SBUX has big problems
We added SBUX as a SHORT last week
I was skeptical of Kevin Johnson when he became CEO of SBUX, and it looks like I was right. Looks like the company has lost its corporate culture over his tenure to the point where the company is broken? Also, looks like the new CEO is not having a good first week. Pro-Union supporters are suggesting that Howard Schultz, my not have handled a meeting with employees well. According to Perfect Union "Madison Hall, a 25-year-old barista and union organizer, says that the 68-year-old billionaire repeatedly bristled at and cut off their questions about Starbucks’ handling of the growing union movement within the company. “If you hate Starbucks so much, why don’t you go somewhere else?” Schultz told Hall, they recalled.
The union genie is out of the bottle and I'm starting to think Howard Schultz may not be the right person to fix the company this time.
Rapid Delivery
DASH is a SHORT
An article on Bloomberg highlights the challenges of the Rapid delivery model. "The rapid-delivery model requires companies to lease and maintain small distribution centers to keep inventory close to customers. Unlike many ride-hailing and restaurant-delivery companies, the delivery startups employ workers directly, a strategy for increasing speed that drives up labor costs. While fewer competitors may exist, DASH will unlikely see synergies with its restaurant business, leading to incremental margin pressure. The article also points out that the New York City Council considers prohibiting the companies from advertising 15-minute delivery times. Backers of the measure argue the guarantees incentivize unsafe behavior from people making the deliveries.
Prosus DEEP DIVE CALL
Last week, Prosus hosted a quick commerce deep dive call to explain how it believes the space is food delivery 3.0 (2.0 being the shift from simple marketplace → logistics). The company says it is building the most significant quick commerce footprint through its investments in Delivery Hero, Gorillas, iFood, Flink, and Swiggy's Instamart. As of Q4 '21, these platforms had 1700+ live dark stores. It laid out five levers for quick commerce startups to reach profitability: increase AOV, decrease COGS, ads/delivery fees, store optimization, and batching.
Should DASH just buy GoPuff?
