Joggin' your memory

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Your snacks are about to get cheaper, a funny thing is happening at pubs in the U.K., sales of sweets are down thanks to GLP-1 drugs, and here’s how to succeed like the best of them 💪

Let’s get into it!

Is there anything better than receiving news just days before the Super Bowl that PepsiCo is cutting the prices of Doritos, Cheetos, and several other snack products by 15%?

The food and beverage giant made the announcement after internalizing and acting on customer feedback that snack prices had gotten out of control, and no amount of shrinkflation was going to do the trick.

“[We’ve] spent the past year listening closely to consumers, and they’ve told us they’re feeling the strain,” said PepsiCo Foods US CEO Rachel Ferdinando in a statement. “Lowering the suggested retail price reflects our commitment to help reduce the pressure where we can.”

The statement noted wholesalers only sell to retailers, and that the retail outlets set consumer prices. “So what you see in‑store may vary,” it said, while noting some could “see even greater savings depending on the store.”

On top of responding to consumer frustration over constantly rising prices, the move also came after activist investor Elliot Management amassed a $4 billion stake in PepsiCo and made several demands of the company, including that it lower prices while righting the ship.

What the heck is goin’ on at pubs across the pond?

According to bartenders and landlords across the country, people have noticeably started lining up in a single file queue to get their lager, ale, or a pint of the black stuff.

Several have said they’re at a complete loss for why pubgoers are all of a sudden changing their behavior after centuries of “crashing” the counter and waiting for the lad or lass to take their order.

“It’s like the one person did it once and since then everyone has followed like lemmings, they all just copy each other’s behaviour,” said Paul Loebenberg, owner of north-west London’s Wolfpack.

“We’ve trained our guys to say: ‘Please come forward, don’t queue. If we could figure out why, then we would find a remedy. But there’s no rhyme and reason.”

Jess Riley owns Wylam Brewery in Newcastle, and is similarly perplexed, saying, “we’re a big place with massive bars, but some people just refuse to stop queueing.”

Riley believes it probably has something to do with the pandemic, which often forced people to distance from each other in queues in public spaces. John Drury, a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex, agrees.

“For people who work in these industries, when we’ve spoken to them, a lot say that behaviour has gotten worse post-pandemic,” said Drury.

“They say it has become normalised, and when you ask the general public, their response is more mixed. Most people didn’t think that others’ behaviour had worsened since the pandemic, a view which contrasts with that of industry staff.”

It’s not even just ultra-processed food manufacturers, but any food maker not leaning into the healthy eating trend that should probably be concerned about the rise of GLP-1 usage.

Researchers at Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen published a study in JAMA Network Open, which tracked just under 2,000 participants who volunteered to share their grocery receipt data for at least one year before and one year after a specific date.

One quarter of the participants had been prescribed and were regularly using a GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA), while the other three quarters had not. At a ratio of 1:3, receipt data was collected from either a year before or after the date the participant started taking GLP-1RA, or a date that matched it in the case of the non-users.

According to the study, the researchers “focused on average energy density in kcal per 100 g and nutrients per 100 g of food, including sugar, carbohydrates, saturated fat, and protein, before versus after GLP-1RA initiation.”

They found the GLP-1RA users generally began purchasing healthier foods over the year following the beginning of their prescription. the average energy density of their food shrank from about 209 kcal per 100 grams to around 207. Sugar, carb, and saturated fat content dipped slightly, while protein consumption rose. Unprocessed food consumption rose slightly, and ultra-processed food consumption dipped.

The study participants who weren’t on GLP-1RA documented no meaningful change in the nutritional value of their grocery purchases.

Shortly after Stake reported the other day that the Artemis II launch window was pushed back a few days, NASA announced it would actually be pushed back a few weeks.

The mission crew were released from quarantine in light of the announcement, and dreams of a Super Bowl Sunday launch were shattered, due to a hydrogen leak detected during a dress rehearsal for take off.

"With the conclusion of the wet dress rehearsal today, we are moving off the February launch window and targeting March for the earliest possible launch of Artemis II," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post on X.

"We fully anticipated encountering challenges," he said. "That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success."

The dress rehearsal had actually only been delayed by the initial leak, which engineers were able to troubleshoot. However, at just over T-minus five minutes, the leak was detected again, and NASA stopped the clock fully.

"The team will fully review the data, troubleshoot each issue encountered during WDR, make the necessary repairs, and return to testing," Isaacman said. "We expect to conduct an additional wet dress rehearsal and then target the March window."

According to Harvard Business grad and author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, Gorick Ng, hard work isn’t enough to be successful.

If you had the tools to get into the college of your choice, working hard was probably enough to succeed academically. However, in the real world—as many of us have found out over the years—there’s no blueprint, instruction manual, or anyone as invested in our success as we are.

That’s what Ng tried to provide for in his book, and with the hundreds of people he’s spoken with or interviewed, from students to Fortune 500 executives. In his mind, the “secret handshake” the uber successful seem to have with each other is that they know about the “20 rules” and “3 Cs.”

Competence, commitment, and compatibility are key to anyone rising in the ranks of any hierarchical business system, he says. Sure, you work hard; but are you demonstrating the ability to work effectively? Do you enjoy doing it? Do you work well with others? The answer is usually yes for the ultra successful; you have to do it well, you have to love doing it, and your effectiveness has to be able to elevate a team.

You can read more about Ng’s framework here, including some of the 20 rules.

Say my name

It’s time for the name game in today’s trivia. That’s right, all our questions are songs about names. You name it, we got it 🤣

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Friday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*