I want my Cheez-Its via drone.

0:00Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And we run Express Checkout, a bi-weekly newsletter covering the latest in consumer brands and retail. And today we got some fun stories, some fun insights. And Jenna, you want to kick us off? Yeah. So last week we were coming off of Black Friday Cyber Monday and we have some Black Friday stats in last week's episode. But this week we got, as I said, We're tying the bow on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Yes. So we're not tying the knot, we're tying the bow. And the final tally is in. U.S. consumers spent$44 billion during Thanksgiving week.

0:45God. Which is up 7.7 % year over year. Pretty significant. Cyber Monday hit a record of$14 billion. Crazy. And Black Friday hit$11.8, so$12 billion, which we had said last week, which is up 9 % year over year. What we were interested in, we mentioned this on last week's episode too, is more people were using buy now, pay later payment options than ever before. And we actually have some stats on that now. It ended up processing over$1 billion of Cyber Monday alone, which was 7 % of total online sales. That is a lot. And if you want to blame Gen Z for not having enough money and being the issue with buy now pay later.

1:26Actually, millennials were 51 % of the population that used buy now pay later options on Cyber Monday. The thing that I was most interested in that we didn't actually touch on last week is how much live shopping surged this year. We could have guessed this TikTok shop had its moment and ended up driving$500 million in US sales during Black Friday, through the weekend until Cyber Monday with nearly 50 % more shoppers year over year. So this is one of those things where like last week we said that AI shopping was like an 800 % increase year over year. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Cause nobody was using AI to shop last year.

2:03It didn't exist. No, but TikTok shop did. And I think it's more of a show. I, consumers were already in the habit of making some purchases off of social last year, but so many more brands are now on TikTok shop. So that 50 % year over year number, I think is partly due to more shoppers just being on TikTok, but also just so many more brands being on that platform. Yeah. And the platform is simply just pushing it more. I mean, every other... Like crazy. Every other damn TikTok I see has a shop button or it's a live shopping experience. Right. I know it's clearly working for some brands like Douglas Yu from Diamond Brew.

2:43I see him live all the time and some of the stats he's posted on LinkedIn and on social have been very impressive. And I guess because it's like, especially if it's the founder and it's a smaller brand, it like kind of resonates a little bit more with the customer, with the audience. And to your point, live shopping on TikTok, yes. And also there is a live stream marketplace called Whatnot. Yep. And it tripled last year's totals. That's insane. People are live shopping. This also makes sense to me because other countries have been doing live shopping forever and it's taken a really long time to take off here.

3:15What's crazy about live shopping is just how many sales can happen in like a single minute. Like it just pushes numbers. It's crazy. So that's where we landed with Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Lots of live shopping. People want things right now. And on that note, people also want things. So fast. So fast. So fast. So our main story of the week was actually on ultra fast. And there were a couple ones. My personal favorite one is that Walmart's drones are taking over. And these are not drones like the Palantir kind that they're involved with. These are delivery drones. As far as we know. Yeah, they're delivering packages, safe packages.

4:00And the retail giant, our lovely friends at Walmart, they are launching their drone delivery across Atlanta and that metro area. They've been all over parts of the Midwest and in Texas, and they're greatly expanding their drone delivery service. They partner with Wing, which is one of the bigger drone delivery companies out there. Wing is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which if people don't know, Alphabet is Google. That's Google's parent company. Wing also partners with some other retailers, but Walmart is sort of, I think, the biggest one because Walmart already reaches what, like 90 something percent of the country.

4:40And now they're basically able to reach literally everybody into their front yard. The drone deliveries are wild to me. it's wild yeah and for clarification you can't deliver anything at a walmart right you're not getting a tv delivered that getting a tv delivered via drone is is nearing palantir drone status actually um no people are getting five i think it was five pounds like five pounds max yeah so think prescriptions like just or uh like body like smaller cheese it's i would the day that we get cheese it's via drone is the day we peak as a society i want my cheese it's in five minutes or less yes absolutely when i'm craving it i want it not not a bad i just like cheese it's i love it i mean drones are are one way to get people faster shipping than ever before by quite literally like moving in different airspace than the rest of us.

5:44But we're also, we had just like a week of news where a lot of retailers So many. are aiming for ultra fast delivery. So if they're not using drones, they're testing out. So Amazon, for example, is testing out 30 minute delivery in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia. And the way that they're doing this is not via drone. It's via what's called micro fulfillment centers, which basically means it's a small warehouse place near like very dense residential areas as opposed to for the most part amazon has these giant warehouses and suburbs right it's the it's the go puff model exactly they're doing the go puff model which has done well for them so far the product is just like close to you before you even order it it's only popular items for that like specific neighborhood but they're trying to do more and more of it and at the same time they're expanding their same day and next day delivery to smaller and rural communities and adding fresh groceries and same day delivery to more and more cities.

6:42And some of those are actually deployed via drone. I hope if anything, like I am from the suburbs of Philly and I'm very familiar with the Philly streets. And if there are fewer Amazon trucks in those narrow, narrow roads, that would be such a blessing for traffic. So I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel like their city could really benefit from some drone delivery. Yeah. Oh yeah. And another retailer who's also playing around with some faster delivery is Target. They're trying to catch up. They're piloting overnight delivery in a couple different cities. They're also working in a similar way to Amazon where they have these dedicated centers and gig workers helping with those deliveries.

7:22Amazon has their own employees who are doing the deliveries from the micro fulfillment centers. But Target is partnering with gig workers for last mile delivery from like other platforms. So like an example would be an Uber Eats. And they also are using sortation centers or sortation, which I just learned that this is a thing. And I think it's just kind of interesting. So for sorting overnight orders, facilities kind of micro fulfillment centers, but they organize group orders by delivery route. So before it's like finally dispatched, they're sorted. So that kind of like a school bus, Like it's not along the way in a neighborhood that makes sense.

7:58So they're like, people are just trying to get savvier with supply chain and Target needs it because they've seen three quarters of declining sales. So it's clear that they're trying to catch up in some way and it's fun to watch. Hopefully those people are getting things faster, I guess, because we all want faster things. Yeah. I mean, even Uber Eats is really trying to get things faster to people. They're partnering with retailers that are not edible. No. Best Buy, PacSun, Lush. I think we said Camping World as well. DSW. DSW. Sephora. Sephora. It's more than just tacos now. As you said, they should change their name.

8:40Uber Eats needs to change its name. No part of me would go to the Uber Eats app when I'm like, I need shoes last minute. It feels wrong. It feels wrong. I almost feel like it should just be like one huge Uber app that you can order a car from and you can order shoes from. But it shouldn't. Having the two apps and one of them is called Eats. It's getting confusing. But yeah, that's an example of essentially retailers renting the infrastructure for ultra fast delivery as opposed to owning the infrastructure for ultra fast delivery. So Walmart and obviously Amazon and Target are like trying to own the infrastructure by building these micro fulfillment centers and sortation hubs, having these dedicated drivers or drones.

9:21But retailers like DSW and Sephora and Lush, who are all partnering with Uber Eats, and there are also a bunch of grocery stores that are partnering with DoorDash, they're essentially paying Uber Eats to handle the delivery. And I think it can be upwards of like 30 % of the order goes towards the platform and the drivers. And they also lose customer data. So it's cheaper to operate that way because it's, I mean, I think Amazon is spending over$4 billion to expand its delivery network, which is crazy because it already has a really robust delivery network. Insane. So it's a huge investment, but it's a huge investment up front.

9:59And then they own all the customer data and own the infrastructure. Yeah. And don't have to pay 30 % commission on every order. So it's interesting to see which retailers decide that it's worth investing up front versus working with a gig driver partner. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, it's clearly the ones that already have extensive reach and volume that it just makes sense for them. I'm curious also what Uber will do in the coming years if they will partner with drone companies and work on their own fulfillment centers because they could. Just like how GoPuff has that. We will see. But I do think it is kind of interesting to see how successful a lot of this has already been.

10:45Oh, yeah. Both from like Walmart and Amazon delivering billions and billions of next day delivery packages last year. And I'm sure it's going to be up this year. But also the fact that the head of e-com at Walmart said in a recent interview that ultra fast basket sizes end up being 13 % larger than a standard basket size. I thought that was so interesting. And it wasn't just 13 % larger than an average shopping cart. It was 13 % larger than scheduled orders. So it's still, it's the comparison point is to other online scheduled orders, which I think retailers would think that shoppers are still operating on that impulse mindset in a scheduled order.

11:29But it looks like when it comes to ultra fast, the impulse shopping is at a different level. Right. Because 13 % is significant. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if like your regularly scheduled order, it probably is, let's say it's a weekly thing. you probably have a solid set of things in there that you run out of consistently. So that means you're just, you're buying so much more stuff. I wonder how different it is. Like, you know, when you go to a grocery store, there's that little, that the end caps by the cash register that are always impulse buys. Yes. I'm curious. It's like that. It's just like that.

12:04I'm like, I'm curious the correlation in growth of cart to that. And if this is just so much more because you have even more products at your disposal to quickly get. No, you're so right. And also how those things are digitally merchandised. Like what is saying, oh, do you want to add this to your cart at the end of your checkout is effectively the same thing as buying gum at checkout. The retail media and retail marketing companies are about to have a freaking field day. Field day. Another ultra fast delivery method that we will be seeing robots and pipes, basically fancy pneumatic tubes. So there's a company called pipe dream.

12:48They are working on what is called hyper logistics. So it's, it's a method of ultra fast delivery that can basically move items. They're saying across cities in minutes right now they're in Austin. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. They're working on putting these tubes. Literal pipes. Literal pipes with these little robots on wheels that can go really fast, either from a grocery store into your home or to a distribution center near your home, that you can get groceries and food and anything. They're saying in mere minutes. How big are the pipes? Crazy. My brain immediately, you said pipes and like delivery, and I was like, Roman aqueducts.

13:30Right. something unleashed in me from seventh grade and i was like see i thought of the pneumatic tube system that like hospitals have but more specifically that stew leonard's has to like move notes and money grocery store stew leonard's is is a crazy grocery store that's so crazy but essentially that throughout cities throughout cities tunnels pipes so that we can deliver things underground some crazy things happening so people want ultra fast delivery but people also want gummies jenna sick transition i know right um you're right actually that was a pretty flawless transition because you're right the people really want they want functional gummies they want functional gummies this week we got two two big stories in the gummy world what is our job grunes which is essentially it's a greens gummy it's it's like a greens powder but in gummy form yeah they just launched their newest line extension juiced j-u-c-e-d pre-workout gummies yeah they have caffeine they have something called carnitine carnitine yes which i had to google because when we were writing the newsletter i thought that nate spelled creatine wrong um which is fair that's a fair assumption which is fair it was actually carnitine which apparently is a compound involved in like metabolic processes so i guess it helps with energy production and they're very clearly targeting these towards women i would say yeah they got they got tinks to be a spokesperson for this yes i think some of the copy actually even says like not your boyfriend's pre-workout yeah i think so it's caffeine in a gummy i mean there's other there are other supplements that are in it as well but that is effectively what it is pre-workouts i feel like i almost want to see a graph of protein being talked about more and i would say pre-workouts have followed that but like below right because definitely energy drinks like alani knew are partly marketed as an energy drink and partly marketed as a pre-workout and we're just seeing more of that language being used beyond the bodybuilder community in the same way that protein is so it's unsurprising that they came out with this but i know you knew that Gruens is just coming out with a lot of gummy supplements in the future.

15:48They will, for sure. And this is definitely an indication of what a friend texted me. So a friend texted me basically a long list of different trademark filings that apparently Gruens made for potential line extensions. So I'm going to go through a couple of them. And I'm very curious to get your take on what these might be. So Duel, S-T-U-L. fiber fiber that's actually unreal to call a product stool yeah and it's got to be fiber but there's fiber in grunts there's fiber in in juiced in this new one too okay stool what else do we have that's crazy agua hydration routine that should just be grunts yeah popped like a puppy i'm assuming no way i i think it'd be genius to have one you have a regular one for adults you You have one for kids.

16:45You have one for your puppy. That's so nice. Dogs, and I will stand by this till the day I die, do not need gummy supplements. So this one, yeah, it says gummy candies on the listing. And some of these just say dietary and nutritional supplements. Some say gummy candies alongside dietary and nutritional supplements. So they might be expanding beyond gummies, which is funny because Lemmy is kind of doing a mix of both. They have their metabolic, fat-burning, let-me-burn pills, and they just came out with a gummy version of that. It's called Body Composition Gummies. And according to the press release, the product delivers a delicious way to support visceral fat reduction.

17:30And I wrote in the newsletter, I am so upset that we have paired the word delicious with visceral fat reduction. Where are we as a society? What's going on? Who am I to say? What is going on here? This is not marketed towards me. No, it's not. No, it's not. This is marketed towards me slash women. And I'm very, very disappointed. I'm not surprised though. No. Oh my God. No. I just think Lemmy's a funny brand because I feel like they have a couple skews that are just the same. Slightly different name, but like the same exact thing. So with supplements, first of all, there isn't really much regulation around supplements.

18:12So I think it's just easier to innovate faster. And I think supplement brands are figuring out exactly what format consumers are most responsive to. It appears that gummies are that, but we've tried powders, we've tried pills, we've tried shots, we've tried gummies. Patches. There's even fucking patches. So I think these brands are just launching like more and more form factors of effectively the same thing because they can. It's probably cheap to produce the same thing in a slightly different format. As a consumer, I do enjoy the gummification of a lot of this stuff. I don't always want to have a full bevy of these things.

18:51It makes greens taste a lot better. Granted, I do really like the bloom greens powder, but those are also like super flavored. So those are very fun yeah but it's interesting because ollie had such a grip on the gummy supplement market and i feel like some other ones came out with with gummies but like it really wasn't until lemmy and grooms that i feel like the discourse around it and the explosion of other brands coming out with gummies really took it was ollie and it was maybe some nature one gummies and that was it right now no you're so right why did nobody follow after ollie yeah and just why didn't ollie explode i feel like i mean maybe it did actually the reason one ollie always had like separate skews for everything and grunz took the ag1 model of putting right everything in one and i think that was really effective also grunz is greens which ollie wasn't doing as much that's actually a really great point i do feel like ollie pioneered adult vitamin gummies and we aren't really talking about them anymore yeah and the only time i've mentioned them recently is is our our shared love for their for their body wash products which are great yeah their body wash products are i love i love the smell and they feel good let's move on to our next story about klebby's we don't always talk about like a new brand launch because new brands launch so many brands and we physically can't cover it all in the podcast which is why you should follow our instagram at express checkout but we did want to talk about this launch because it's just such a cool one it's really cool klebby's is a new cannabis baking mix company as i wrote in the newsletter it's basically just legitimizing what was a i don't know centuries long affair with the underground brownie business of getting weed brownies from your sketchy older neighbor.

20:51That is what this is. But it's legitimizing it. It's beautiful branding. These are what seems like more upscale baking mixes. They have cookies, brownies, cakes, and it's these baking mixes and they come with lab tested Delta 9 oil, either in 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams of THC, which would be like throughout the entire product. Yeah. Getting that much at once. So you know exactly how much THC is in each serving, which you were not getting from your sketchy older neighbor. No, and I have a story about a sketchy brownie debacle. Oh, please share. This was junior year of high school. Of course it was.

21:31This is the Friday before our version of the Sadie Hawkins dance, so girl-ass guy. And my date is like, hey, can we come make brownies at your house? And I was like, no. What kind of brownies? underground brownies infused functional brownies let's say functional functional brownies let's use that word and i was like no my mother would kill me and my mother is listening you're welcome i find out later that the functional ingredients that they got were laced with something or not good or however they made it was not not good and i had to find another date to the dance because her and some other friends got got ill from from these functional brownies oh no but i i do agree with you that like this brand and so many other brands are making it so much more accessible to so many more people who might have been scared to to partake in this to buy from from someone who's sketchy but also somebody who just wouldn't have partaked might partake now because it can be dosed better it looks prettier more people are consuming it and i we've talked about this a lot when we've when we talked about target entering the thc space in 10 of their locations in minnesota it's just driving more mainstream acceptance of this category and people are coming to it and i think it's really exciting too and it's this is also where a lot of the non a lot of people who want to be non-alc i think this is ultimately where they want to actually sit for sure if you're wondering how this is able to exist legally we're not going to get into it too much but basically there's something called the 2018 farm bill and it allowed hemp derived thc products in certain percentages to be legally distributed again like i'm not going to get into this too much we can leave a link in the show notes but that has allowed all of these cannabis beverages to exist and get distribution and cannabis i mean now we're a baking mix so it It took a second because it was in 2018, actually, that this was first legalized.

23:37So almost 10 years later. I mean, it's blossomed a whole category and there's now countless brands of all different sorts, mostly beverages. That's the most prevalent one. And there's a lot of good beverages and good brands out there. I like this space a lot. I think it's really fun. It's made me, even me more open to it as well. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Another thing that happened this week was around a functional beverage, but this functional beverage has adaptogens. Nothing too mind-altering. HIO, which is a fast-growing functional beverage, non-alcoholic brand, they just entered into a multi-year partnership with Live Nation, bringing this social tonic to U.S.

24:19venues and festivals. Live Nation also invested some equity in HIO. And HIO, overall, they've raised over$20 million, plus a minority stake from Constellation Brands, who their SVP called HIO one of the fastest growing names in functional non-alcoholics. And Constellation owns famous beer brands like Corona. So they kind of know what they're talking about in terms of beverages. And this is such a cool partnership. One, because it shows off this omni-channel approach that these products that we consume are consumed in other places other than, you know, from a grocery store in the home. But it also mirrors what Liquid Death did to become a billion-dollar brand.

25:03Yeah. So Liquid Death similarly had a Live Nation partnership. And that made them a billion-dollar brand. I mean, they became the exclusive water at 120 plus Live Nation venues and festivals. Crazy. And also got an equity investment from Live Nation. So a really similar partnership. And their revenue just like absolutely blew up after this. Their distribution blew up. In 2024, they ended up being valued at$1.4 billion, like literally a billion dollar company. Yes. And Liquid Death's marketing is like going to be taught as an entire marketing class. On its own, Liquid Death as a brand is just brilliant.

25:41But there's no denying how much this partnership legitimized the brand, got it in so many more hands. And that was for a water. So what's interesting here is I think some people were like, oh, Liquid Death was essentially like a non-alk option in the sense that if you're at a concert, instead of getting a beer, you can get a water. And it looks like a beer because of their branding. But it isn't functional. And it is just water. So it looks like Live Nation is looking to fill that gap between fully non-functional, non-alcoholic and alcoholic. And that's where something like HIO comes in, which does claim to have some effect from adaptogens.

26:15A challenge they will face is that saying like adaptogens and nootropics make you feel something, but like not fully being able to define what that is for each person. I think people will try it, expect some kind of functionality that's similar to alcohol or weed in some way. and really not experience that. So they need to, like, temper expectations, I would say, in order to be super successful. But they have potential now, I feel like, to be, like, the functional NA or social tonic, whatever you want to say, beverage. Because this partnership is providing a ton of legitimacy. Yeah. And it's also, like, captive audience.

26:57Yeah. You don't have much choice of beverage in stadiums and arenas and festivals, usually it's whatever they have. So if like, this is your NA option, this is your NA option. That's like not a soda or something. Like you want something to feel a little bit different than just like, oh, I'm getting a fountain drink. It's like, no, I'm getting a functional beverage, a social tonic, a non-alc. It feels like you're part of the crowd who might be drinking something. Yeah. And the packaging is elevated. It kind of looks like a canned cocktail. Yeah. Yeah. It sits in a good area where it's not too high brow.

27:31It's not too low brow. It feels very approachable and it feels like you're getting something that's different than just a Diet Coke. Absolutely. That's good. But speaking of booze, a boozy adult juice box brand, Beatbox, was just acquired by Anheuser-Busch. The beer and beverage giant scooped up around 85 % of Beatbox for around$490 million. And the brand is currently valued at almost 600 million and they're adding it to their beyond beer portfolios that includes brands like cut water neutral vodka and form energy which i like vaguely know but i guess they have an energy drink brand i i we've probably seen it at some point but yeah this is this is kind of this is huge uh it's huge bbox well launched in like 2011 it's always been in this tetra pack the tetra pack is it's like what your your milk comes in just a smaller version of that it's Yeah, like a cardboard box with a lining, basically.

28:32Yes, it's wine-based. It's around, what, like 11%, 12 % ABV, so it's a little higher. It's fruitier. It's non-carbonated. And it's a play for a younger drinker, for AB and Bev, especially at the moment where traditional beer is, I put this, I use this word in the newsletter, softening, where a lot of these younger consumers are opting for something that's fruitier, higher ABV. and specifically non-carbonated. I've learned that a lot of young people don't like carbonation, which is... I don't really like carbonation. Okay. Carbonation is the best thing ever. No, I don't like it. It's uncomfortable.

29:11It makes me bloaty. I literally think that Olipop... Have a gas sex. I'll try that next time. I think Olipop should come out with a flat version. So for me, Olipop is flat because they're 30 % less carbonated than a regular soda. I want it fully flat. I want juice. Damn. So Beatbox is like, honestly, it is a beverage for me. Yeah, I should try it. I actually haven't had it. Well, we'll host it. I'll host a house party. An express checkout house party. Like it needs to be like a darty. I don't. Fine. Beatbox doesn't belong at like a happy hour. It is. It is. Dare I say a little fratty. And that was something.

29:50He didn't use the word fratty, but alluded to the format being different. Dan Graham, who's the founder of Springdale Ventures. They were an early investor in Beatbox. One of the things he said was like Beatbox succeeded because they fundamentally reimagined the drinking vessel. So where everyone was iterating on different cans, they did Tetra Pak. Nobody was really doing that format. And it makes it more, he said, portable, shareable, and signals party where a can could never. It does. A can could never. Maybe he's never shotgun a beer. I don't know. Dan, please write us if you've shotgun a beer before.

30:28there's not enough pressure but no but like i i think that that's a really interesting point and like look i i think partially because the format but also the branding of of a beatbox is very party forward let's be honest oh yeah it screams party and the shack version shack is also a partner in this brand of because of course shack is shack is a partner in everything but he is he is a flavor and like when i see shack i see a party guy he's dj diesel yeah uh that's so funny it also is all like party punch yeah yeah yeah so the flavor profiles too i think i mean to dan's point it's clear that this brand is not directly competing with these like canned cocktail just be i mean just look at anhauser-bush's portfolio like they already as you said have cut water and neutral in their portfolio.

31:18So I don't think they would want another competitive product necessarily. This is a totally like different line of products. It's clearly for a younger consumer who is either doesn't want the carbonation, wants something a little sweeter and more fun. Stronger. Definitely stronger. That is strong. Yeah. It's a very impressive brand. It was on Shark Tank. Like I personally know some investors in it. Before it got like really crazy big, which is, it's just really cool. It's like fun to see the evolution of this brand. It's like so cool to see. And it's, what's the other side of it that's really cool is like, this is not a sexy brand.

32:01This is not something that is arguably quote unquote, well-branded. I agree, but I don't know if like they would agree. No, it's well-branded for what it is. But in terms of the aesthetic and the types of brands that we're seeing at least more in the discourse, just because it's super beautiful doesn't mean it's going to always win. Yeah. And I think what Beatbox does really well is it knows its audience to a T. And that is something that I think is a little rare sometimes. No, I think you're spot on. I completely agree. But it's exciting. And it is such a good example of how form factor can be such a game changer because it really, I do think you can attribute so much of the success to the Tetra Pak.