768: Alicia Kennedy on the Power of Memoir and Martinis

26:55But we also go to the farmer's market every weekend. And so it's this combination of like, you know, figuring out how to best stock the pantry and what you can get in bulk. And then and how do you fill that out with, you know, local produce and the eggs from, you know, the happy hens, which is how they're called in Puerto Rico, like gallinas felices. And so, you know, it's just figuring out the balance of those things. And it's interesting. And it's not easy for everyone to do that. You know, based on time, based on interest, really, too. And I think that, you know, there to the laws around importation and the taxation of it, it makes the food horribly expensive in the supermarkets, like shockingly expensive for even coming from New York.

27:47And me and my husband always say, like, when we're in New York, we eat so much more cheaply than when we're in Puerto Rico, which I think is, like, shocking to people. But it's a very cultivated and constructed and colonial relationship to the imports and everything that is – it makes – you know, it just – it pushes people to fast food. It pushes people not to cook and not to really engage with it. Yeah, I think the infrastructure component is so interesting. You write about turning on the tap and not having water come out of the faucet. Yes. The water problems, like I think Puerto Rico kind of famously has electricity problems.

28:28The grid hasn't been updated like in, you know, almost a century. And there's a lot of corruption going on in that situation. But also the water has become a very big issue. And a lot of I'm really lucky. Like we went without water for five straight days at the end of last year. But other people, it was like 15 days without water. businesses a few months ago, like 15 to almost 20 days without water, not being able to operate because they ran out of water in the cistern. And then, you know, one of my favorite cafes was raising money because of all the lost tips and wages that their people were facing because of that.

29:07And there's just not a lot of accountability for how these things affect people there. But But for me as a food writer, of course, I'm thinking about, OK, like, what is this? This like this really kind of I want to say tapped me into because I'm I don't know why this pun is coming to mind. But about water scarcity, like because if water becomes scarce to you, you're like, oh, well, as a writer, I'm like, oh, what is this? What would this be like if this were every day? Like, what would it be like to not have water? And then I was doing so much research into water scarcity and water stresses that are happening everywhere in the world.

29:47And, you know, just feeling like, oh, okay, so in Puerto Rico, we're having this sort of introduction into a future of, you know, possible, like, absolute water scarcity, which is really scary. Right. And like that, maybe this is starting here, but it's going to affect people everywhere. I found that perspective just so interesting because the way that you're talking about water is in the same chapter that you're talking about coffee, which I don't think I've—I mean, I'm sure someone has done this, but I don't think I've ever read, like, a coffee story that's talking about water, like, not just in terms of growing the coffee beans, but as the thing that coffee is made with.

30:26But obviously, that's, like, the other ingredient in coffee. So I was just like, damn, like, wow, we're not even thinking about that's, like, the other ingredient in coffee. Well, I think because I think that was in my mind. Well, it was in my mind in the from the initial like proposal of the book where I was like, I want to write about water and coffee, but I don't really know why yet. And then I think maybe because I also write about martinis in the book and I'm like, you know, ice is an ingredient in a martini. And so that really primes me for thinking about water as an ingredient is just because I drink martinis.

30:58And so then the coffee chapter, but because, again, we're in Puerto Rico, like coffee is so integral to like the cultural identity. But it's also so another like corrupted reality because this company, Puerto Rico Coffee Roasters, which is basically a Coca-Cola holding company, bought up like so much of the local coffee. And so if you go to the supermarket, basically all of the brands are going to be Puerto Rico coffee roasters. And it's all these old school brands that used to be like run by, you know, family haciendas and stuff like that. And so for me, because of the idea of like not having coffee is so tied to me to not having water.

31:39And so I don't it just it just felt really natural because these are both things that I don't think we are thinking enough about in terms of climate change and how we're stressing both of these resources for ourselves. And I do think, you know, coffee, we think of it as sort of necessity, sort of luxury, which is like always my favorite type of thing to think about, which is like the things we take for granted but also think of as special. and so you know it is something that we need it's something that like shapes our days and stuff like that and I know lots of people like to give up caffeine or whatever but I think it's just it's such a beautiful ritual especially when you live somewhere like San Juan where it didn't you didn't need like third wave coffee shops and you didn't need Starbucks to like tell you coffee was important like it has a much richer history and identity that I think is is so nice to you know remember and to be like, okay, we want to make sure these types of cultures can still exist.

32:43Absolutely. And this conversation makes me think about potentially an idea for your next book, which could be about all of the ingredients that food media doesn't count when you're making like a five ingredient recipe. You don't count salt, pepper, water. Water. Water drives me nuts not being on the ingredient list because then you're like, I have to go, you're reading the instructions And it's like, oh, now I have to go get the water when it's like, OK, I already like had my mise en place and then I have to go fill up water. Right. And especially if you're in a place where you can't drink the tap water, you might not actually have water at home to make the thing.

33:16Exactly. Yes. Something to think about. Yes. On the like kind of non-food side of this book, another thing that I was really struck by is how much music plays a role in your life and in your writing. And I also am like a quote unquote food person who like loves music and like thinks of that as really core. And I was curious if you think your taste in music and your taste in food are somehow the same or if they're different. There definitely is an alignment there, I think. I don't know. It's interesting because I didn't, even though I like thought these subcultures were cool when I was growing up, Like I wasn't like part of the punk scene or the hardcore scene or, you know, anything like that.

33:58Like I was in orchestra and played the violin. I'm very – The different hardcore scene. I know. I'm like very partial to strings. Like I love Jeff Buckley. Like I really needed music to like make musical sense to me to really love it. And, you know, like I love the Mars Volta and not a surf. And like that's what I talk about in the book. But, you know, I do think that there is there's something there. Right. Because I I don't like pop music necessarily. I'm not against pop music, but I don't it's not my favorite thing in the whole world. And so I do think there's this like desire to like find stuff that's not surface level, I guess.

34:42Curatorial. Exactly. Do you listen to music when you write? Yes. I have one specific playlist that is like my go-to writing playlist. Like if I really have to lock in, as they say, I put that on. And it's a lot of stuff from the Carlos soundtrack. So it's a lot of like post-punk that really like gets me to focus. I have a playlist that I listen to also, so I understand that. But mine is not post-punk. What is it? Well, I have a playlist, but recently I've been listening to this one radio set on NTS that is UK garage tracks at half speed. Okay. So it's half the speed that you think it normally is.

35:22So it has this kind of forward momentum, but also at a beat that I can think at. Yeah. I'll send it to you. Maybe I'll even put this in the show notes, but it smooths my brain out, you know? Quiets things down. Well, I actually made like a 75 track, like soundtrack for the book that like follows the trajectory of the book. Right. Because in the book, I mean, I think I see you using music almost as a signpost to this moment in time. Was it easy for you to come up with those kind of like time music references? Oh, yeah. I mean, like, yeah, freshman year of college, Deloused in the Comatorium. And then when I was doing the vegan bakery, I would I got really deeply into Not A Serve for some reason and like would listen to the entire discography on my iPod.

36:05on shuffle. And then when I'm, I don't think I start, I mentioned music when I'm in Puerto Rico, but that actually became really important. Like I got really into like this Argentinian rock and Espanol band Soda Stereo, which is really famous. But, and like a lot of different, you know, another like little story that I wish I had figured out a way to put in the book is like this song by the Spanish band La Union. And this girl, I was on a trip and this really cool girl from Venezuela who lived in Paris was like, oh, they play this twice at every party in Spain. And so that's on the playlist for the book, but it's not in the book.

36:41So like for me, there's like a lot of little memories that I used music to cue up for myself that sort of set the tonality of the book. But even if I'm not like mentioning them explicitly. Yeah, I think it's similar to food in that kind of way, right? It's like, or even the scent, it's the memory that can kind of anchor you in a moment in time. Yes. Okay. I love that. We've been talking about Puerto Rico a bit in terms of how it kind of evolved your thinking as a writer. And I love just kind of reading about your life in Puerto Rico through your newsletter. And I'm curious, like, how you feel about living in Puerto Rico in this moment in time and what—I don't even know if there's a song that relates to that moment.

37:19Well, it's from the 1970s, actually. Viva Puerto Rico Libre by the Ghetto Brothers, which is also on the soundtrack. Um, but I, I love Puerto Rico so much. And like, I also understand like my grandmother left Puerto Rico like a billion, a billion years ago. Um, and I understand why she did that, but I also have my own relationship to it. And, and obviously my husband grew up in old San Juan. And so, but, um, it's really difficult. It really is difficult. And like, it gets really depressing a lot of the time, especially lately. And, you know, everyone, we love Bad Bunny, but the tourism since the residency has been overwhelming.

38:04Like, it's just, you know, I walk out of my house and people are just having photo shoots in the street. Like, and so I'm trying to like walk my dog and it's just so many people and they don't really care that you live there. You know, they'll be sitting on my stoop, like having a photo shoot and stuff like that. And, And, you know, the tourism – because the Airbnbs have displaced so many of our neighbors, you know, we just lose our neighbors all the time. And you used to be – we used to have, like, the baristas who made me coffee in the morning used to be our neighbors. And now they live somewhere else and sometimes they take an Uber to work and it's like, oh, the Uber took 15 minutes.

38:43And it's just like this really – the infrastructure, the oversaturation of tourism. and the fact that so few spaces are for locals anymore is just, it's really overwhelming. And this is really why, you know, my husband and I are planning to move back to New York is because it's just not a fun place to live anymore. And for me, it's really sad personally because I fell so deeply in love with Sam Juan like over my reporting time and like was just like having just felt so good whenever I was there and was so happy and when I moved there in 2019 was just like so energized by it and then with the pandemic and then the over tourism and then Airbnb displacing everybody and then so many places closing or changing it just stopped it just stopped feeling like a real place you know so Yeah, I think especially living in Old San Juan, which is the most touristed part of the whole island probably.

39:48Because in New York, you know, there's obviously a lot of tourists, but like— You can avoid them. Yeah, I mean, we're recording this in Midtown. There are a lot of tourists around here right now, and I expect to see them here, and I don't live in this neighborhood. So to me, I'm only annoyed when I can't like get off the subway platform, which is not that big of an issue. Yes, yes. But my husband grew up in Old Samhwan, and when he was growing up, it was like a far more bohemian place. And, you know, the apartments are gorgeous, like, and it's walkable. And, you know, he works in preservation very close to our house, and so it makes sense for us.

40:21But at the same time, it's just like they're squeezing the residents out. Right. And, of course, the answer shouldn't be that you should have to live in the neighborhood that you want to live in and grew up in. Yeah, yeah. I didn't mean that. No, no, no, no. I know, I know. No, it's just it's a funny it's a thing of like it just yeah, it's it's hard. I mean, I see that even in terms of writing a memoir and revisiting the past like the New York City you used to live in the Long Island you grew up in. I bet all of those things feel different as well. Different. Yeah. I mean, the town I grew up in Patchogue, like I write about it as this like really desolate place because that's what it was when I was growing up.

40:58like everything was closed. And now the theater that was closed my entire childhood, like I think Melissa Etheridge played there a couple of weeks ago, which like, you know, she's older, but like, it's just like a weird thing. And like, there's a good coffee shop. There's at least one good restaurant. There's an oyster bar. It's alive again. And like, I think the last time I was at the coffee shop, I like someone was reading Flesh, like the Booker winner. And I was saying to my mother, I was like, how, like, what is going on here? Like, this is Patchogue. Like, people are reading books. Like, what is going on?

41:34And that makes me sound like, like, it does make me sound like the 13-year-old pretentious dick that I was, but, and that who I become again when I'm in Patchogue. But it's very different. And the Brooklyn that I lived in was, is very different from the one that exists now. And, you know, when I was a teenager, my parents were like, you can't go to Brooklyn. Yeah, I think it's funny reading the book because you're writing about your relationship with Long Island and being like a Long Island woman who like drinks martinis and eats oysters. And maybe it's because I'm like somebody who moved to New York from the West Coast.

42:07But I feel like you have this kind of degree of reclaiming that's happening. But I see that as like, oh, that's so glamorous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is. I mean, there is a glamour to it. But I'm appreciative of, like, where I grew up. Like, I was saying this to someone else who's from Long Island today, actually, Sari Botten, who is a writer. And she was saying, you know, in On Eating, I talk about coming into the city when I was a kid and, like, seeing a woman with purple hair and dressed all in black. And I was like, oh, that's who I want to be. And she said she had an equivalent of that, of someone, like, at a restaurant reading a book by herself.

42:41And, like, I am so grateful to have grown up in, like, the shadow of New York and to have been able to, like, go to concerts all the time from when I was, like, very young and take the train when I was very young and, like, do all the stuff. But it's a weird – it's weird. Yeah. It's weird now because everything is so – it's just so gentrified in a way of, like, that I don't know where I fit anymore. Here or anywhere? No, here. I think it's very, you know, I never had this, you know, desire to have like classic markers of stability. Like, oh, I'm like, I'm going to live in the city. I'm going to find a good apartment that I can rent and afford it and like have the jobs I want to do and like live the life I want to live.

43:28And like, but now I'm like, oh, no, I have to focus on making as much money as possible and buying a house, even though that's not something I ever wanted. But like it's the only way to have stability. And so it's just very, it feels very different now where the possibilities are limited. It brings us back to the systems that we exist in and how we fight them and succumb to them. Yes. I guess not quite building a system, but in terms of like building towards something, I've been really excited to talk to you about this new food magazine project that you're working on, Tomato Tomato, which I had to check that was the correct pronunciation.

44:04Yes. That's the sort of joke of it, I guess, is from the song where it's like, you say tomato, I say tomato. Tomato. Tomato. Yes. Like, let's call the whole thing off, but if we called it off, we'd be sad. So it's like just sort of, I don't know, it's just a silly thing. I like to, you know, I think tomatoes are an interesting, like, fruit slash vegetable, you know, they have a role in so many different cultures and cuisines, but they come from, you know, South America and stuff. So I think it's just an interesting, you know, it's just a fun name for it. But it's a very casual venture for me where I just wanted, I like editing and I miss editing.

44:39And so I just wanted to like put out an occasional little web magazine and see what happens. Yeah. How did it go for you to, the first issue came out, how did you kind of decide what that would consist of? I actually was assigning those pieces at the end of last year. And I kept thinking I was going to launch it along with my birthday at the end of last year, but I was like dealing with getting this book ready and it was just a lot of stuff. And so I decided to move it to March. And yeah, I had to sign those pieces based on like, I think, you know, these writers would be good for these stories.

45:13And then that was it. I now going forward, there's going to have to be a little bit more thoughtful curation just because to keep it going where I can't like six months out decide on 10 stories. And then so I'm not committing to monthly. I'm committing to like when I get it done. Yeah. I like that time frame. Yeah, I'm like I'm taking it very I think it's it's fun to do something super casually and not expect anything out of it necessarily and just try and see see what work can come out of doing it. And it exists online so far. Are you interested in doing a print component? I had thought about doing print, but then I was like, no.

45:54So it's just the just thinking about the cost of it and, you know, the logistics of it. I was like, I I can do a digital magazine basically by myself and then like maybe hire some people to help me with like the administration of it and maybe building out posts and stuff like that. But and then it's accessible to everyone. And then I think, again, going back to Puerto Rico like that, a lot of my thinking is about how, you know, if people if I were putting it out in print, like where would it be sold in Puerto Rico? And the answer is like basically nowhere because we have obviously bookstores, but there's no like magazine shops or anything like that.

46:35And so just to make it ideally accessible to people everywhere and like maybe and hopefully invite people from everywhere. Like in the next few issues, we'll have work in Spanish and English, and I want to expand that into more languages and stuff like that. And I think so making that doable and possible is by doing it digitally. Yeah, I mean, I can speak to how difficult it is to print and distribute and all of those things. And I think obviously it's nice to have the physical object, but there are many moments in time where I'm like, why? Well, it's because we didn't start it as a business. So it doesn't really make business sense.

47:10But I think the work of Tomato Tomato existing and being able for people to interact with that is more important than like having something to put on a coffee table. Yes. Yeah. That's for me. I mean, people can put my book on a coffee table. And like maybe I'm not saying that there won't be a print something in the future, but I just want to leave it as loose as possible so that it's doable. And we can talk off mic about printing if you ever need as well. You know how much effort goes into taking care of yourself physically, eating the right amount of protein, drinking the latest probiotic soda, hitting those Peloton personal records.

47:45Mental health deserves the same energy. But finding a therapist who actually takes your insurance, that's where things usually fall apart. Rula fixes this. They're a health care company that works with over 100 insurance plans, so the average copay is just$15 a session. $15. They match you with licensed therapists based on your actual goals and needs, not just whoever's available. And appointments can happen as soon as tomorrow. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash taste to get started. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash taste.

48:27You deserve mental health care that works for you, not against your budget. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with no artificial sweeteners and three grams of prebiotic fiber. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola. Unbelievably Pepsi. With Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation and it won't impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 U.S. states at all major retailers near you with no ID, prescription, or age requirement needed.

49:10Together, we've got this. Follow Plan B on Insta at Plan B One Step to learn more. Use as directed. So I guess before I jump into my rapid fire to close today, I want to just think about writing the book, like the kind of chronological order of how it all came together. Like in this moment in time, is there a chapter that you feel like closest to or is like resonating with you or food from the chapter? Oh, I don't know. I feel like I always am. Well, I think my favorite chapter to write was the plantain chapter, honestly, because I just got into a lot of stuff that I hadn't gotten into before about language and belonging and diaspora and that sort of thing.

49:56And also, I just like to eat plantains. But I also I really like the mushroom chapter for being sort of where I feel like the book and me as a person start to sort of breathe in a way that I am like I don't want to say I'm holding my breath for like the first half of the book. But there's a lot of like tension that I'm holding because I'm just trying to make a life that I want. And in the mushroom chapter, I'm finally sort of like in solid enough footing as a writer and like I'm doing the things I want to do. And not everything is perfect, but like things are going okay. And then I meet my husband.

50:40And so it feels like the rest of the book from there has a different sort of energy. Yeah, you're kind of plugging into the mycelium network of community and identity and all of those things. Yes, yes. Yeah, I love that. I love that chapter. And I think that's a really nice place to kind of end the conversation and go into some rapid fire questions. So I'm going to make you play some favorites. And some of these correspond to chapters in the book. Okay, cool. We'll see. Okay, so start off with your perfect martini. It is Beefeater Gin, Dolan Dry Vermouth, an olive as a garnish, stirred to the correct temperature, which I don't have precisely.

51:22And I like a 2-1 right now. I go back and forth between being a reasonable 50-50 person and a 2-1 person. Okay. Your favorite apple? A macoon, which I write about in the book. But I also, you know, I'm not really up on the new apples. They keep releasing them. I know. So I got to like go to the store and just get some new apples and do a tasting, I think. Yeah, the Ludacrisp is the new one. Okay. Like Ludacris. Like Ludacris, yeah. I thought I saw that he did an apple, yeah. Oh, actually, I don't even know if he's involved. I feel like I'm making this up then. I'm making up a false memory. But I feel like I or maybe I saw someone make a joke about this apple and ludicrous.

52:03If I was ludicrous and the ludicrous apple dropped and I wasn't involved. I'd be mad. I would get involved. A honey crisp is fine, but I still don't love it. I like a macoon or a mutsu. OK. It's just a green type apple. OK, cool. I have to try it. Your go to ice cream flavor. Cherry Garcia, non-dairy Cherry Garcia. A favorite cookbook right now that's not one of these books. Well, my favorite cookbook of all time is The Vegetarian Compass by Karen Hubert Allison. And it's out of print, but it's gorgeous. And it has this stunning photo of a cabbage on the cover. And it has no photos inside. Okay, I'll have to set an eBay alert for this one.

52:45It's very good. Yeah. Your favorite thing to listen to while cooking? Oh, my gosh. Right now, you know what? I've been listening to Faithless while cooking a lot lately. Something that you have to order if you see it on a menu. Fried artichokes. A favorite restaurant in San Juan? In San Juan? Oh, they're going to get mad. Leña A is my favorite, and it's a food truck. And Vianda is my favorite fancy restaurant. A favorite bar in San Juan? El Bate is the dive bar. I live there, basically. How's their martini? Actually, it depends on who's working, but it's a dive bar with really good bartenders.

53:29So they're usually very good. Okay, I love that. A favorite restaurant to visit when you come to New York? I feel silly about it, but Les Rock is like my favorite restaurant in New York. Really? It's very Manhattan. Yes. And great martini, great omelet, great french fries. Like I like the great leeks vinaigrette. Perfect. Yeah. Okay, final question. Is a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie or something made up that you wish you could eat in real life? Ooh, that I wish I could eat. Well, I guess the Matilda chocolate cake. Yeah. Right? You think you could do it all? I could do it. I mean, I also just want to be in the Willy Wonka candy forest.

54:07Yeah. Are you trying to be drinking the river? I want to eat one of those like giant like candies that looks like a bouncy ball. Huh. I've always wanted one of those. I'm trying to picture this, but this reminds me of the book. I don't know if it's in the movie. the gobstopper oh the everlasting gobstopper the everlasting gobstopper that like you suck in it's like um breakfast lunch and dinner yes oh that's the gum that's the gum okay of violet that violet beauregard you're like a charlie and the chocolate factory scholar um i love i watched i haven't watched it in a million years i should probably do that again but like yeah i write about that in the chocolate chapter that the the vhs was like really over overused by me um but i do think Swedish candy is pretty close to what that room probably felt like.

54:59Yeah. Have you been to any of the Swedish candy stores here in New York? We have one on Long Island that unfortunately is opening even closer to where my mom lives. So she sent me a TikTok being like, look, they're coming to this close nearby town. I was like, that's terrible because I'll spend like$50. Oh, what do you go for? You know, I'm like really not an ex... I'm like, I just love it all. Obviously, I love those sour blackberry fish and the sour elderflower. Like those are fabulous, obviously. But when I'm in the I'm literally like a child in a candy store in the Swedish candy shop where I'll just get so much stuff and I just like love to eat such a big assortment.

55:36Well, I have to ask you if you like licorice then. I don't. I don't. And maybe honestly, though, maybe I just have such a like trauma from childhood about it that I should eat it. I should try it again. I think if you keep eating it enough, your brain might reset. But also, it seems like you already have a lot of things you go for in the store. So maybe you don't need to open the liquor. I like the sour stuff for whatever reason. Yeah. Well, I hope that you get to go to a candy store very soon on this trip. And congratulations again on this book. Thank you. Thank you.

56:11Liz Dunn, welcome to This is Taze. How are you? I am well, thanks. How are you? I'm great. You wrote a terrific piece, the after-school special, how a caffeine-laced strawberry acai drink became the allowance-draining status symbol of New York's teen elite. You wrote it in New York Magazine. I love this piece. Thank you. It's really good, and I just want to talk to you all about it. You know, before we get to New York City teenagers' obsession with caffeine-laced refreshers, I want to talk to you about the actual drinks in the glass that you reported on. You call them, quote, the beverage equivalent of a pleasant conversation with someone whose name you won't remember, which I think is such a good line.

56:53What do you mean by that? And just tell me about these drinks. So I think with that line specifically, I was thinking about the strawberry acai refresher in particular, which is a Starbucks drink. Anybody listening who has a daughter between the ages of 8 and 18 will probably be familiar with this drink. It's pink. It is a sweet and cold and very inoffensive fruity drink that is making billions of dollars a year for Starbucks. And I came to realize as I was drinking these things while I sort of spied on teenagers doing their thing in Starbucks that the kind of innocuousness of it and the blandness of it is, I think it's intentional because anything that becomes as popular as this drink has become among teens has to get there by just being kind of acceptable to a very wide range of tastes and preferences, if that makes sense.

57:55So it's almost like, I think it's inoffensive by design. Yeah. And like you, you think about just like kids food and it can't be too adventurous. It can't be too weird. It can't be too this or that and really the way that these are market is for a wide appeal, as you mentioned. You spent two weeks staking out Starbucks, boba shops, Blank Street. Sorry, you had to go there. And Cool Sips, all these great, maybe not great locations around New York. I mean, what did you find out when you were kind of snooping on for journalistic purposes the way teenagers interact with these shops? Thank you for trying to make me sound less creepy because I did feel a little bit creepy, like skulking around in a trench coat and like going up to young people and being like, can you tell me about your order?

58:43Um, so the, the, the number one thing that surprised me was actually that the drinks were less crazy than I expected going into reporting this story. I was very familiar with all these headlines that you see that like, you know, 2000 calorie, 400 gram of sugar, Duncan drink is like taking over America. And I, and I had spent a lot of time on hashtag drink talk on TikTok, looking at what people seem to be posting. And I was expecting that I would see people ordering like really crazy, customized, over-the-top stuff, like stunty beverages. But actually, really what I saw was this incredibly, like this incredible level of focus on these kind of actually milder drinks.

59:28I mentioned the refresher already. That is not insane in terms of sugar and caffeine. I think we're probably going to get to that part later. But at Blank Street, like it's the Daydream Matcha, which is also, you know, it's nothing insane besides the price, obviously. So that whole thing that it's actually like much more sort of reasonable beverages that seem to be popular. The other surprise that I had just reporting the story in general was how young this starts. I still, well, I guess not now, but going into the story, really still thought of Starbucks as kind of an adult destination. Really, like seven, eight, nine-year-old kids are having a whole social life that revolves around these types of like coffee shops, Starbucks, Blank Street.

1:00:13And that surprised me. So what's like the typical behavior for say, maybe a little older than eight or nine, so like fourth, fifth, sixth grade, New York City? Of course, we're being very specific. This is New York City kids and doesn't represent everybody. but what is the typical hang at a Starbucks on the Upper East Side for this group of like fifth and sixth graders? Yeah, so and we can talk about this later. This is actually more national than you might think. I know this story is like focused on elite New Yorkers, but it does. It is a real national trend. So I would say there are kind of two different ways that I saw kids interacting with Starbucks.

1:00:52One is they've got like an Apple Watch and they've got Apple Pay and they just like, you know, rush in with all of their friends, grab their drinks, and then they're off to their gymnastics class or wherever else they're going. And it's like a grab and go situation, but always in a group. And then there were also a lot of kids who used it as a place to hang out. Like it really had sort of a student lounge feel. I would say with the teenagers that I talked to, they're going like two or three times a week, which really does add up. And as I've said before, and I just can't say it enough, they are all ordering the same thing to the point where I went to a Cool Sips.

1:01:34That's a smaller chain. It's like a dirty soda chain. And I was sitting there and there were this pair of, I don't know, like seven-year-old girls that came in with a dad. And when the employee asked, like, what can I get you? The one girl looked at him and said, I will have whatever she is having. I mean, you know, there's like tribalism too with these groups. and you have like a leader and certainly the leader calls the shots. And sometimes that means she wasn't even pretending. She was like, I don't know what you serve. I just need to have what my friend is going to order. Well, let's talk about how it represents maybe behavior, not just in urban centers, but like going out to like maybe rural Maryland or Sacramento and around the country.

1:02:15Like how does this represent this kind of change in culture for tweens who maybe after school? You mentioned a little bit about like hanging out and doing nothing. That behavior is really common right now with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Yeah. So like, so I guess I am 43 years old. I don't know how old you are, Matt, but I assume somewhere in the same ballpark. In the range. And, you know, I certainly remember when I was growing up, there were, you know, people would go out for like Slurpees at 7-Eleven. It definitely existed that people would use drinks as kind of a way to bond after school. That, I think, I don't think anybody was like flossing the 7-Eleven logo.

1:03:03There wasn't a lot of, I guess, identification with the 7-Eleven brand or like this wasn't something that people did to be cool. It was just like something to do. the real change in this generation or at least right now is that is that these brands really have like a level of social cachet for the kids and so and this isn't just as I said earlier this isn't just a New York City thing like certainly I was reporting this among very affluent kids in New York City but there is data to show that Starbucks is sort of seen as like a very cool and in-demand and relevant brand to teens all across America so there's an investment bank called Piper Sandler.

1:03:43They do a survey of teens every year where they talk to teens about their preferences and what brands are meaningful to them. And Starbucks was named as the top beverage brand by over half of respondents. Which is crazy. That data point. And the teen report is legendary for those guys. And 50 % said Starbucks. Crazy. Yeah. So, I mean, Starbucks, this is, I can only imagine that the frequency of the visits is lower, obviously, in places where teens have like more normal budgets for such things. But the brand is still like really seen as cool and seen as aspirational. And there's a lot of other brands that are arguably coming up and, you know, following, nipping at Starbucks heels.

1:04:28And who knows when they will surpass Starbucks for the teen cool factor. Dutch Bros is a huge one. We don't have any in New York. I don't think there are any in the Northeast, but that's spreading like wildfire. Seven Brew is very similar. there's Swig. I mean, there's sort of a lot of brands who are really pushing the style of drink, not just among teens, but teens are a huge part of the audience. So do you feel that this is this kind of like cultural cachet that you get from ordering a cooler or fresher at Starbucks? Is this like an online behavior where you're graming up the drink and telling your friends?

1:05:07Or on the opposite end, is it more offline? You know, you hear about Alpha being slightly more offline. And is this just like you're seeing these cups in these physical spaces, like before school, in the gymnastics class, on the street, and that's the cultural cachet moment? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that I, in addition to spending time in Starbucks and Blank Street, I also just talked to a lot of teenagers that I knew through friends and friends of friends about their behaviors. And I would say Instagram and TikTok came up a startling amount of the time in terms of being like a catalyst for thinking that these things were cool.

1:05:45So the online appeal, the online sort of cachet of the drinks is a real accelerant in like making them cool. But then to your point about is this an offline behavior? I mean, the other side of the coin is teens are using these places as gathering spots, as physical gathering spots. in a way that, you know, maybe people wouldn't expect that there's a value to these drinks that isn't just about, am I going to go post it online, but like using it as a way to be physically with your friends, which is heartening, right? And many more teens that I spoke to talked about seeing the drinks online than talked about posting the drinks online.

1:06:25Very few actually said that they posted their own drinks. Interesting, interesting, interesting. So it's not really about social peacocking via their own posts, but just being influenced by influencers. And, of course, marketing, which is being, you know, these things are being like done through SponCon and hitting the algorithm pretty hard. So these companies really have an opportunity to market these brands through social. Totally. And it's not like the point about that is it's not just this like weird accident that, you know, Starbucks has these drinks with exquisite social media appeal and that, you know, they're very popular among an audience who Starbucks is hoping will become customers for decades to come.

1:07:08Like, you know, a lot of the reporting that I like to do or the reporting I like to do best is trying to kind of help people understand why the food world they see around them is the way it is. And so much of that comes down to business and money in some way. And so, you know, the fact that these drinks are really taking over is largely influenced by the fact that they are extremely profitable. I mean, they're like sugar and water. And you can charge seven bucks for them. You know, the matcha ones, matcha is pretty expensive. So that's maybe a little bit different. But these refreshers, super, super profitable.

1:07:47And they are, you know, Starbucks has realized that they've hit on something here. That, you know, if you get the queen bee, eighth grade girl ordering a drink, you got all our friends coming with her. So these are definitely, you know, a very, very calculated menu expansion on behalf of all of these chains. Well, let's talk about health a little bit. We touched on it earlier. You know, you report how some parents don't even realize that these refreshers have caffeine, which I actually didn't realize either that they're using green coffee and it's like kind of this extract from the green coffee.

1:08:23So it's almost like a supply chain play where they're using like this kind of, this discard for this caffeine, which is genius. But also like Starbucks responded to blowback and has now made it customizable. You can actually do zero caffeine to latte strength. Do you feel like the industry, are they threading a needle with responsibility here or on the flip side, is this just kind of bad and maybe a public health crisis in the works? You can think about it. This is a tough one for me to answer. I've been thinking about this one a lot. You could think about it a couple different ways. One is the actual amount of caffeine in a traditional Starbucks refresher is like about the same as a Diet Coke.

1:09:07So we're not, put another way, like about the same amount as a cup of green tea or maybe it's regular tea. Anyway, not a huge amount of caffeine. So certainly like this is not the type of situation where somebody is gonna have a venti refresher and be in the ER because they like overdose on caffeine. They're not energy drinks in that way, they're traditional ones. And so I think it's a relatively benign phenomenon. But having said that, the kind of strikes against it are, number one, there's no real reason why people of this age need caffeine. And the only reason that you do it if you're Starbucks is because caffeine is addictive.

1:09:44And so it is a great way to keep people coming back for more. So that's not great. Another thing that's not great is you could argue that it sort of gets them on. It's a gateway drug to these much more caffeinated drinks, which at some level can be very dangerous. So I don't love it, but I'm also like not pounding the table about what what a disaster this is for the youth. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And also appreciate that you call out that when it comes to sugar, contrary to public opinion, these actually aren't as sugary as some of the other, you know, of course, like soda. You know, we almost banned it here in New York, you know, the amount of sugar in kids drinking soda.

1:10:26You know, you mentioned it's almost as much sugar as a glass of apple juice, which, you know, as a nine-year-old, like a lot of parents still give their kids apple juice. So. Yeah, totally. And I did sort of, I found it, I don't know, kind of amusing when I talked to parents about refreshers, you know, parents are like up in arms about them. The ones who know about the caffeine don't love the caffeine. And they're like, oh, so much sugar, so much sugar. There is this like wealthy parent syndrome of just being completely terrified of sugar in a way that I find to be kind of amusing. They just like are so scared of it.

1:11:02I don't think that the refreshers have so much sugar that anybody should be unduly concerned about that, especially if you have a really active kid. Like school, it's a long day of school. Maybe they have soccer practice in the afternoon. Like that's not a big deal. Again, having said that, I don't like if you go on the menu at like, I've talked about Dutch Bros, but I'll talk about it again at Dutch Bros. Cool Sips does not have nutrition information on their website, but they're a dirty soda chain. So you're mixing soda with additional syrups. So those are just super sweet. Like some of these are just a very bad thing.

1:11:41You know, nobody should be drinking like a venti frappuccino daily. It's just not great for you. Yeah, and the dirty sodas, as you mentioned, just like the customizability of it and just the amount of shit you can put in as a kid. It's like you obviously are going to hit those buttons as many times as possible. Matt, have you had a dirty soda? I've had a dirty soda. I've had them and think that I like the ones that have a little bit of that dairy element personally. Yeah, like the creamy. Yeah, like that speaks to me. But they are very sweet. They're so sweet. it's it's i knew of them and until i actually tried them i really couldn't believe how sweet they were they're crazy and and that's i think like a little bit of dairy cuts it a bit and makes it its own like thing i have to say this this this this refresher this strawberry acai sounds kind of good sounds kind of good

1:12:39it's not i mean i don't it's i am maybe not the target audience but to me it's it's just very it's like I said very forgettable not bad it's just like not I would never be like you know what I could really go for right now I mean it takes me back to like of course Snapple like strawberry kiwi Snapple in like 1993 like I mean listen I mean that was good it's not as good as Snapple oh I know it's like not or the peach like for me it was always the peach one the peach iced tea but we did everything better back in the 90s We did. In the 90s, things were better. We had nice things. I want to close and talk about Consumed.

1:13:22You cover the food industry from a business and culture lens. Just terrific work. Just give us a quick update on what you've been working on there. Well, we've been covering a lot of Maha-related stuff because that seems to be what everybody wants to think and talk about. So doing a lot of Maha coverage, like the new dietary guidelines, stuff like that. And I just wrote something about hospital food and why it's still so bad, which is like one of these deep nerd interests of mine that I love to be able to find expression for on a sub stack. And you've dipped into GLP-1s as well. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

1:14:02We talked to a whole bunch of people about their real experience on GLP-1s, and that was super interesting. I mean, that's a whole, you know. Yeah, that's a whole. We can have you on and talk about that. I mean, are you buying this, like, you know, 40 % will be on GLP-1s by 28 data point? Yeah, I mean, I think assuming that the pills continue to—I think there's one, maybe one or two approved pills. I think that'll be a game changer. I have to say, you know, we heard from like, I don't know, maybe five dozen people in the comments of a GLP-1 story that we published and talked to about a dozen other people.

1:14:39And very few of them had negative experiences. I mean, to the point where I was really like, wow, this is, you know, this is going to be a generational shift for sure. Absolutely. I mean, it's kind of the way we were talking about AI three years ago and now we're here. I think GLP-1s in 28 is going to be where we're at with AI. I mean, it's really, truly a generational shift and with affordable GLP-1s and really a lot of upside for a lot of different reasons in health. It's so – I hope you keep reporting on it. It's such a fascinating topic. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think my – one of my big takeaways about it was that if you are a big food company, like, you should be investing in supplement.

1:15:24You should be buying up self-mint companies or something because a PepsiCo with kind of the mix of what they sell, people are going to be able to resist that stuff. And it's going to be very hard for them. Oh, they are, Elizabeth. They are buying up lots of protection, lots of hedging happening with the acquisition in these major companies and really protein. We think we're sick of protein now. Think about two years from now. we're going to be talking about protein for a long time can't imagine well Elizabeth this has been so much fun speaking and I'm such a fan of your work thank you so much for joining This Is Taste thank you so much for having me

1:16:10This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel the show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumber and supervised by Pat Stango director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergang Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skurzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.