Walgreens—still reeling from that bender it took with bad blood vendor Theranos—is bellying up to the lab bar again with Wing Aviation LLC, newly certified as an air carrier by the Federal Aviation Administration, and will begin offering on-demand drone delivery to residents of Christiansburg, Virginia, beginning Oct. 1. Warehouse doubled up on three items: NyQuil, Gatorade and Morning-After Pill. No kidding. Walgreens will do surge pricing—more after 11 p.m.
Its chief innovation officer, Vish, is heading the team and all are working with Virginia Tech, which explains Christiansburg. By the way, 78% of US population lives within five miles of a Walgreens. This ship sails.
WeWork’s tab of $6 billion in debt and $47 billion in lease obligations can only be explained as a love story between a founder and a funder. Here is billion-dollar pickup line: “You and I are visionaries and see things the rest of world can’t see.” NYT should move its coverage of the saga to its “Modern Love” column in the Sunday arts and style section and off the business pages. The G 50 jet was one thing, selling the company’s name to the company was another thing, but the ice pool in founder’s office is inexplicable when you are wiring billions and they are having to cut holes in the roof to lower the marble so you can ice dip. Where I come from, if you are getting in a Jacuzzi in middle of day, you are up to no good.
By the way, I started early beginnings of Oxford Center in shared office space and always enjoyed visits to WeWork. Their staff busted their butts to help and keep everyone happy. The only problem I ever saw was that the bathroom lines were longer than opening night of "Jaws." Here is the deal on WeWork: Kick out the footlights because there will not be a curtain call. But $8 or $9 billion write-down, or probable the equity is worth nothing.
Last Saturday, at 11:59 p.m., we broke the WeWork story and other jumped in Sunday. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as the work gets done. Speaking of credit, Matt and Loren deserve a lot of it with the job they are doing with the "Morning Report." I like their focus on helping businesses run.
Problems in Paradise. Thursday I stopped by the 26th floor on 200 West Street (Goldman’s HQ) to visit a “friend” and got the scoop why the Wall Street titan is trading below its peers with no premium just being Goldman. They decided to go downstream and market consumer banking to masses in its homegrown startup called Marcus and, pardon me, they have lost more than their minds on this one.
Lost $1.3 billion to date and delinquency rate is almost twice as high as industry standard as they are making loans on everything from window air conditioning units to car repair bills without a sign of a collection department.
Here is how a problem snowballs. They moved Marcus' inside salespeople onto the same floor as the Goldman traders—far as I could tell, not going be any problem of interoffice dating. Seven highly sought, highly productive traders left the building. How many times—don’t go downstream. And just because a mistake takes a long time to make does not mean it has to take a long time to end.
Don't be cruel. FTC sent hate mail to dating site Match this week with a serious charge: flashing 400,000 singles' fake interested candidates. Sixty-five percent of the free trial subscribers were women shown a picture of a hunk with a nudge note: “He's interested—don’t you want to join?” I am not organized enough to do the dating site stuff, but if I did, and you put up a fake candidate with the title "former Ms. Kentucky," I would whip out my credit card faster than Matt Dillion. By the way, Match tried to pull an Equifax and offer every trial subscriber victim a year of free service on the platform. No takers. Ain’t that lonely yet.
Peloton took a 15% haircut on IPO price. Not a good look but a good bit of that could be caught up in backdraft of stone-cold investors over WeWork and Endeavor pulling the IPO rip cord. Here is the deal— Peloton has something with a 98% renewal rate on its recurring revenue. We had a 92% renewal rate and that included 24x7 access and fix your plumbing, if we had to.
I think I’ve made my last trip to Dairy Queen. It was bad enough when they took the Walnut Pineapple Sundae off the menu. Last night, I found out that they have now changed how they make the Mr. Misty float: instead of soft ice cream served on top of the grape ice chilled drink, a concoction that got me through many swamp summers, they now churn it all together into more or less a grape slushy shake. Here's the scoop: The new Mr. Misty machines do not condense the ice chips to support the ice cream on top. It falls through so, to make it easy, they now just blend everything into a grape slushy shake that tastes like grape milk. Why not meet the manufacturer’s reps in the field and fix the problem. Granted, they’re Italian, so it is going to take a while, but Mr. Misty float is worth it.
By the Numbers
Sorry, on this one, I am with Cattlemen’s Association—big lawsuit in federal court over plant-based protein companies using a picture of a cow on their packaging. You are either with Daisy or against her, but you can’t have it both ways. Beyond Burgers and others are after the meat lovers crowd and, by 2022, want 13% share of meat market, which is the exact percent the soy and nut milks have taken out of the dairy market hide. No coupons for us who have been eating the veggie burger at Houston’s since the '90s. Have you read the ingredients in plant-based burgers? Love Canal. By the way, McDonald's will test Beyond Burgers in its Canadian stores this week. Beyond Burgers is surging on the stock market again. The McDonald burger will be called P.L.T.—plant, lettuce, tomato.
Noun
1. Minimum Viable Product. A product ready to launch—but barely.
Disclosure: My son works at Peloton in Development.
