created by the rest, by the kiosks, right. And then the chefs that started buying it in big size wanted it a certain way.

39:57Carol Massar:And we really had that dialogue with a lot of chefs about creating it, how to create it. And then that's what led to the barbecue sauces, a more squeezable sort of format of a chili crisp. Right. Um, so we've been very involved with the chef community around the country. We've been very fortunate to have that opportunity. And that's, there's a flywheel effect between being on restaurant menus and then how your sales are like in the stores, and also the e-commerce piece, like all three of these things, you know, impact each other. Where's the growth? I get the under, I get it. Like you're in a restaurant, you do it and then you like, you want it for home.

40:32Carol Massar:Where's the growth in terms of your businesses? Is it to the restaurants or the business side of it? The corporate side, if you will, or is it in retail outlets? Like where's the, where's the growth? It's all really across the board. All of it. You know, I think we've been very fortunate to have the opportunity, the relationships and the distribution, frankly, getting distribution is really hard. You really need like anchor customers, anchor clients, anchor restaurant chains, anchor retail. Once you have that, then you can really go out and sell to everyone, everyone else. But the growth right now is in our squeezables.

41:04Carol Massar:Like chili crisp is awesome. Don't get me wrong. People love it, but you gotta, you gotta stir it up, spoon it out, scoop it out. it's a little bit you take that extra step you get a little oil on the on the counter which is fine it's just the nature of it right because of the texture and how the particulates are but a lot of people just like to reach for something and squeeze it and squirt and put it back right and that's what these are this takes chili crisp there are about 10 chili crisp bits in them so it's a line of asian barbecue sauces chili crisp barbecue sauces they're the first ones on the market that are a chili crisp based barbecue sauce right uh and that was developed but because chefs wanted to squeeze the chili crust.

41:40Carol Massar:They wanted to be able to apply it to pizza or to wings more easily. You needed something sticky, like a binder, right? And that, like, Topper's Pizza in Wisconsin was the first one that really did that with us. And that led to the OG sweet and spicy. And then that worked so well in a large format that we decided to go a little more Pan-Asian. And that led to the Thai, the Thai hot honey, which has more, like, lemongrass and confere lime leaf in it. We have a Korean gojujang forward one that has more yuzu and ginger. And we have a mild. So don't forget, like our mild chili crisp is actually more than half our sales of chili crisp because almost half of Americans don't like spicy food.

42:20Carol Massar:I'm a mild kind of gal. The rest of my family is going to bring out the spicy. Okay, so I'll take the spicy when you take them out. The things you just held up, those small dishes, what are those? These are samples. These are just, we'll call them hockey pucks. Basically these little baby guys. TSA compliant? They are TSA compliant. They are. And I'm sort of infamous for always having them in my mouth. So now I know what he's going to be traveling with. Yes, exactly. So basically, I mean, food service is so relationship driven. And Chili Chris, to your point, like a lot of people don't know what it is.

42:50Carol Massar:You have to taste it to kind of understand what it really is if you've never had it. I've never had it. Oh, it's so good. I'm sorry I didn't share it with you though. No, you're absolutely not sorry. But honestly, I have a real question about the serving sizes. Yeah. Because these little jars are supposed to have 40 servings. That is, like, not typical for me in terms of serving. But it's a teaspoon of this as a serving size. That seems like a small amount to include on it. How much do you take, Tim? How much? A few teaspoons each time. Yeah, quite a bit, though. But I mean, I think it's kind of regardless.

43:27I don't know. I'm sorry. It just seems like a small serving size. I don't know. You know you have a big appetite. I do, but do you find that chefs are actually adhering to that actual suggested serving? I know that's just the nutrition information side of it, but is that meant to be like to flavor an entire piece of pizza or flavor like three eggs?

43:47Carol Massar:It's a good question. So in food service and according to food labeling rules, there is a standard serving size for different types of things. Barbecue sauce is a particular standard serving size. I guess that makes sense if you want to compare labels across the board. Yes, exactly. And chili oil, because it's pretty potent or can be pretty potent, you know, ours is not. It kind of builds up. It doesn't overpower you. It's more about the texture, the flavor. But there is a standard serving size that you put on there for chili oil. Now, chefs will use as much as they want. Right? I mean, the Tyson chef was covering an entire turkey with a chili crisp turkey as a new concept.

44:22Carol Massar:Oh, that's cool. Right. That's really cool. And so that totally blew away the portion size, right? Tim, did you hear Brian said standard size? Yeah, standard. Yeah, that's okay. Just going to put it out there. I'm just looking at, so you guys are in 10 ,000 retail doors nationwide? Yes, over 10 ,000 on the Chili Crisp, over 2 ,500 on the barbecue sauces. Yeah. And I don't know how many thousands of restaurants, hotels, colleges, stadiums. Does it sell in terms of the retail across the country equally, or do you find there's certain metro areas where you really, that's where a lot of the demand is?

44:56Carol Massar:I mean, it does tend, it used to be very strong in the more international coastal cities, right? But it's really spread just because, you know, TikTok and social media, people see these things all over the place right away. It doesn't really matter. But yes, we have had a stronger, a little bit higher numbers, I guess, you know, East Coast and West Coast, Pacific Northwest where we manufacture it, California, obviously large Asian population. It's all manufactured in the United States? It is. We make everything in the United States, which has been really great, especially to avoid. We haven't had the really tariff issue come up.

45:26Carol Massar:It makes it a lot easier for us to work with our manufacturers to adjust things in terms of supply chain. But yeah, we put Made in USA in pretty big letters on there. So Asian-inspired, but Made in the USA. You know, McCormick bought Cholula hot sauce for$800 million back in 2020. Things have changed a lot in the last six years. You're an independent company now. What's the plan for acquisition or the future? So we're very focused on our current products, growing them, getting them more into more chefs, more stores. We do work with some other big brands. We've been very fortunate through the food service industry in particular.

46:09Carol Massar:With Kikoman, for example, we do a chili crisp poison sauce together, which is awesome. A little bit of Ponzi, a little sriracha in there. And we sell that in food service together. With Hormel, we work with them with their proteins, like really complimentary companies where they'll use it to ideate with big, the biggest restaurant chains in the, in the country, right. On how to integrate our sauces with their products. And, you know, we'll see where things go, but right now, right. It's really focusing on growing the products, getting the new products. So there's more expansion that can come off of this.

46:40Carol Massar:Absolutely. Yeah. A lot, a lot more. Like what? Well, there's, you know, when you talk about numbers in retail, there's roughly 30 ,000 supermarkets in the country that you kind of judge in terms of your percentage of penetration in retail, we're just over 10 ,000, right? So we have definitely a ways to go and in food service as well. And especially with the new products. So we're at about a 12 million run rate right now. We're profitable and there's a lot more growth. So Brian, how much should Tim eat of this regularly? I think that's personal. Like one teaspoon is a normal, a normal person? Big chili crisp guy.

47:15Carol Massar:One teaspoon? That's a suggestion. Should he share with his colleagues, maybe? He should. Come on, Tim. Yeah. I will share. It's on the record, everybody. Brian Goldberg, founder and chief growth officer over at Mr. Bing Foods, joining us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

48:04Ask yourself, what are your best people

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