The Rise And Fall Of 17 American Industries

Key Takeaways

America used to produce almost all of its own garlic but when cheaper Chinese bulbs flooded in most us producers went bankrupt and 90% of the shrimp Americans eat today comes from other countries that's one of the toughest jobs you could ever do and if you're not getting your dos for it why do it so what went wrong in these American Industries and can they recover Christopher ranch produces more than half of all garlic grown in the United States here its crops span an area about half the size of Manhattan in other words 1 billion bulbs of garlic that's Ken Christopher grandson of the original Christopher who gave the ranch its name in 1956 when he first started growing garlic on just 10 acres garlic is an asexual plant it's essentially a clone of itself year after year you're going to be guaranteed to have the same flavor profile throughout the decades and so today we can enjoy the same Italian bold y flavor that my grandfather first selected 60 years ago they plant all of it in November bulbs grow underground over the span of 9 months once they're ready Farmers have about a month to dig everything up by hand machines would rip the Garlic's thin layers of skin making it harder to sell and quicker to rot there simply is no automated process uh the hand selection process Remains the best they'll ripen between June and August so the company hires an extra 3,000 workers for just those few months American farmers often struggle to recruit people for this work so the ranch hires workers from Mexico on temporary agricultural visas one problem you're going to find with a lot of farmers in this area is labor how can we possibly get enough people to produce the food that Americans eat and it takes hundreds more hands at Giant warehouses like these to get produce like garlic store ready it's critical to get it into one of these rooms as fast as we can did I get it off the railing each one of 100 million pounds wherever they're grown in California all come home to here workers wheel it all in in these 2000 lb bins it's 90° in here heat loosens up the Skins so these scraps can fall [Music] off then the garlic goes onto this conveyor belt because garlic is a root crop sometimes you're going to have some staining all around the skins and it's our job to make it give that perfect appearance that you're used to at the market Ken runs sales for the ranch and checks that all the bulbs look packaged pretty the crew's job is to go through and physically clean every single one of these bulbs every day workers inspect about 200 100,000 lb worth then machines sort the bulbs into seven groups depending on their size the smallest bulbs fall through these tight chains as the links get bigger they let in bigger bulbs you're going to have the largest bulbs coming here on the left lanes and as we go to the middle Lanes we'll have the middle siiz bulbs and on the far right we're going to have the smallest bulbs that we're going to pack for our customers restaurants usually go for the big ones those have larger cloves they're easier to chop into finer pieces and give chefs more control over how garlicky their food tastes different customers require different kinds of garlic some customers want very large bulbs some customers want smaller bulbs and sleeves some customers want garlic and display tray some customers want their garlic and 30 lb boxes but only the smoothest cleanest bulbs will make it into the shipments that leave this Warehouse Christopher ranch says that's only about 60% of all the garlic they harvest the rest will get processed in another room but we'll get back to that another crew checks for any lingering dirty skin that might make the bulbs less valuable and then essentially the final part is they're just cleaning and then it goes into a box and this is going to be found in retailers starting next week about 5% of the garlic Christopher ranch produces leaves the country going to Canada Japan Mexico or New Zealand All the Rest stays in the US our business model will split into retail food service and Industrial the company ships these boxes off to Major chains like Costco Kroger Trader Joe's and Safeway across all 50 states in some of our relationships with companies like Blue Apron they've mentioned that garlic is the one constant they have in every single box of product they ship out Nationwide on a typical day they'll fill seven semi- trucks with garlic but things were different when Ken's grandfather started the company in 1956 when he only sold to a produce market in San Francisco when he started he was almost a joke in town garlic was very much a niche crop a niche vegetable the kind of garlic that's popular in the US today was brought over by Spanish explorers in the 1500s but it wasn't until Italian immigrants came to California in the late 1800s that the crop found its home in Gilroy Wellen in the 1950s it was most mostly popular among immigrant communities that faced discrimination only Niche markets carried the vegetable and it stayed out of the mainstream for decades things started to change in the late 80s when American scientists confirmed the ingredient was really good for you it contains a natural antibiotic called Allison which can help prevent blood clots garlic became newsworthy and its popularity continued to grow so so you take a whole garlic head like that and you know it takes a long time to take each clove off and peel it America's gotten a whole lot more diverse so as America's cultural palletes become more diverse garlics move from being very side plate to being center plate in the 1990s garlic finally became one of the most produced crops in America the only problem was that the white skins stain easily so a lot of it was hard to sell because Americans wouldn't buy bulbs that didn't look perfect that's where Ken's grandfather Don saw an opportunity because garlic is so time and labor intensive to grow we want to find a home for every single pound Christopher ranch was the first company in America to sell the crop peeled they invented this machine that could peel hundreds of cloves in minutes and produce garlic Americans were willing to pay 50% more for it gave the ranch an edge over its American competitors within the first few years peeled garlic accounted for 10% of Christopher ranch's Revenue today their machines peel more than a million pounds of garlic every week first the bruised up bulbs go into these giant drums called crackers which use rubber rollers to break them down into cloves then a 60 person crew sorts them again chucking out the completely rotten ones and the pretty guys they go into a special room giant machines portion the cloves into cups and blast them with compressed air most peelers do that at around 116 lb per square in that's about 3 to four times the air pressure of a car tire machines whip the garlic around at 1200 revolutions per minute and those stubborn shells fly right off they upgrade their machines every few years their newest one can peel 100,000 lb of garlic in an 8 hour shift these computers can identify which cloves are going to be okay for our final pack they're going to identify where the gross defects are they're going to identify Sunburn and using automation we can fire small streams of air kick out the bad cloves and let the good ones go by in effect saving a whole lot on labor costs today peeled garlic accounts for 40% of the company's Revenue But Ken says they've constantly looked for new ways to keep up with growing competition from China the US started to import cheap garlic from China shortly after the Cold War but Chinese bulbs sold for almost 50% less than American ones the US government accused Chinese producers of trying to gain a monopoly by selling garlic for less than what it takes to grow it also known as dumping by the mid 90s Christopher ranch sales had fallen by half and the company started laying off workers the US Government tried to control it with anti-dumping duties in 1994 but Chinese Imports continued and by 2004 the US was importing over half of the garlic it consumed between 2001 and 2005 Christopher ranch had slashed the land it farmed by 40% and during this period the US garlic industry was losing an estimated $600 million to Chinese Imports meanwhile in China garlic was beating gold stocks becoming the country's most lucrative asset before the 1990s nearly all the garlic consumed in America was grown in America there used to be 12 commercial garlic growers in the country now we're down to three and Ken often spoke about it even on TV as seen in this clip he's just back from Washington DC where he lobbied to help win a new 10% tariff on Chinese garlic one of the hardest things I've ever done was actually going to DC and testifying and offering evidence that the Chinese continue to impact and negatively hurt the domestic Arctic industry in 2018 then US president Donald Trump imposed a 10% tariff on garlic coming from China that tariff Rose to 25% in 2019 and President Biden has kept them in place in the past decade China Imports dropped overall but the country remains America's Main foreign supplier tariffs are applied before it even enters the country so we found that they were incredibly effective keeping the company profitable has required constant Innovation though over the years they've launched dozens of new products that Americans would pay more for like minced crushed pickled or chopped garlic we've really had to upgrade our skill set in that respect you're not always going to get perfect bulbs like the one you see here we try to use every piece that we can and this facility churns out 100,000 lb of roasted garlic every week accounting for 5% of the company's sales we're going to have a two-sided convection oven heat up the garlic to about 250° we kind of see through a layer of garlic then they put it on these fans for 30 minutes oh sorry I didn't think where we were going it goes into this cooler next it gets the temperature down to about 40° F which helps make the garlic shelf stable and ready to ship across the country they pack some of it into these 30 lb boxes and send it off to their warehouse to store their robots can portion out and seal up to 500 packages every hour in a single day Christopher ranch cranks out about 200,000 lb of garlic they also sell garlic skins to local farmers as animal feed some of our garlic may not be perfect for restaurants and so we're going to find a new home for it but Ken says to stay competitive they also had to sell Chinese garlic but not under the Christopher ranch name and the packaging doesn't say grown in California like these boxes do if you want to zoom on this this is kind of the most important in 2018 a Netflix documentary rotten accused the company of selling Chinese garlic peeled by prisoners under its own name Christopher ranch has denied those allegations they made a critical mistake this is a streaming and living thing that continues to impact our brand and our business we are an ethical company uh we're a company that strives to be the best and we only work with suppliers that bring it into this country and that have the same certifications and documentations that we'd expect of our garlic today Chinese garlic accounts for about 8 to 10% of the company's Revenue but American garlic is still the choice of all chefs who participate in the California Garlic Festival one of the biggest garlic fairs in the US ooh garlic Julie Linburg has been the head chef of the event since 2022 she bought 300 lb of garlic from Christopher ranch to prepare food for 3 Days California garlic is a bit sweeter when you flip it over if you see that brown hairy bottom you know it's out of our ground our beautiful soil if it's nice and bleached and flat you know it came from somewhere else very very far away Julie runs a team of 40 kitchen staff at the official Festival tent let's open it all the way so when they get here it's a fast process she got here at 6:30 in the morning to prep before thousands of Festival goers start arriving at noon no frying we have no customers everything's got to be fresh fresh fresh all day they'll prepare nothing but the two signature dishes created by Julie herself garlic fries and garlic bread it may sound simple but she's thought of every detail carefully our special concoction and then they will put parm and or bacon Julie uses 200 lb of Parmesan imported only from Italy make sure we're getting some of this from the bottom okay how much garlic is in that a lot can I say a lot so this is where the garlic bread happens we're toasting it on a Char boiler in 3 days they go through about 600 loaves of soft French bread from a local bakery and 300 lb of butter once it gets nice and toasty comes over here and it gets dipped in this special concoction that smells just a little bit like garlic it's garlic and butter and some other things she uses pre-minced garlic she buys from Christopher ranch as a base and add some fresh ground on top and then we wrap it and here is an order of garlic bread smell a vision I don't know if the camera captures that but then we will rent it by the boss make sure it's the right size one every new batch needs to be approved by Tony noet small the organizer of the festival little SP Tony's in charge of the garlic pesto pasta a recipe he learned from his Italian grandmother this ain't McDonald's here this is know of stuff back at the ranch in the old days you know so I enjoy cooking and uh that way I get to eatat Tony Farms walnuts but everyone here knows him as the guy who saved the Garlic Festival in California we heard a few years ago that the Garlic Festival was going to close and it's been the longest running festival here in California well that's when I stepped in and said we're going to continue to keep the Garlic Festival alive the city of Gilroy used to run the largest Garlic Festival but decided to drop it in 2022 3 years earlier a mass shooting at the festival caused insurance rates to spike and the covid-19 pandemic slashed turnout in 2020 a year after that it was a legacy that we thought we couldn't let go I mean it's just part of our life cycle here in California and we believe in local business local products that's very important keeping our local economies going though this is technically a different Festival Tony invested more than half a million dollars out of his own pocket to continue the tradition near its former home in Gilroy it's important for agriculture the community the people that there's so many people involved in agriculture throughout California throughout the world Julie wave to the camera hey everybody without her this wouldn't go she gives me orders and I think I'm the boss now she's the boss in the kitchen this year nearly 16,000 people attended the festival more than double the attendance in 2023 Cali garlic alley is open for business follow the smell garlic fries garlic bread and how about some garlic pasta garlic garlic garlic that's how what I how I grew up as a Filipino family my mom cooks everything with garlic so and it keeps the vampires away yeah about 150 vendors from all over the State signed up using California garlic on chicken all right here's the magic more garlic pork our famous pork belly and even honey and butter would you guys like to try a free sample you like it it would be a sad sad place to be without garlic yes m well I'm adding it right now one vendor here even puts garlic in ice cream ice cream ice cream it's different yeah he's Italian so they eat a lot of garlic and in my culture which is Cambodian we eat a lot of garlics too but to infuse it into an ice cream it's amazing I love it I'm not sure but some Festival goers told us it wasn't just about buying local it's amazing it has healing properties it's very good for your body it acts like an antibiotic I garlic in the morning in the afternoon so I have to be careful when I'm engaging with people cuz they'll smell they'll smell the garlic before they see me Ken says these are the customers who will keep the business going we're finding that Americans want the safest and healthiest product for them and their family chher Ranch has its own tent here selling minced peeled and organic bulbs the company used to supply all the garlic for the original Festival back in Gilroy since co-founding it in 1979 nowadays other producers participate too but Ken says organic only recently became a trend here about 10 years ago we started really investing in our organic program and since then we scaled up they started off with about a million pounds of organic garlic which was grown without pesti pides fertilizers or hormones that often means producing it takes more work and the garlic has a greater chance at rotting which is part of what makes organic more expensive but Americans have been buying more of it anyway today Christopher ranch grows 15 million pounds of organic garlic about 20% of its annual crop we found that to be our best profit Martian Center as inflation goes up as the cost of Labor goes up as we have more scarcity for land and water really pivoting towards Organics and a more high-end heirloom program is going to be the path forward as for the produce Christopher ranch doesn't sell during the harvest season each one of the rooms behind me we're going to store millions of pounds of garlic from our Harvest and as you can see we have garlic that was harvested at the end of June of 2023 so last week we just opened up the room behind me and the garlic is every good as you could hope for the garlic you see here essentially goes to sleep for 12 months they can pull garlic from here all year you can remove the oxygen from the room lower the temperature and keep your product safe but Ken says farming is always a gamble over the past decade droughts in California have made it harder to grow in the area and Silicon Valley is expanding making land a lot more expensive than it used to be meanwhile America's appetite for garlic is still growing the country consumed over $4.5 billion worth in 2023 and Ken says regardless of how or where his Ranch harvests it he's confident homegrown garlic will never go away how important is garlic to your family garlic means nothing to no garlic is a part of our DNA it's part of our culture it's part of who we are it's an inspiration for our whole family shrimp is the most consumed Seafood in the United States and in Louisiana it's big business the wildc crustations bring in about $1.3 billion for the state every year but for the last few years shrimpers have been hit with a perfect storm of rising fuel costs and rock bottom prices that's one of the toughest jobs you could ever do and if you're not getting your dues for it why do it producers say a flood of Cheaper imported shrimp from India and Ecuador is sinking Louisiana's industry but there's no way to feed America's skyrocketing demand without Imports which make up 90% of the shrimp the US consumes up against these headwinds companies up and down Louisiana's supply chain are closing up shop if you worked hard and you did the right thing you could become a millionaire in the 80s and the 9 now you can barely make a living so how did the industry get this bad and is it too late to save it [Music] New Orleans Chef Justin Kennedy insists on buying only wild shrimp caught by fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico we have never fried a foreign shrimp and ever serve it to our customer I'm never even look at it as an option he runs Parkway Bakery and Tavern a New Orleans fixture since 1911 famous for these massive poboys it's just one of those perfect little things that bring all walks of life together and damn if it's a sandwich you know he can go through 3,00 th000 lbs of shrimp a week so what this is is a a sink that we just have chilled water pipe to and uh it's it's just a quick thaw uh Tha out our seafood and if you look at them they're peeled we take that vein out because it's it's a it's a cleaner shrimp it butterflies it a little bit more to kind of hold the batter and just make it a better bite I'm going to scoop a heaping pile of it up so we're going to dust this up he coats them in only corn flour we just use the natural juices and moisture from the shrimp to pick up that flour you lightly lightly shake that off 350° that's pure vegetable oil this one right here is getting that golden brown color right looking like little baby Fried Chicken watch this you break that open look at that look at that little coating look at that Louisiana white meat in there you know you can't you can't get no better than that that shrimp will eventually meet one of these giant loaves I think I'm almost uh I'm almost two breads tall let's see the French people kind of laugh at it cuz we call it French bread but it's New Orleans French bread this ain't French bread Justin hits the bread with some mayo lettuce and tomato and then we start dealing the shrimp two handfuls oh no we put more in that yeah I mean we four handfuls it's a big sand sandwich but you you you'll notice when you see this thing laid out in front of you you'll be like how am I going to eat all that and then all of a sudden it's gone go we do one fold tuck these in wraping we're going we're going to put one more on there there you go Parkway Bakery shrimp P boy where's that where's that going now in my belly [Laughter] baby about a thousand people line up every day for these sandwiches and Justin credits local shrimp for his award-winning recipe you know I I've had people uh try to sample me foreign the batter won't stick on it it's translucent when you cook it you never see this pretty white meat it still looks clear it still looks like this when you cook it but this Louisiana shrimp's true and true every time can't beat him Justin gets most of his shrimp from this Factory right up the road Kristen bomber is one of the few processors left in the area who only works with golf shrimp just like his family has for over 130 years we've definitely seen a lot of processors go out of business it's become more of a volume game because the margins are so tight his company processes 30 million pounds of shrimp annually so what we're doing is easy peeling shrimps we're hand feeding it into a machine that puts a that splits the back of the shell cuts the shell open and then it allows when you cook it more flavor to get into the shrimp as well as making it easier to peel Kristen's team flash freezes all the crustations in this room that's how they're able to transport the shrimp all over the country so they're picking shrimp for the second time to make sure they get all the defects out of it before it goes up this sh s separates the pieces so they won't stick together when they're frozen then they take a trip down this tunnel at- 400° F and after the shrimp hits the liquid nitrogen it forms a crust on the shrimp and then it moves slowly through the belt to freeze from the outside in don't stick your finger unless you have a warrant that you want to bur up this machine portions the seafood into 5 lb bags of about 15 pieces each bag gets a traceability bar code link it all the way back to the shrimp do that g this processed product comes out to anywhere from 7 to $10 a pound depending on the season with inflation everything is getting more and more expensive and running these processing plants and all this moving equipment and avoiding breakdowns takes a lot of capital people have been fishing and processing this shrimp in Louisiana for centuries from cjun fishermen to the indigenous people of theed United hom nation in the 1800s shrimp was a staple food of the poor and sellers couldn't transport it far because shrimp spoiled so easily in the Louisiana heat that was until the mid 1800s when several advancements brought shrimp beyond the local scene Chinese immigrants introduced traditional drying techniques that could preserve the shrimp and the first canning Factory in New Orleans opened up in 1875 but fresh shrimp transported on Ice was expensive so it took on a reputation as a luxury item tossed into shrimp salads and perched in cocktails by the 1950s techniques to freeze shrimp and new refrigerated trucks sealed the deal they allowed for seafood delivery as far away as the east coast and Chicago this was about the time that the shrimp Imports into the US from Mexico and then India began to take off by 1970 demand across the US had nearly tripled and domestic shrimpers caught more to keep up with Louisiana leading the pack by the 9s the state's shrimp and shellfish generated nearly $2 billion and supported 22,000 jobs and come the turn of the century shrimp became the most consumed Seafood in America at the same time new tech helped farms in Asia and South America raise a lot more shrimp in less than a decade farming production skyrocketed nearly 200% overtaking Global catches of wild shrimp in 2023 the us imported 1.7 billion pounds nearly as much as its population consumes and these Imports are often cheaper than wild caught us shrimp that's because labor costs are lower in big shrimp farming countries like India and Ecuador and their governments have subsidized these operations in the US domestic shrimp prices have dropped to compete with the low import prices meanwhile shrimpers like Captain Lonnie Mayu Jr are facing sky rocketing costs of operating a boat you're wasting Fuel and Ice if you don't catch anything since the 1980s he says a block of ice has gone from $14 to $26 today a set of new Nets more than doubled and a gallon of gas more than tripled in price at 82 years old Lonnie who goes by Knuckles hasn't given up trolling these Waters even after six decades starting in May he heads out to catch Brown shrimp usually around Sunset you have to go do your homework so and know where they're going to be at he works independently like most of the shrimpers here right about there a little too far during the day Brown shrimp may bury themselves in the sediment to hide from predators but after dark they often come out and roam in shallow water Knuckles and his duck hand Steve drop these nets that skim the top of the water we're not dragging anything on the bottom he positions himself against the current so the shrimp flow right into his Nets the shrimp are not like fish they can't really swim that great they take the they take a ride on a current Knuckles and Steve will pick out and keep just the shrimp sea turtles have an escape hatch in the net and other animals get thrown back into the sea where some dolphins are waiting to Chow Down on them if we don't pick up and that favor often enough they'll take and bite it out the net they can literally rip a a 4ft hole in it which is going to take a lot of time to fix like this one Knuckles pulls up the net so he can sew it closed you're going to lose everything you know you're going to be working for literally nothing this work can be grueling some shrimpers have big enough vessels they can stay out for weeks at a time Knuckles has a smaller boat so he fishes just until morning but it keeps you in shape but even after all this work there's a chance they could have a bad run tonight most of the Nets were full of catfish oo catfish you see the belly they full of shrimp full of shrimp they went in the that ate all the shrimp ain't got a pound of shrimp it's all catfish I'm going try pushing up going a little further up in the lake or something Knuckles spent $45,000 buying and fixing up his boat it was meant to be his ticket to retirement but now he's unsure that plan will work you know for me to get out the business I got to sell it I got no retirement but I can't sell a boat can't give it away nobody wants it and most shrimpers agree it's getting harder to justify going out for this boat to leave the dock is going to cost me over $1,000 they killing us the farmers that's killing us right now nobody want to do it no more because they're struggling Molina Chie has been fishing for 8 years like 60% of the state Shrimp Boat Owners she and her husband are originally from Southeast Asia with our education there's nothing else we could do besides fishermen if especially like me and my husband like in our were mid-50 melen and her husband weren't able to go to college but they hoped shrimping would help their kids do the opposite it's not enough to pay especially when you have two kids in college you're struggling doc owners are feeling the impact too cuz if we don't bring no shrimp they don't make no money either you know when the shrimp boats go out they going to kill the dots too that's a pretty shrimp Dean Bard's family has been buying and selling local shrimp for five generations uh I was born in a shrimp dock when I was a baby they used to put me in a shrimp box his dock 2 hours south of New Orleans was once one of the biggest shrimp suppliers in the country but last year he paid the lowest prices he ever has for the larger shrimp 30 something years ago they went down from $5 to $130 that's because he's selling it for so little to the peeling factories right now is the cheapest I ever seen in my life I'm sick to my stomach I ain't never seen nothing like this never never in my life seen it this bad after six decades in the industry Dean no stranger to financial challenges from the 2010 BP oil spill to big storms his dock had $2 million in Damages after hurricane idah hit in 2021 where you standing right there wasn't even there after the storm I mean I've rebuil this building at least eight nine times he never fixed up this part of his marina oh it bring tears to you eyes I mean everything you work for all your life is gone but Imports he says have done even more damage we're directly correlated with Imports if a completely processed product is coming in for just over $4 a pound uh that means our dock side prices have to be lower the processes prices are lower so to be able to try to get that market share and keep it so you're making the same amount of money that you would in 2000 but 22 years later fewer boats can afford to go out so less shrimp is landing on Dean's dock we down to right under 20% of what we normally are for this time of the year on this day we visited in May 2023 not a single Shrimp Boat pulled up to unload it ain't going to last too much longer like this thank God I'm almost 65 years old and I ain't got no kids in this business Dean estimates that 96% of the docks operating when he started out have since closed down I feel bad for the people because I know once I'm gone they're going to have to drive 50 60 70 Mi to go sell their product just like Knuckles when Dean retires he doesn't think anyone will buy the company nobody can afford to take it over the property is word more into [Music] business Louisiana still hauls in the most shrimp of any US state over 70 million pound in 2023 but that's a small fraction the roughly 2 billion pounds the US consumes the American Landings of shrimp cannot cover the overall consumption of shrimp nearly 90% of the shrimp Americans eat is imported and much of it is sourced using controversial practices in 2021 an International Trade Commission analysis indicated that shrimp might be the US seafood market most affected by illegal fishing like this boat off the coast of Gambia it had an illegal undersized net and although the shrimp was labeled sustainable 99.9% of the seafood on board were other species like sharks and octopuses and a lot of time that by catch dies on the deck and just gets thrown back into the ocean but the majority of the shrimp the US Imports is farm raised a lot of our shrimp comes from India where there are huge environmental concerns as well as ongoing allegations of Human Rights abuses and for labor a 2024 Associated Press report found women in the Indian state of Andra PES were peeling frozen shrimp without protective gear which can lead to frostbite it's kept incredibly cold to keep bacteria from proliferating I don't know about you but I don't want to hold ice cubes in my hand all day while I'm also trying to do very Nimble work with my fingers one of the huge issues is that these shrimp Farms are isol olated they're far out on the coast you know there's not OSHA there's no one protecting and making sure that the conditions are safe but they have few other options for work a lot of times when these aquaculture facilities are built other economic resources in these areas [Music] disappear [Music] for arugula baby is still trying to pay off an $8,500 loan she took out when her son was dying of liver disease since he passed she's been raising her grandchildren alone to get to the peeling shed she has to pay for transportation and 25 cents to a recruiter she earns below $4 every day $2 under the country's minimum wage a lot of times we will see um a woman being threatened for her own safety or her family safety unless she works unless she meets certain quotas beyond the human cost there's also an environmental one in India most of the Farms are along coastlines where water is is plentiful and Mangrove forests Thrive those mangroves go through deforestation they're pulled out they're blown up with dynamite so we lose that Nursery habitat for other sea creatures and we lose our Coastline protection when that happens shrimp can have 10 times the carbon footprint of beef next these really big ponds are dug into the land the shrimp live in these ponds chemicals and excrement from shrimp pens can leech out into surrounding environments they can cause algae blooms and dead zones disrupt ecosystems and contaminate water shrim farms around the world have been criticized for using antibiotics to treat illness in their ponds if you've ever rid the subway home at rush hour you know how it is you're in tight you're squeezed in tight there's great opportunities for sickness to spread and it's that exact same situation in these ponds which is why antibiotic use is so incredibly High that overexposure can lead to antimicrobial resistant super bugs a health concern that's estimated to have caused nearly 1.3 million deaths around the world in 2019 and some antibiotics like nitrofurans have been linked to liver damage and cancer in the US and European Union almost all of these kinds of drugs are banned so you could end up eating something that's illegal here in 2023 the US Food and Drug Administration turned away weigh 51 shipments of shrimp because of banned antibiotics but the organization checks just about 2% of imports so what happens with that other 96 to 98% of seafood that's coming in the major health concern here is the lack of testing of imported shrimp the amount of baned substances that may be carried in the shrimp a 2017 LSU study found that 30 out of 42 samples tested from stores around Baton Rouge had antibiotics or antimicrobials and that's largely due to the fact that the FDA is responsible for more than 50 million Imports annually and there's just not enough work power to inspect everything coming in in the last year the US Department of Commerce has imposed duties on shrimp from India Vietnam and Ecuador but these efforts Louisiana and shrimpers tell us haven't been enough to help their incomes imported shrimp is still flooding the market that's why locals like Kristen have been advocating for more regulation he's a part of the Louisiana shrimp task force which works with the state government on long-term Solutions we need country of origin labeling on restaurant menus so at least when people buy they're buying and making a choice in 2019 the Louisiana legislature passed a law requiring restaurants to disclose if their shrimp is imported but some restaurants still passed off imported as domestic the state's health department has handed down 2600 violations since the law went into effect but no restaurants were ever fined in May 2024 the governor signed a bill for heavier fines on restaurants that mislabel Seafood if they're busted they could be fined up to $2,000 while Justin says he'll never touch imported shrimp he can understand why restaurants turn to it when the local stuff gets expensive they're looking for a good product that will get the register to ring and and so you can't blame them either with Doc prices so low he paid $4 a pound in 2023 almost half of what he was paying 2 years ago I understand that when I get a cheap price I know the the shrimpers out there in the boats are probably getting hammered but if it went back to $7 a pound I'd still buy it I just had to go up on my price a pricey says he's lucky his customers would probably pay you're talking to one of the B busiest pboy shops in the city what about the corner stores who are just living from day to day there has to be some kind of medium I just hope it'll work itself out this has been little small holes pecking away for 30 40 50 60 years you know and it's yeah it's coming where uh-oh it's starting to take water we're going down you know in this in the seafood industry [Music] the fact is the US eats so much shrimp that the stuff caught in the Gulf could never cover it all so Farm crustations will probably always fill that Gap got the import we can't Supply the whole United States but put a quote on it it has to come down from Washington it has to be some work done up there with like regulating the import Dean wants federal assistance for shrimpers yeah there there wouldn't be a farmer left in business if they had to live like we live they being subsidized for it shrimpers should be considered farmers of the sea but we not more inspections of seafood at us ports and better traceability of shrimp from boat to Plate would also help but some experts say it comes down to better consumer awareness of the health benefits of wild cut shrimp over Farms like how the salmon industry got people to pay more for wild CAU thanks to messaging that it was more nutrient dense if people would know exactly what they're buying and they know exactly what they're feeding their kids they wouldn't mind paying a couple of Cent more for for a product that don't have antibiotics in the grocery store aisle don't be fooled by tricky labeling like product of USA or prepared in the USA that could be referring to where the shrimp was last processed not necessarily where it was caught flip to the back of the package and look for the phrase farm raised or wild cot in followed by a country name that should tell you where it's from purchase us farmed or us wildau shrimp in the US Farm shrimp are held to very strict regulations in regards to what antibiotics they can use and how much and when you're at a restaurant I always ask where is that shrimp from and if that restaurant can't answer that then I don't order it or maybe we should just eat a little less shrimp and take it back to being a special occasion item backed by consumer awareness maybe then shrimpers can save their sinking ship we have to have it and we will always have it Parkway Bakery will always have Louisiana shrimp I'll get on a boat my damn s you know this is the kitchen behind America's largest Buffet Shady Maple in Pennsylvania serves about 1 .2 million people a year there's 20 trays every piece has to be laid out individually customers travel from all over the country to Chow Down on this 200t Buffet you come here you eat until you start laughing oh my God I don't even have hand it will set you back just $16 on a Saturday morning I feel like it just sums up American culture so well lots of cheap food come on into Old Country Buffet all you can eats like this used to be all the rage across the US even big chains like Pizza Hut and KFC got in on the trend but especially in the last decade buffets have stumbled their US market size is down roughly 30% since 2012 but this place Shady Maple has thrived on average 4,000 people come here every day to eat so what happened to the All-American all you can eat and why Against All Odds has Shady Maple kept the big business of Buffets alive now that crispy I met with sumers Smith Shady Maples food quality manager bright and early on a Saturday morning good morning morning to get to you got a little maze [Music] yeah the cook start prep at 4:00 a.m. we'll go through about 7 to 750 uh lbs of bacon Saturdays are their busiest days as they race to prep for 8,000 people going to be going that one oh the energy is high it's like our Super Bowl the chefs cook a ton of different dishes from American to Pennsylvania Dutch Fair honoring the menonite and amus traditions of the area like this local delicacy called scrapple liver and it's it's ground up at the frier station they crisp up sausage patties and links on the griddles chefs drop hundreds of Pancakes this line is for egg dishes summer and her team go through over 700 eggs for a Saturday breakfast on the other side of the kitchen this team starts cutting veggies for lunch they'll set up this Chopper the broccoli cauliflower they chop by hand it's a lot of prep by 8: a.m. the line wrapped around the Lobby and I was getting a little hungry so it was time to check out the buffet myself hi uh just one just one today that is going to be 1769 okay gocha is there a time limit there is not a time limit you can stay as long as you'd like just if you want to stay past 11:00 that's when we switch over to our lunch um Buffet there you go your chcken head down there you can get seated by a Hostess um and they'll let you know how everything works thank you so much didn't can I get an omet with everything on it one chocolate chip thank you oh yeah this is like childhood right here jiggle scrapple she said this was a Pennsylvania favorite never have too much bacon fries you need a little lime bacon to hold you over for the table bacon you know I have no shame let's go all right got the first round [Music] the cinnamon syrup was too much that is the thickest omelette I'm going to crush it in like 30 seconds flat I'm going to try the Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple it's just like it's literally just a Patty of like pork she said livers in it all that stuff baked French toast M okay that's good I'm going to try this whoopy [Music] pie oh man I'm covered in chocolate flip the slip over when you're finished dining and no tipping please I mean look at this spread like if you wanted to try everything you're you're inevitably not going to be able to finish it all what's really mind-boggling all of this was just $16 and those affordable prices are why Americans fell in love with buffets to begin with buffets can be traced back to 18th century Sweden where elites feasted on large spreads called smorgus boards around the same time the French laid out fancy meals of their own that's actually where we got the name for Buffet after the French word for sideboard where the food was served but it was a Las Vegas casino manager who brought the idea to the American masses in 1946 with a 24-hour buffet that cost just a dollar and that was something that didn't make him a lot of money herbs buffet was meant to attract people there and then they would stay and eat and then eventually Gamble and that's where the casino made its money in the 1970s Buffet chains started to spread across the US Golden Corral delightful at Old Country Buffet kids always get what they want the restaurants could keep meal prices affordable because they had heavy foot traffic and low labor costs doesn't take very many people to run a Golden Corral compared to a fancy restaurant there weren't as many servers and a smaller kitchen staff cooked in big batches while a chef at a sitdown restaurant can cook for 25 people in an hour a buffet Chef can serve 200 the profit margins at these places were razor thin but it is definitely something that gets consumers in the door and for a lot of restaurants that's challenge number one by the 1980s these buffets were roaring success a key part of the American dream is Having excess right having lots of stuff and in a way and all you can eat buffet fits perfectly in with that you know Wendy super bar is great for families because there's something for everyone the concept was so successful that big Brands like KFC and Wendy's hopped in on the trend I went to Pizza Hut regularly in high school for the buffet uh because it was cool as a high school kid to Gorge yourself with pizza Ka Maples Founders started the buffet at the height of all you can eats in 1985 from a small roadside veggie stand in the 60s their new 300 seat Buffet concept was a quick hit 1 and 1/2 hour weights were common but soon all you can eat stumbled across the country in the era of fad diets customers opted for healthier options then into the 9s especially there are a number of Fairly high-profile incidents um involving kind of mass food poisoning at these places in 2000 a Milwaukee Sizzler was responsible for hundreds of probable eoli cases in 2003 a Chi-Chi in Pittsburgh was the site of at the time the largest hepatitis A outbreak in US history bad green onions infected 660 people and killed four in 2010 a man got salmonella from an Old Country Buffet in Wyoming the court ordered the chain to pay him million in Damages when you have enough stories in the news about people getting food poisoning from these places that affects public perception and people will go elsewhere and it's been downhill ever since between 1998 and 2017 more than 1300 All You Can Eat restaurants in the US closed down then came the coron virus pandemic it's hard to imagine a more lethal blow to all you can eat buffets than Co everyone takes from the same trays and puts it on their plate there's a bunch of silverware sitting out it's all communal in a sense and I don't want to eat food that maybe other people have sneezed on that's just gross Sizzler one of the biggest Buffet chains in the US announced bankruptcy in September 2020 the following year the parent company of Old Country Buffet did the same the pandemic shook Shady Maple too we had to close here for over 5 months we reopen then we had to close again between Thanksgiving and Christmas they started doing takeout but what really kept the company afloat summer says was the Shady Maple grocery store behind the buffet which brought in thousands of customers every day but since 2021 Shady Maples Buffet business has come back with roaring success the last two years have been our best years ever and we're continuing to thrive Shady Maple's reputation for making fresh food has kept people coming back there is is this notion that everything is freshh or homemade that's a different kind of proposition than a cce's or golden [Music] carel instead of using pre-made mixes Chef Brian nagley whips up the bamel sauce for the mac and cheese from scratch using milk and shredded cheddar he also makes the stuffing or filling as the Pennsylvania Dutch call it by hand following the Founder's original recipe he mixes 10 lb of butter with red cubes you can feel it what I mean you feel it with your hands to keep food fresh the staff monitors the buffet closely and orders more when a tray is close to running out so this is our ordering system that we order the food here that it goes back to the fryer aisle in the cooks departmenta the friers get the ticket this one for fried shrimp and fill the order as quickly as possible that ticket stays with the batch back through the order window but while an order of fried shrimp might take Chef's 2 minutes to fill the Fried Chicken takes 30 minutes he's putting a load of chicken in his name is tungsten and then after he puts it in we have them programmed in 18 minutes it takes for fried chicken what's your nickname son he handome man cuz he thinks he's hand handsome he calls me boss lady tongon dunks and Brads every piece by hand each order has 60 pieces so he's always juggling multiple batches at once and some chicken yes me' cook John plot Cooks the veggies they chopped earlier [Music] what did you just put in cabbage 20 yes ma'am cabbage and then when it comes out we throw some of our brown butter and cornflake mixture on top of it summer this one just froze again most restaurants have a shut down and we don't we keep going from the moment we open at 7:00 a.m. till we close at 7:30 so the equipment sometimes gets tired like everybody else does down the aisle John jumps in to make potatoes we mix our mashed potatoes for 5 minutes if you do it under they don't turn out if you do it over they don't turn out there is a science to it at the end of the aisle chefs pull the briskets out of the smoker so on a Saturday we'll go through 42 we have it down to a science where it's a hickory smoke cooked 12 to 14 hours here are they grilling rows of perogi and Kil basa SAU [Music] sausages hi it's me again if you're like me and want to stay for both breakfast and lunch you just have to go back to the front and pay the $13 difference it's not actually an advertised thing so you only hear it by word of mouth it's a fun little perk from being here um if you have the stomach for two meals in a row yes round two the only thing summer said I needed to eat was this brisket how long have you been working here for long time and I've been always on this Grill there you go thank you so much some people say it's expensive but it's actually really cheap you know when you think about it hey love it I need to get I need to get the fried chicken that's that's what everyone told me was was the best thing here handsome man he's the one that made that okay got the goods and I think that's the stuffing that Mr Brian made for us can I get a burger with cheese please oh my God we haven't seen any of these Foods yet oh my [Music] Lord oh my God okay so So the plan of getting a little bit of everything does not work when there is 700s of everything finally I got to dig in starting with these bright pink pickled eggs a traditional Amish eat look at that it's not as bad as some of the people I've watched on YouTube expressed it's very vinegary but I think it's just a color man like to see an egg that's literally as Pink as flesh it's a little jarring and I don't know if I can get past that okay so the the fried chicken look at that now that crispy God that's good best thing I've eaten all day Bar None best thing wow no wonder he knows he's handsome we're going to try this ped pork the barbecue pork and Cajun Catfish were decent the mac and cheese that's actually really good the brisket seven people said this brisket was like the only thing to get here all right not to say my expectations are like to the moon but they're high no it's a little dry good chicken Wings good chicken wings good fried chicken good fried shrimp oh the mashed potatoes so it's like a creamier version of what you would get out of a box I think I mean for the amount of food that you can get like I feel like the quantity alone is kind of worth [Music] it so we tried a Chinese buffet we tried Golden Corral and we were comparing both of them and we realized how bad the actual food is at both of them [Music] and then when you you come over here though th this place is actually decent it tastes more like real food I'll definitely come back yeah this is my third time like the past two two months we came one time and that was it yeah that was it and now we look forward to coming every week I love this place by 5:30 p.m. the line has wrapped around the lobby and out the door like all buffets Shady Maple works on thin margins but this volume has kept it afloat it sees three times more traffic than a Golden Corral in the area and 15 times that of a local ccas and because of that giant line each platter of food is turned over quickly within 20 minutes that does alleviate some of the food safety issues because you're turning things over so quickly nothing sits around for too long but when we we look at like the decay of the American Buffet I feel like this doesn't even sit in the same category Shady Maple has found its Niche it's not only the largest buffet in America it's also leaned into the Allure of the Amish Country around it focusing on home style Pennsylvania Dutch food and touting Local eats like that scrapple and mush and I think the reason that this place is endured it's like food aside it's it's the experience with a gift shop and a grocery store looming behind the buffet Shady Maple has become a they become rare enough to be novel again right and people will go to Amish country and say oh let's go to Shady Maple because who the hell has one of these in their neighborhood anymore Macy's has shaped our culture in more ways than we realize from the way we shop to the way we celebrate holidays to even the invention of the retail Santa at its peak it was a symbol of retail Innovation and cultural significance but sales have been slipping for decades and Macy's has been closing stores and letting go hundreds of people making us wonder if the department store will fade in prominence like Sears Kmart and other Titans so what went wrong and can Macy's make a comeback Macy's started as a small dry goods store in New York City back in 1858 it was called RH Macy and Co and it was the fourth business attempt by founder Rowland hussy Macy on its opening day the store only made $116 but sales quickly increased and after a year they reached $85,000 in the following years Macy's expanded into 11 buildings around 14th Street in Manhattan that was the store's first location with his new business Macy implemented a series of business practice that we've never seen before in the retail industry for example at that time bargaining and bidding were the norm discounts were frequent and it was common for customers to buy now and pay later but Macy added Label prices to all goods and stuck to it with no negotiation he also insisted on immediate payment and cash the American entrepreneur started the custom of pricing Goods in odd figures instead of round numbers like $4.95 instead of $5 he thought this strategy would force his staff to be more diligent with how sales were accounted for making it more difficult them to pocket money without being caught Macy was also the first to advertise prices in newspapers and offer money back if customers weren't happy his new stores included a made to measure clothing service that launched the idea of tailoring at big department stores in the 1860s Macy's became the first retail store to get a liquor license to serve alcohol by 1862 it created the concept of the retail Santa and just 2 years later the company established the tradition of holiday Windows giving birth to window shopping and spawning an entire industry dedicated to designing elaborate store window displays ran husy Mason died in 1877 but his family kept running the store until another one took over the Strauss family Nathan and Isidor Strauss were familiar with the store because they were already doing business there they were selling imported China and glassw to RH mey and had started renting retail space to establish a China Department in 1896 the Strauss family officially bought the company and In 1902 the shra family moved Macy's Uptown to Harold Square the move was a meticulously planned operation it included A procession of 250 delivery wagons all going up 6th Avenue the New York Times reported that it was the greatest moving that ever happened in New York that nine-story store here would become an iconic location in pop culture it had 33 elevators and four wooden escalators one of the first to be used in an American Store it initially consisted of just one building and was about 1 million squ ft but the store soon expanded through new construction eventually taking up almost the whole block making it a little over 2 million square F feet the department store had everything except for one corner this tiny slice of Manhattan is known as the million dooll Corner because Macy's has never been able to buy it and with all this new construction Macy's eventually became the world's largest store in 1924 the same year they hosted their first Thanksgiving Day Parade which included animals from the Central Park Zoo 10,000 people gathered to watch this amazing event after a few additions a liate floats were introduced and became an essential part of this iconic parade in 1947 Macy's was really making a name for itself in pop culture especially with its role in the movie Miracle on 34th Street what do you want for Christmas Peter I want a fun and just like the big one spy ain't got me nobody's got me and in 19 1976 it started its annual 4th of July fireworks show which continues to this day over the years Macy's continued to scale up opening Regional stores all around the US from San Francisco to Atlanta Macy's was capitalizing on growth and taking risks by stocking up on lots of inventory while other stores were being cautious and controlling how much product sat on their shelves Macy's stores always had product to sell at the same time competitors were reducing the number of buyers who chose what to sell and started relying more on suppliers well Macy's did the opposite they hired more specialized buyers so that each could focus on specific sections of the store that helped them identify products that customers would love and even uncover new business opportunities and while other retailers were investing in research and strategic planning setting firm targets for return on investment and other benchmarks Macy's didn't they didn't really believe in having strict Returns on financial goals so in the mid1 1980s the iconic department store started seeing the first signs of trouble the whole retail industry was experiencing an economic slowdown but for Macy's the downturn was worse because they had already had high internal costs the company was spending a lot of money rolling out more private labeled products and on ads to attract upskill customers their $500 million expansion across the American South also didn't help reports suggest they overestimated demand which led to stockpiling Way Beyond anticipated sales they also had to slash prices to clear out their excess stock all of that made it very hard for Macy's to pay its bills crushed by a $6 billion debt Macy's f for bankruptcy in 1992 by 1994 Macy's was acquired by Federated Department Stores a company that already owned its Rivals like Bloomingdales and Abraham and Strauss with this purchase it became the largest department store retailer in America in the 2000s the company tried a few different strategies to revitalize its business it launched new brands and smaller stores it also started some major collaborations with celebrities like Kate Moss and Sarah Jessica Parker it beefed up its rewards card to attract Shoppers and opened its off price store Macy's backstage but Macy's has been slow to adapt to online shopping and new consumer trends at a time when many customers were already walking away from department stores on top of that Macy's has been facing stronger competition from discount retailers like TJ Maxx and Burlington and more recently from Fast fashion giants like Zara H&M and newcomers like Sheen and teu so Macy's has not been able to slow down this retail apocalypse sales dropped and Macy's began closing stores around the US in February 2020 Macy's announced a massive restructuring that would close 125 stores and cut 2,000 jobs the goal of the plan was to generate Savings of about $1.5 billion a year by 2022 the plane involved experimenting with Concept stores that operate outside of traditional malls in 2021 Macy's also joined the crypto craze auctioning off nfts depicting its most iconic Thanksgiving Day Parade floats but in 201 23 Macy's closed another wave of stores behind the scenes the company also underwent a series of executive shakeups by February 2023 Macy CEO Jeff ganette retired after working at the company for 40 years he was replaced by Tony spring the CEO of Bloomingdales today Macy's runs 502 stores under its own Banner an investor group offered $5.8 billion to buy Macy's the company declined though citing a lack of compelling value shortly after Macy's announced it would close another 150 stores in the next 3 years the closures will leave the company with about 350 full-size Macy's department stores that's less than half of what they had a decade ago but in March the same investors returned to Macy's and upped their takeover offer to $6.6 billion that offer is still under consideration the fate of the retail giant remains unknown but no matter what happens next Macy's will always hold a significant part of our culture life and history craft cheese has been a stable in American kitchens for over a century but in recent years people have been reaching for healthier options so how did the craze for process cheese start and will craft survive the craft story began in 1903 when Canadian born businessman James lcraft moved to Chicago and started selling cheese out of a wagon business was so successful that in 1909 craft and his brothers formed their own Cheese Company a few years later they opened a factory in the Small Town of Stockton Illinois it was here that jcraft took on the challenge to turn leftover scraps of cheddar cheese into a longer-lasting product with consistent taste now look JL you know it'll never work when you heat cheese hard enough to make it keep it's going to separate but it did work craft discovered that if he heated the cheddar with an emulsifier it would create a smooth cheese that would have a much longer shelf life he was making what we now call American cheese and in 1916 craft became the first person to patent this process his invention couldn't have come at a better time when the US military deployed over 4 million soldiers in World War I it needed a huge supply of non- perishable food the army bought 6 million pound of cheese from Craft over a pound and a half per Soldier by 1921 craft was selling 1,000 tons of cheese per month craft built on this success by acquiring competitors like the Vita Cheese Company in 1927 and merging with the Fenix Cheese Company the following year in 1929 Craft's annual sales surpassed $86 million the 1930s would see another Master stroke a box of elbow macaroni with a foil package of craft cheese macaroni and cheese makes a hit and it's simple with craft macaroni and cheese dinner only a nickel is serving too and once again the timing couldn't have been better the United States was in the late stages of the Great Depression and a box of craft macaroni and cheese could feed a family of four for only 19 cents or roughly $35 today it was an instant hit craft sold 8 million boxes in the first year sales continued to rise during World War II when ration coupons could be traded in for crafts macaroni and cheese dinners and just as it had in the first world war craft supplied tins of cheese to the US military the next game changer came in 1950 when craft invented a way to slice processed cheese fabulous flavors and so quick mom said it took him no time at all to make enough for the party trouble with c half cheese slices is there so good there's no such thing as enough and 15 years later it launched the now ubiquitous individually wrapped slices singles are individually wrapped so every single one stays fresh even if it's the last one in the package luckily for craft Americans appetite for cheese was skyrocketing by 1980 Americans were consuming 172 lb of cheese per capita more than twice as much as in 1950 wasn't afraid to tell consumers to put cheese on just about anything arrange on greens with chicken tomato and avocado to with sprouts and bacon by the mid90s craft controlled over 50% of the processed cheese market and when craft Foods went public in 2001 it was the second largest IPO in US history American seemingly endless appetite for processed foods had fueled crafts growth for nearly a century but all that was about to change over time what really happened was this kind of cultural Awakening to what the heck was all that stuff that we were adding to food and then putting in our bodies in late 2002 the Food and Drug Administration accused craft of violating its labeling standards the company was making its singles with milk protein concentrate an ingredient the FDA does not allow in products labeled pasteurized processed cheese food rather rather than change the recipe craft just relabeled its singles as pasteurized prepared cheese product but Americans were waking up to the potential negative Health impacts of ultr processed foods and craft began to worry the company listed consumer concerns about food safety quality and health as one of its major challenges in 2004 craft responded by removing trans fat from some products and offering lowfat cheese slices still in 2006 the company reported a 2% decline in the processed cheese market awareness of healthier eating only grew when influential figures like Michelle Obama launched a national campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010 today we know that we can no longer let our kids eat whatever they want a 2013 petition to remove artificial dyes from Craft macaroni and cheese gained over 360,000 signatures and a report at the time said that more than half of consumers were concerned with the nutrition of processed cheese craft did remove synthetic dyes from its macaroni and cheese and also ditched the artificial preservatives in its singles but revenue from cheese products hadn't increased much since 2008 Warren Buffett took a gamble on the company in 2015 partnering with Brazilian private Equity Firm 3G Capital to finance a merger between craft and Hines the move aimed to turn Craft's fortunes around by slashing expenses and cutting 2 a half thousand jobs in focusing so much on cutting costs did craft hindes miss out on some opportunities to act to do things that actually grow the top line but 2018 brought more bad news craft Hines announced the market value of its brand portfolio had declined by a whopping $15.4 billion they were respectively saying that these brands are not you know as powerful as they thought they were the craft brand itself was responsible for a loss of $4.1 billion because the company anticipated less growth in the processed cheese category the whole Deb barkle even LED Warren Buffett to admit we paid too much money uh for craft to some extent our own actions had driven up the prices since the merger craft hines's stock has sunk about 45% but craft tends to Thrive when disasters strike in 2020 when the pandemic drove consumers to stock up on non- perishable Goods Craft products were suddenly in high demand sales of its macaroni and cheese were up 27% during the first quarter compared to the same period in 2019 but craft continued to be plagued by concerns over its ingredients I'm not hungry you're having one more bite no one more bite critics also accused craft of showing healthy food in a bad light in commercials targeted at children craft for the win-win in 2021 craft hind sold off its natural cheese division to French Dairy company lactalis group but processed cheese is something the company is still holding on to that same year the average American ate over 8 PBS of processed cheese the highest amount since 2003 and craft remains one of the most powerful companies in the food industry Jello was once a beloved dessert for the American upper and middle class but after its peak in the 1960s sales plummeted so what happened and can they win over the next generation of customers with new packaging and ingredients before to prepackage boxes and colorful jiggling cups we've come to recognize as Jello gelatin was served in the Middle Ages gelatin is made of collagen and early recipes involved melting and filtering pigs' ears and feet it eventually became a status symbol because you needed to have access to a lot of meat have enough bones to boil you also needed a large staff to do it and some were cool to sort a gelatin so it could set properly the jiggling dish was served to European royalty and it eventually made its way across the Atlantic to the United States soon people were looking for an easier and faster way to make gelatin but early attempts just didn't taste that great however one instant gelatin product would quickly become a staple in American households j e l l o invented in the Tiny Town of L New York by struggling cough syrup maker Pearl weight and his wife may Jello combined gelatin with sugary fruit syrups which made it sweeter than other instant gelatin products but the small town couple didn't know how to Market Jello so in 1899 they sold the patent for $450 the equivalent of almost $144,000 today to orator Frank Woodward of the genese Pure Food Company just 3 years later Jello sales Rose to $250,000 or 7.4 million today Jello founded success in a series of Highly strategic and successful advertising campaigns it printed its own recipes showing and teaching consumers all the different ways they could serve Jello in a meal which generated demand for the product the company commissioned cookbooks and advertisements from American Artist Norman Rockwell who created colorful drawings of jello and family-friendly settings this helped to establish the company's wholesome reputation in 1923 the genese Pure Food Company changed its name to the jello Company 2 years later the jello company became part of a larger food Empire which would eventually become General Foods Corporation when the Great Depression hit recipe books promoted Jello as an affordable food option highlighting its ability to preserve foods and transform just a few ingredients into a satisfying meal and during World War II Jell-O salads became a creative way to put meals together with rationed Goods convenience also began to play a bigger roles in the meals people prepared in World War II when you had many more women um mobilized in the work force and people were looking for something easy it was probably much easier to just make some Jello and stick it in the fridge for the next day than to try and bake a cake or make a pie when when fat was rationed and in the post-war era elabor Jello salads became a popular choice for home events like dinner parties these were sort of public events in a private space so it was important that you impressed your guests but the qualities that once made Jello is Staple in American Homes started to backfire while jell-o's low price point made it accessible during hard times like the Great Depression its cheapness also degraded gelatin once glamorous reputation not to mention jell-o's association with wartime rations made it less than appealing to Consumers who no longer had to stretch out ingredients so by the ' 50s gelatin was seen as something to stick leftovers in or serve to kids and by the 70s Jello sales began to decline in response to its slipping sales Jello hired comedian and actor Bill Cosby as a spokesperson in 1974 the partnership is one of the longest celebrity endorsements in American advertising history lasting 29 years at the time Cosby's endorsement helped boost sales but Jello took a hit as it ramped up production of its prepackaged single serve cups it was seen as snack food for children something served in a school cafeteria or in a hospital not a filling meal for a family tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris bought General Foods in 1985 and in 1989 merged it with craft incorporated creating craft General Foods when the lowfat diet Trend emerged in the ' 80s and 9s craft tried to Market Jello as a diet food with fat-free flavors to keep up so in the ' 80s there were all of these products where manufacturers were trying to to take away the fat and then add a bunch of preservatives and other ingredients and sugars to make the food still palatable without fat but for Jello doing this wasn't enough to turn things around instead it now had the added reputation of being a diet food which only increased in the early 2000s as Jello pivoted to promoting its sugar-free products to take advantage of the Atkin's diet crease when D didn't help bounce saes back Jello attempted to play up its familyfriendly reputation and although consumers had embraced Jello during the Great Depression as a way to cut costs the Great Recession didn't seem to have the same effect from 2009 to 2014 Jello sales declined by double digits falling from 9325 million to 692 million so Jello is basically the opposite of what consumers are looking for right now it looks artificial its ingredients are unre recognizable it has a bunch of added sugar and um even though it's fat free we all know now that that is not necessarily healthier so is this the [Music] end despite its falling sales numbers Jello remains popular in places like Salt Lake City and the surrounding area otherwise known as the Jello Bell the area has a large Mormon population and jell-o's wholesome family branding aligns of Norman values Jello even became the official snack food of Utah in 2001 and the trading pin for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics was a bowl of Green Jello the company also encourages people to get creative with jello recipes on social media which feels like a return to jell-o's Origins when the company would print recipes to teach confused Housewives what to do with the strange new product and in 2023 craft decided to Rebrand the snack food they launched a bold and modern design to attract a younger audience so while Jello May no longer be the dinner table staple it used to be it's still alive and jiggling a Mainstay in pop culture and lunchboxes for more than 80 years the twinkie is an American icon but Twinkies almost disappeared from store shelves entirely after two bankruptcies Force Hostess to lay off workers and shut down factories so what happened Twinkies were invented in Schiller Park Illinois in 1930 this guy James deir managed a bakery plant at the start of the depression he wanted to make better use of expensive Strawberry Shortcake equipment sitting unused when strawberries weren't in season so he stuck banana cream in a short cake deir sold the Twinkies in packs of two for 5 when bananas were rationed during World War II the simple vanilla cream we know today became the filling in the next two decades twinkies and its parent brand hostess dominated the packaged cake Market marketed to children and everything from TV commercials to Batman comics Twinkies Rose to the status of a cultural icon you're getting ready for school here here's a swell dessert that you can take along with you a package of two big Hostess Twinkies the hostess snack cemented itself in kids lunch boxes Across America it was an affordable Indulgence for families it was just so woven into the fabric of the culture of America in 1971 the brand introduced its mascot Twinkie the kid it's Twinkie the kid Yahoo the anthropomorphic Cowboy Twinkie became popular among kids for sharing his namesake cakes but growing talk of twink's high sugar content would soon butt heads with the Brand's kid-friendly marketing first the Federal Trade Commission came down on Hostess for false nutritional claims the agency concluded that sugar was the main ingredient in Twinkies and then in 79 the trial of a San Francisco man in charged with murdering the mayor gave rise to the term twinkie defense the defense team argued he had diminished capacity thanks to his addiction to twinkies and the murder charges were lesson to manslaughter it was a trial that bed at the wholesome cake brand Hostess was trying to build fresh wholesome Hostess meets my top standards so when I say yes it's Hostess then began a string of new owners for Hostess in the 70s Telephone Company it ran twink's parent company in the8 80s the dog food maker Purina acquired Hostess and a decade later it landed under the ownership of Interstate bakeries Corporation the sale created the largest Baking Company in the US with at its peak 58 factories over 10,000 delivery routes a boost and twinky sales and $3.2 billion in total sales but in the late '90s America's changing tastes would soon spell trouble for the sugar packed Twinkies with the growing popularity of low carb Atkins and later the South Beach diets some Americans were becoming more health conscious loaded with calories sugar and preservatives most people hadn't heard of let alone could pronounce Twinkies became a casualty of the health Revolution Sales fell and then flattened and October of 98 because of missed earnings shares dropped 25% in just one day but it wasn't just the product that was the problem pensions and raw Goods got too costly as other food companies were modernizing manufacturing Hostess ran inefficient factories operating at 54% capacity utilization that's very poor in the manufacturing world the company also ried on a tired delivery system a DSD model direct store delivery model has really high costs because you've got trucks drivers gas insurance that you have to pay for and you're going to every store in America every few days to drop off product delivery alone ate up 36% of Revenue an important way to capture this moment in time would be by filling a national time cap capsule in 1999 President Bill Clinton included a Twinkie in the National Millennium Time Capsule so Twinkie still had a huge fan base but by then the damage to hostess's bottom line had been done by 2004 with $700 million in debt twink's parent company Interstate filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy over the next 5 years Interstate cut 7,000 employees and shut down eight factories the company came out of bankruptcy in 2009 and rebranded itself Hostess Brands but it didn't work but unfortunately many of the Legacy problems that really hampered the company didn't get solved through that bankruptcy then the recession took a huge hit on hostess's bottom line with year-over-year sales down 20% to make matters worse a worker strike and labor dispute soon followed that fight turned into production stopping and the management team then threatened to shut the company down given pressure from its creditors and that's exactly what happened by January 2012 with nearly a billion dollars in debt Hostess Brands filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy again the company that makes Twinkies Wonderbread and ding-dongs announced this morning that it is going out of business in November Twinkies were pulled from shelves and headlines across the country reported the death of Twinkies customers started you know honestly losing their minds over it people who would have never cared about Twinkies in fact suddenly wanted them right or thought oh my god well if they're going away forever I need to St up the rush was on to grab the last of those tasty treats people scram to get the last Twinkies off those store shelves it was like the death of a piece of Americana in December 2012 Hostess began laying off all its employees things were looking bad for Hostess but this guy still saw value in the Nostalgia attached to the brand there was a real brand here and it's hard to kill a good brand Andy is half of the duo credited with saving the Twinkies if you pull people age 20 and over there's 95% brand awareness I mean it's unbelievable it's not every day that you can buy a brand like this that's ubiquitous in consumers mind and has leading market share had a billion dollars in revenues and an 80-year Legacy after the second bankruptcy Andy approached legendary investor Dean Metropolis about joining him in rescuing Hostess Dean had turned around Bumblebee tuna chefo Rd blasic pickles half through Riven Dean's reputation historically really fit well for this but unlike the first Hostess bankruptcy in 2012 there was no coming out of it with a simple restructure that bankruptcy process was was unique because it turned into a true liquidation and what's known as a 363 asset sale process basically what was left of Hostess was sold for parts instead of having to inherit that expensive delivery system underfunded pension plans and old Union contracts Andy could cherry pick what he and Dean actually wanted and forget the rest so the two showed up to the 363 asset sale ready to fight for Hostess not one buyer showed up other than us and anybody could have showed up and topped our bid and nobody showed up it was frankly very surprising to me Andy and Dean purchased Hostess for 410 million out of the sale they got the Hostess Brands including Twinkie recipes and five factories that's it there was no employees there was no ingredients there was no inventory and I have to tell you it was very odd during diligence walking through plants where when you walk in they're empty and the person who's walking you through the plant has to turn on the lights and quickly Andy and Dean got to work fixing the company first they tackled that delivery system The Old Company did direct store delivery we were going to transform it into a distribution to Warehouse mod instead of going direct to every grocery store in America you then go to Walmart's distribution centers or Kroger's distribution centers instead and then they ship it out to their various stores but in order to move Twinkies through a warehouse they first had to increase the shelf life historically Twinkies only lasted 25 days people would put Twinkies in their earthquake shelters because everybody had this perception that Twinkies would last forever that really it wasn't the case Andy and Dean invested Millions to develop a Twinkie that tasted the same but lasted longer at first able to get the shelf life for 45 days and then ultimately the 65 days of shelf life and so that really helped get the retailers comfortable that they could take it into their warehouses and that the product quality would not be compromised the new recipe and Warehouse delivery model helped cut delivery costs by 20% it also meant Hostess could affordably deliver Twinkies to drug stores and dollar stores markets they'd never reached before Dollar General became one of our top five customers next up Andy turned to factory efficiency Andy and Dean wanted to be able to make a billion dollars worth of cake yearly but with a ninth of the labor and a fifth of the factories we ended up doing getting to 85% capacity utilization Plus finally the duo worked on innovating the product line with smaller pack sizes and mini Twinkies those products really didn't get the residance in the marketplace and so then we just jumped wholehearted leave to embrace the brand Embrace what you are which is Indulgence the team had to make all these changes in a matter of months in July 2013 the on dead Twinkies returned to shells to tons of fanfare the world is a better place tonight because Twinkies are back the tagline was the sweetest comeback in the history of ever it all went viral it was really kind of unbelievable a lot of that frankly that excitement and buzzz ironically could have never come about if T never came off the shelf the tri saying is what you don't know what you've got until it's gone Twinkies quickly sold out in stores Across America during our first year we had 555 million in revenues from nothing with profit vergins of 27% in a company that lost money and had to go bankrupt twice by 2015 hostas was making a million Twinkies a day 400 million a year and $180 million in profit at the time Twinkies made up 80% of the company's product output and the success just kept rising in 2016 Apollo and Metropolis took Hostess public the IPO valued the company at $2.3 billion nearly five times what Andy and Dean had paid for it Apollo and metropolises gamble that Americans still love Twinkies had paid off but was the blood snack revived for good the coronavirus pandemic helped Hostess as people stayed indoors more they bought more processed foods at the grocery store by the end of 2020 the company's net revenue had reached a billion dollars and in September 2023 the jelly giant Smuckers secured a takeover of Hostess Brands for $5.6 billion having come back from the brain it seems America isn't ready for a life in a post- twinky world just [Music] yet this is what many of America's malls look like today empty Eerie dead and while the pandemic has most people avoiding indoor Gathering spaces social distancing is not what emptied out the mall this footage is from [Music] 2018 for decades the mall was both an economic and Social Hub and for many a way of life now many malls in the United states have either collapsed or are on the verge so how did we go from this to this the story of the mall begins in the 1950s when America was experiencing an unprecedented economic boom the middle class had more money to spend than ever before and they were spending it on houses and cars along with this came Eisenhower's federal aid Highway Act which meant that people could drive to their jobs in the cities while living in a new kind of development the suburbs Suburban populations Rose astronomically but they lacked what sociologist Ray oldenberg called third places under this model home is the first place where you live the second place is the workplace and third places are the vital spaces where people go to exchange ideas form relationships and create communities this could be a park a bar or in today's Times social media Platforms in other words the third place is a place to hang out enter Victor gruan a man who had later become the king of retail for the era gruin who ironically was a staunch socialist had already made a name for himself in America designing boutique shops and storefronts but now wanted to create something far more ambitious an indoor downtown and what would prove to be his boldest and most enduring project yet gruin set about designing the mall on October 8th 1956 America's first indoor mall the South Dale Center in Adena Minnesota opened its doors like no building ever constructed before the Southdale Center not only had shops but fountains art installations a bird sanctuary and a sprawling courtyard all within a single indoor complex the mall received mostly rave reviews deeming it an attraction on par with Disneyland which had just opened a year earlier in 1955 Walt Disney himself even cited gruin as his main influence for the ideas behind Epcot with Southdale all over the news everyone wanted to go to the mall malls began springing up in every American suburb along with large Shopping Center Mall hybrids and everything in between by 1960 Just 4 years after grin's first Mall there were 4,500 large shopping complexes in the United States which averages to at least three new shopping centers opening every day by 1975 malls and shopping centers accounted for 33% of of all retail sales in America but grin's utopian vision for the mall had not been realized cheap food courts were installed where Courtyards were supposed to be instead of Cosmopolitan communities developers often surrounded malls with enormous parking lots and Suburban housing projects exactly what gr was trying to thwart whereas the mall was designed to be the communal remedy for Suburban individualism it instead became its most potent catalyst car it's Mall Madness at the sh St the new shop till you drop game that really talks in the 1980s began the mall's golden age I hate work in the theater all the actions on the other side of the mall shopping complexes continued to build at a rate of over 1,000 per year and in 1986 Consumer Reports named the shopping mall alongside the birth control pill antibiotics and the personal computer one of the top 50 Wonders that has revolutionized the lives of consumers movies board games and even concert tours all centered around the mall Ed's teenagers even looked at the mall as a place to which they could escape and socialize as was epitomized in the cult classic movie Mall Rats I love the smell of Commerce in the morning the American Mall would reach its peak in 1992 with its final evolution the mega mall fittingly in the same state as America's first Mall the Mall of America in Bloomington Minnesota spans a whopping 5.6 million square ft with over 500 stores a theme park with 27 rides an aquarium a wedding chapel and a movie theater the mega mall was immensely profitable reports showed that consumers were 50% more likely to buy something at an attraction filled Mega Mall than at a regular Mall leading to several more Mega malls being built across the 50 States but Mega Mall's gargantuan size coupled with an unsustainable rate of construction would lead to the collapse of the mall itself although thousands of malls of all different shapes and sizes were built in the latter half of the 20th century the basic Mall layout had remained the same since 1956 two large department stores at either end connected by smaller shops in between the bookending department stores are known as anchor stores and serve as the main attractions for the rest of the mall with so many malls being built in close proximity to one another the newer malls would often poach the department stores from the older ones nearby stores like Macy's or sear would relocate to bigger more popular roller coaster riding Mall locations and the older malls without their anchors would be left to drift away and drown as the 2000s progressed consumer habits shifted away from the Department Store altogether Macy's for instance has been steadily closing stores since 2005 most of them in malls department store side vacancies are difficult to refill and with other better malls often nearby there is little that can be done to save a failing Mall which is why hundreds of malls have already been pronounced dead the dead mall has even become its own aesthetic capturing the imaginations of several internet photographers and filmmakers the 2017 credit s report estimated that one in four us malls would close by 2022 as foot traffic declined developers believed the future of the mall to be less about shopping and more about the extravagant experiences offered by the biggest Mega malls bowling alleys laser tag Gokarts and other activities that could only be found outside the house investors were hopeful that this would be achieved with the creation of the American dream mega mall and East Rutherford New Jersey opened in 2019 this Behemoth houses not only a theme park but also a water park an ice rink and an indoor skiing complex but in a world of social distancing even America's most spacular malls are floundering as of June 2020 the Mall of America was unable to meet its billion dooll mortgage payments for the second straight month and the American dream had laid off 100 employees will malls ever recover their Mainstay status in American culture or will we look to new types of third places in our post-pandemic future only time will tell but one thing is certain there is plenty of space for something new we reached out to the mall of America and the American dream mega mall but received no response Red Lobster used to be the place to be the home of endless shrimp and of cheddar bay biscuits the place you kind of went to be fancy is but in May 2024 Red Lobster declared bankruptcy it's obviously more than mediocre Seafood going out of style it also has to do with private equity and there's talk of a shrimp Mafia involved in some ways it's a perfect example of how to to kill a business I'm Emily Stewart and I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider so the first Red Lobster opened in 1968 in Lakeland Florida the goal of Red Lobster was sort of to bring Seafood to the masses especially in places that were landlocked right you're not on a coast you probably don't have fresh seafood it also wanted to have family prices and you know something that regular people could afford 30 of them I mean it's terrific 30 shrimp for under $10 now at Red Lobster it's it grew from from 1 to five locations within a couple of years in 1970 it was acquired by General Mills a food conglomerate and it grew more from there across the southeast at first and then across the US by 1978 it had grown to 236 restaurants and had sales of almost $300 million it opened up in Canada for the first time in 1983 and then over the years it just kind of grew grew grew by 1991 it had grown to 568 restaurants and had sales of $ 1.5 billion in 1995 General Mills spun off Red Lobster as part of Darden Restaurants Red Lobster grew pretty steadily in the early 2000s but it had some hiccups in 2003 it launched an endless crab promotion which is what it sounds like could eat all the crab that your heart desired turns out a lot of people really wanted to do that and so the company lost a lot of money and their president eventually stepped down they also made other updates to their restaurants like adding in Woodfire grills or updating their designs but things eventually started to go Ary Darden stopped investing as much in Red Lobster instead opting to inut money into Olive Garden which it also owns and sales at Red Lobster started to flag in 2013 Darden came under pressure from activist investors who were unhappy with the company's strategy and Direction and wanted some changes Darden sort of panicked at this and sold off Red Lobster that wasn't was the activists had wanted but there really wasn't anything that they could do about it the deal was done it got bought by Golden Gate Capital which is a private Equity Firm based in San Francisco for $2.1 billion so in order to finance the deal and raise cash for the deal what Golden Gate did was a sale leaseback Transaction what that means is that they sold off the real estate they sold off Red Lobster restaurants and then they immediately leased them back so suddenly all of these Red Lobster stores that didn't have rent to pay before had rent now this maybe would have been fine but as breed Lobster's business started to struggle in the years to come those rents really became a problem it's a pretty common private Equity move I think it's important to remember these people are there to make money not often to revive the business and so they're going to strip assets and monetize Assets in any way that they can including through strategies like this so in 2016 Golden Gate sold 25% of Red Lobster to taii Union which is a Thai Seafood conglomerate then in 2020 they sold the rest of the company off to the seafood Alliance which is a group of investors that Thai Union is also a part of so obviously in 2020 Co hits and a lot of restaurants are in a pickle Red Lobster is not an exception here there are shutdowns people stop going to restaurants traffic Falls so this is a bad time for a lot of restaurants but a lot of restaurants really did weather the storm but bread Lobster does have some pretty unique problems for itself it's hard run a seafood restaurant in the United States um if it were easy there would probably be more of them and you know if you think about it if you're going out to eat in a group and one person doesn't like seafood you're not going to Red Lobster also nowadays if you're super in the mood for fish you can probably get it at a steakhouse and so again you're not going to Red Lobster for that Red Lobster is longtime CEO retired in 2021 and it really hasn't been able to find its footing in terms of leadership since then and that's made it really hard to execute a turnaround plan right if you don't know who's in charge you also don't know what direction you're going in some experts have said that a lot of the problem here is that taii Union just had no idea how to run a restaurant business they came in really wanting to cut cost to cut Staffing and not necessarily on Reviving um red lobstore they didn't really land on a good plan for what to do to kind of turn it around finally so in the middle of 2023 what Red Lobster decided to do was to make its unless shrimp promotion permanent I've had 24 shrimps and I ate 51 shrimp I ate 50 shrimp someone had the bright idea let's do this all the time and so what that means is that for 20 $25 you walk into Red Lobster eat as much shrimp as you want and a lot of people again took advantage of this so what happened is that Red Lobster started to lose a lot of money for the gentleman all you can eat all you can eat all right when you're ready take this plate over please don't take the steam tray sir Red Lobster lost $1 million on the endless promotion in the third quarter of 20203 and it lost even more money in the fourth quarter but obviously endless shrimp isn't the thing that killed Red Lobster a couple of quarters of a silly promotion isn't going to take an entire business down so there are a few reasons why first it was struggling with high labor costs you know labor is expensive right now and Red Lobster doesn't have some special scheme to Escape that it also had those leases that Golden Gate Capital had saddled it with a decade ago so suddenly all of these restaurants cannot pay their rent and they need out of those leases analysts also say that unstable leadership is to blame because if you don't have stable leadership it's really hard to execute some sort of consistent turnaround Vision years of changing tastes poor brand management and tough conditions have all contributed to Red Lobster's demise a lot of restaurants have been able to to weather these storms but Red Lobster hasn't what sets Red Lobster apart is a decade of private equity and investor interference tuni is a supplier of shrimp for Red Lobster if I'm Red Lobster maybe it's not a great idea for me to be buying all of the shrimp but if I'm thaun and I'm selling the shrimp that's kind of a great deal for me and so the new CEO is saying that Tai Union had outsized influence at Red Lobster it's basically saying looks like something a little funky was going on on that Tai Union was pushing out other suppliers and charging Red Lobster a lot of money for this shrimp that apparently was costing Red Lobster to lose a lot of money now Tai union says this is meritless this is not what has happened but still some people are joking about the Thai shrimp Mafia basically the implication there being that something was a little untour going on and that Thai Union was throwing around a little bit of of weit at Red Lobster to to line its own Pockets so Red Lobster did declare Bank propy in May of 2024 and it right now is trying to figure out a path forward what to do with its debt who's going to own the company it's talking to its creditors who are private Equity Tai Union wants out of its Red Lobster investment and it says it's going to take a $530 million loss on it and it's also closing down dozens of stores in the meantime according to the restaurant Chain's website more than 80 locations in at least 27 states were listed as temporarily closed so that means a lot of workers are out of work suppliers are in trouble and you know a lot of these businesses are just gone so if you love Red Lobster the good news is it's probably not going away forever plenty of companies survive bankruptcy in some way shap or form on a broader level this is sort of a textbook example of how to kill a business investors sucked money out of Red Lobster and made money in the short term without setting it up for long-term success this is what Wall Street does a lot of the time it swoops in takes money out and walks away this is the last printing press in the US where books are handmade from start to finish every letter of an Aron press book is created one by one together they make up a book that can take years to produce and cost up to $10,000 to buy that's because this San Francisco institution uses machines and techniques that date back to the 1800s printing presses like Arion used to be common but with the Advent of faster and cheaper printing this traditional method is fading away so now we're having to like learn as much as we can before it goes away it is a huge responsibility I think it kind of weighs on all of us but at Aron press the team devotes their days to preserving this historic trade even in one of the tech capitals of the world we visited this 101-year-old press to learn how and why it's still standing each book begins in The Foundry where Brian fret spends his day at a monotype machine from the 1890s making individual letters it can be very very difficult there could be days where nothing goes right there could be weeks where nothing goes right when I have three casters running and nothing's going wrong that that makes me just ridiculously happy he lights a fire under the machine melting the lead tin and antimony solution that is used to create the Le we have a pump here and a nozzle and the pump draws up the lead and then we'll shoot the lead out the nozzle from there the lead goes into a mold then a mat case with the chosen lettering pushes down on it he sends the finished type down the hall to the print room by the end of the day particularly when we're printing we're covered with ink and it's it's just fantastic it's kind of like a good little kid again getting messy and getting dirty at this stage of the process The Foundry has sent us gyss of type they come out about two pages per Galley when we get those gys we take a proof print of that Jeff Raymond arranges the type into a page layout letter by letter so on this one this is page 53 to keep the page together Jeff wraps it in string then he brings it to the proofing press to check for any mistakes once the proof looks good it goes for the final print run on one of the larger presses the final stage of the book making process is in the binder this is where everything gets made into the book from scratch Megan gibbis folds sews and glues each piece of the book together by hand the final product is a work of art I think there's nothing that can compare to physically holding a book in your hands feeling the piece of paper running your finger over it and feeling how the type is impressive into the page however modern technology has made this kind of letter Press Printing nearly obsolete today top us printers use offset printing presses that can produce 120,000 pages per hour before working at Arion Brian spent 3 years at one of these commercial factories I had been working printing big runs of magazines 24-hour a day type of place 12-hour shifts there were so many people I couldn't even count how many people were there letter Press Printing just can't compete with that kind of efficiency I mean there's a reason why this line of work isn't fiscally viable really anymore uh because it is very time intensive that all adds up while many other traditional presses have closed Arion has stayed in business thanks to a group of loyal subscribers like book collectors institutions and libraries this broadside sheet of the preamble to the Constitution is one of the most recent projects to come through the print room making only 350 copies this limited edition print sells for $50 Arion also sells cases of type to order gives Public tours and holds workshops at 45 Brian is one of a dwindling number of people who make a living as a typ caster and with fewer people practicing this historic craft Staff feel a personal responsibility to keep the knowledge alive when it comes to the casting part there are very few people who can do it there are so few machines around anymore and even when you do find them the knowledge that's out there is is disappearing to pass on the knowledge to the Next Generation Brian takes every chance he can get to share his skills he mentors apprentices during the 4-year program at Arion the first few weeks I was here I just felt I'm surrounded by these people who are making this stuff and they knew exactly what they're doing it's like oh my God you know it's almost impossible to find a place where you can learn these skills Brian also shares the craft with his six-year-old daughter and his grage at home Happy Valentine's Day to you see [Music] papa that can I do that Papa okay go yeah normally you do little [Music] dots [Music] turn Happy Valentine's Day to you like it does feel different than than newer books you know a mass produced book there's a different touch to it that handmade touch is striking a chord even in the tech Hub of San Francisco go you have all these tech people and they've been sitting at their computer all day doing non-tactile things and they come here and they're always crazily impressed this gives Arion hope that their business and this craft will continue to live on in an increasingly digital world you can get a book from 500 years ago and you can still open it and you can still enjoy that book I have files on my computer from 20 years ago that are gone because I have no idea how to open that anymore so I think it does really last a whole lot longer than the things that we have now the era that it was made in adds to its character and its beauty if you were in college over the last 20 years or so you might have some memories of Mega Bus the big blue double-decker bus with a giant Yellow mascot painted on the sides maybe you went on a neat little weekend getaway with friends other times you probably got stuck in traffic or the bus broke down on the trip for all of its flaws Mega buus was was a decent and affordable way to get around for years but now it's in trouble the parent company Coach USA has filed for bankruptcy and Megabus is handing over some of its routes to other operators and discounting others altogether business insiders Emily Stewart looked into what's happened to Mega Bus and whether the double decker icon can or should survive these buses are actually like pretty important to get people from point A to point B especially people who maybe can't afford a train ticket or who can't afford a plane ticket Stage Coach Group which is based in the UK first launched meab buus there in 2003 it offered seats for One PB or a quid which is where the mascot Sid the quid gets his name they brought mega bus to the US in 2006 Mega Bus was kind of hit it had Outlets that worked kind of most of the time if not all of the time so you could plug your phone in it had Wi-Fi that worked kind of none of the time but like you could pretend like it was going to work you could also buy the tickets online which was kind of Novel and so Mega Bus felt like kind of cooler than like a greyhound and it was cheap Mega Bus could lure people in with $1 tickets now to be clear maybe there was like a seat on the bus that was a dollar and that wasn't going to be your seat Millennials loved it along with Greyhound Mega buus became one of the two main inner city bus carriers in the US but in the mid-20s the tidde started to turn gas prices fell in 2015 and in 2016 which made other forms of transportation that customers might prefer like driving and flying cheaper and flick bus an operator out of Germany launched in the US in 2018 which meant more competition while Mega buus was ahead with the power outlets and Wi-Fi everybody else caught up and some high-profile accidents may have left some with safety concerns too then in 2019 Stage Coach sold Coach USA to variant Equity advisers in $71.40 in 2020 the pandemic hits and the bus industry like a lot of travel just like completely grinds to a halt and so if they're not bringing any money in there's no way to service those debt payments a lot of that debt is still outstanding and so Coach USA filed for bankruptcy in the middle of 2024 Megabus is sort of a microcosm of what's happening in the inner city bus industry which has been struggling I was trying to take a bus from New York City to Atlantic City over the summer and I was kind of shocked at how few buses there were I could still get them but it wasn't like I at least I felt like it was 5 years ago when there were a bunch of options at all times according to one Insider there were about 3,000 licensed bus and Motor Co coach companies before the pandemic now it is about half the size the industry has had a hard time recovering in part because it didn't get the government assistance the airlines did during Co policy makers tend to treat it as an afterthought there are also problems on the operational side like rising cost for parts and the shortage of both drivers and mechanics bus terminals are becoming a problem too some localities are pushing back against them because they sometimes have an un Savory reputation I've taken a bus before and I think you know sometimes it is nice to be in a terminal and not just waiting on the side of the road like wondering if this magical bus is going to appear or not making the issue even worse is that 33 of greyhounds terminals have been sold to a commercial real estate investor and they have other plans for the space that can make them more money one thing that hasn't really helped the bus industry is the involvement of Finance they don't really care if the public has a great place to to pick up the local bus in other words the inter city bus industry is facing a lot of headwinds of course if you want to hop on a bus from Boston to New York for the weekend you still can it just might not be a Mega Bus it'll probably be a Peter Pan or greyhound or flicks or something else but your options might be more limited than they were before and more expensive I think it's tough to think about a solution I did find that there was kind of mention of trying to Lobby a little bit B more in public policy spaces to try and kind of get across to policy makers to lawmakers that buses do matter whether it be providing more funding so that they can get to rural areas or that they can get to underserved areas you want a bus terminal in your city and you don't want it to be 20 M out of town where nobody can get to it still travel in America may never be what it once was and the days of dollar re seats and Sid the quid rolling down the highway could soon be gone for good this Factory has made hats the same way for 166 years it takes at least 2 months to turn raw rabbit fur into a high-end hat which is why each one can cost up to $2,500 in fact borsellino made the Fedora world famous today just 90 employees make 70,000 hats per year now that might seem like a lot but it's a small fraction of the 2 million hats the factory used to crank out back in the 1920s when almost every man wore a hat out side nowadays it seems like the only people still wearing the hats are Johnny Depp and hidic Jews nearly every man in the tight-nit lubich community wears a fedora and many splurge on a Borsalino the market is definitely growing so what made the Fedora so iconic why do thousands of religious Jews wear it and how do the companies that make these hats plan to bring them back in style while still making them the oldfashioned way at the borolo factory in all alandria Italy everything starts with scraps of rabbit fur most modern hat makers skip this step opting to purchase pre-made felt some say it's the custommade rabbit for felt that makes a true Bolino some of the felting machines have been around since the late 1800s every hat goes through at least 52 steps to meet bcel high standards and it's checked for Quality at every turn these wooden machines rain down the treated fur onto a perforated metallic cone it spins so quickly that the fur perfectly lines up to the surface a jet of boiling water keeps the felt fix throughout the process the company's co-founder gippi Borsalino learned this craft in France before moving back to Italy to start his own business in 1857 he refined the process they still use today the hair from the rabbit is treated felted into a cone then washed and pressed multiple times until it shrinks down to the shape of a hat in its Heyday borolo employed 6,000 people about half of them were women the female workers were mostly involved in the finishing stages especially checking for Quality the Hat's popularity soon spread across the world from the late 1800s to the 1920s most men headed to work wearing a hat and the factory made fedoras for iconic Hollywood movies like Casablanca but hat wearing eventually grew out of fashion especially after World War II one reason behind that hats used to remind men of their time in uniform the popularity of hats may have changed over time but porcelin tries to make a product of Timeless quality we build and we manufact pack the head with the same process with the same machine with all the passage once the raw shape for the hat is created it's still very fragile a worker carefully peels it off the cone then the fabric heads to a smaller roller and cast iron these machines help lock the fibers together then the fabric goes through the first of three quality inspections in a dark room an artisan checks that the surface of the felt is uniform but the felt pieces are still too big these machines use boiling water to shrink them down and repeatedly stamp the felt that's where it transforms from a cone to resembling an actual hat later on the stiffening machine's large claw breaks down the weave of the felt it creates the division between the crown and the brim then it's time for Scotty steam shaping a process named after the Borsalino Craftsman who invented it the felt caline is placed in a machine that uses pressure and steam to press it down with an aluminum [Music] block now there's a well-defined crown in the Hat workers remove any excess hair fibers and the hat heads to the finishing station Giovani zamiri has worked here since 19 1989 he helps create the shape of the Hat's brim giovanny says everything requires close attention back in the 1920s workers watched over the dying of the Felts they use sticks to keep them submerged but today machines dye the Felts with steam pressure and boiling water they soak here for at least 90 minutes the hats are just now beginning to take on the classic Fedora shape the accessories Department sews in the lining internal leather belt and external cotton band and the final flourish that's also stood the test of time the Borsalino logo stamped in 24 karat gold leaf it takes nearly 2 months to make a hat through this painstaking process all using the same machinery and methods the company first became famous for borino was built on handcrafted fedoras today the company is branching out into all kinds of luxury accessories but for some wearing a hat isn't a fashion statement it's a matter of Faith acidic Jews wear a variety of headwear how you cover your head can tell others which specific Community you're a member of some fur hats known as Stamos can sell for thousands of dollars the kabad lubich community adopted the Fedora after World War II that's when Rabbi minim menel scherson known as the rebe fled Europe for Crown Heights Brooklyn after he assumed leadership of the kabad movement in 1951 he continued wearing the Layman's hat the rabbi is wearing this kind of hat and it's a cool hat it's not exactly a stal then it's a no-brainer re uain ketki operates velino boutiques in Jewish neighborhoods he thinks it's too small and I think looks good we let the crowd decide basically basically the smaller the brim the nice the more in style it is but he's a little nervous to to where like such an InStyle hat basically returning customers can give their hats a tuneup this area with all these funky tools are basically this is basically where we take care of both new and old hats and so we're reshaping it and making it look like brand new demand in Jewish areas is so high that it's created an opportunity for other hat makers to enter the market we start wearing hats at 13 at our bar mitzvah so we kind of knew what it's supposed to feel like what a good quality Hat's supposed to feel like Brooklyn Brothers Ley and Yosi Chio co-founded balisimo which competes with borcel for this religious market so we knew what people wanted um being that we were the consumer as well they started their hat business back in 2017 after Levy went shopping the prices went up and I'm like you know I think we can make a better hat the brothers started making hats by hand we put together at $1,000 we got a hold of 10 sample hats and we popped up a tent on the street and we said we're going to we're going to start with 10 hats and try to just show it to people not even give it to them everything works with steam steam can do anything this one actually looks pretty good I'm not going to mess with it now they manufacture at a factory in Montreal right now she's smoothing out the sweatband and making sure it looks perfect but just like borcel this company is also relying on equipment that's over a hundred years old so the equipment we're using is so old because they don't make that equipment anymore the companies that used to make those equipment Clos down but you can't buy this stuff even if you want them to the Machinery at bimo might be Antiquated but the company's not shy about using one modern tool social media the company has extended its reach through celebrity endorsements from Jeremy Piven Snoop Dogg Cedric the Entertainer and someone bought Jamie Fox's hat and we were told recently that you know he got it over 5 years ago and he keeps it in a special place and says his favorite hats from the two CID guys in Brooklyn but we got the bisim mo hat look at that ah Gangsta I asked him if he minded giving us a shout out he happily did that for us which which really helped get us on the map that brought a lot of new customers bimo surpassed its goal of $1.5 million in sales last year a lot of people find the brand through Instagram and buy their hats through their website where they can customize their own funky fedoras but for their own Community the brother's approach remains face to face every day you got to figure out a new way to reach your customers and thank God we're going with the oldfashioned way where it's Word of Mouth a lot of customers were skeptical they only trusted one Famous Brand so they didn't really want to give us a try and like oh let me buy this you know $200 hat from you guys we never heard of so the brothers ran a promotion at a gigantic conference for rabbis we had the biggest line at this convention and all the other businesses were like what is going on at that line they couldn't even see what was what were we selling we're doing like you know $100 off the hat so people just started grabbing the hats and trying them on barely looking in a little handheld mirror while balisimo was trying to grow Bolino is recovering from Financial struggles back in 2017 the brand almost went under but it was brought out by a group of investors the next year and the company has shifted strategy to attract fashion forward buyers with more than just fedoras we are working to make that our brand become much more contemporary much more fresh managing director Maro BTO says the company's toughest challenge is attracting younger buyers we are uh really working to make that the brand much more younger uh because we we really believe that the new generation are the future of uh of the customer a new team of fashion experts joined the company including the former CEO of Gucci yakomo sanui the company aims to sell more hats in the US and Asia and it says the number of women buying their hats has doubled in the past 10 years even with plans to expand borcel won't compromise on tradition and we want that our customer always find luxury product but for luxury means quality and competition for the Jewish Market hasn't slowed things down it's it's an incredible thing that you see newer Brands I think it's it's a positive uh sign it it shows that the market is dynamic and it's growing we don't see any reduction in sales we see growth for balisimo some of its best customers are family dozens of members of the chaio clan gathered in Montreal for a traditional hair cutting ceremony for ley's son today with my uh grandson I think he is doing a very good job and he's creating a whole new fashion in hats not only because it's a custom for us to wear it but it's becoming a fashionable item beanie BS were once one of the most sought after toys in the world we could be millionaires yeah could be our College money a trading frenzy in the 9s saw $5 toys resell for thousands of you just have to have a lot of patience and money but the bubble inflated by their mysterious inventor burst in spectacular fashion leaving collectors with piles of almost worthless animals so what happened how did a cute bean bag go from internet sensation to neglected Keepsake this is Ty Warner who back in the 90s was the Willy Wonka of toys he founded Thai Inc in 1986 just outside of Chicago and his first creation was a lifelike cat stuffed with beans Joanie hirsh Blackman was one of the only journalists to ever interview Warner as she recalls his sales methods were quite Ecentric he would walk in holding this cat in his arms and when people thought it was real then he knew he had done what he had hoped to do tai then experimented with smaller animals less lifelike but with plush material vibrant colors and Loosely stuffed to make them easy to handle in '93 Warner released his first nine Beanie Babies Lena tretti joined the company in 1992 it would often give Warner creative input he was sort of trying to contemplate in his own design and creative process you know should these eyes be green or should they be blue what do you think with a price tag of just $5 Warner hoped that the toys would have wide appeal but beanie B were far from an instant hit there were a lot of people that were just like no no I don't want those those won't work in my store that didn't stop Warner from innovating though he would constantly tweak designs colors and names even after animals were already in circulation by creating variations and even halting production of some animals altogether what Tai was actually doing was laying the groundwork for a market of rare Collectibles only a few thousand of the original peen of the elephant were made before the updated version hit the shelves then all of a sudden those dark blue elephants are worth thousands and thousands of dollars because they're not available and there's only a handful of them that are in the marketplace he's just taken off and he's over $5,000 Now isn't that cute would you rather have a new car or Peanut the Elephant Tai's Financial records have never been made public but according to author Zach binet's book The Great Beanie Baby bubble in 1995 The company generated sales of around 28 Million by then there were over 50 different Beanie Babies there are zoo animals farm animals cats dogs bears and they are very very very cute and thanks to a new innovation in computer networks the Beanie Baby craze was about to go digital lucky for Warner travetti and her brother who also worked at taii had taken an early interest in the internet and convinced him to go online the website creation process took a little time because at the same time I was learning what the internet was travetti is credited with developing the first businesses to Consumer website at a time when only 14% of us adults had internet access the internet turns Beanie Babies into the hot commodity trade of the late '90s to prepare for High Easter demand in 1995 Tai filled three 747s with stuffed toys from Korea where they were manufactured and later that holiday season the company's Warehouse in Illinois shipped 15,000 orders daily to retailers across the US Warner became a Master at manipulating the market every 6 months he would retire beanies from the product line sometimes he chose to discontinue the lowest selling animals to boost interest and then get rid of inventory or he Target one with an already scarce Supply to create a buying scramble a lot of times it would be hours and hours that people would spend driving around looking for a specific Beanie Baby shop owners refer to shipment days as mob scenes where customers would buy more than 50 beanies at a Time Warner achieved all this without needing to pay for advertising or selling beanie babies in big chains like Toys R R Us in Walmart the strategy of mystery and scarcity was intentional people became eager to cash in on the craze with some even creating copycat versions these are all counterfeit beanie babies and some of them are so wellmade self-confessed super fans Leon and Sandra have a collection of over8 thousand beanie B in their North Carolina home it got to the point where we had so many we thought why don't we just collect them all Leon schlossberg's Fascination for Thai products didn't take off until the early 2000s but he remembers the Midwest as the epicenter of the frenzy you had a dedicated group of fans mostly based in Chicago or Wisconsin that thought they were on to something and they started porting Beanie Babies by 1996 Forbes estimated Tai's Revenue jumped to $250 million then came another Innovation that would push demand for Beanie Babies even higher after travetti pitched the idea Warner added poems and birthdays to each animals tag it was just a matter of how do we make these special and how do we make them even more collectible Warner liked the idea so much he asked if she could write a poem for every animal in the collection 86 in 3 days if you read the poem for Siggy the zebra he's a soccer referee so then if you're trying to buy a gift for someone who plays soccer then all of a sudden this zebra is the thing to get in 1997 Tai secured a deal worth over 100 million dollar with McDonald's featuring a new Beanie spin-off teeny Beanie Babies real tied beanie babies in a mini size to toss tuck or just plain love the promotion was supposed to last 5 weeks but the supply of 81 million was gone in just one we would go to McDonald's we'd take turns and we'd buy the limit which was five McDonald's estimated that one in every three Americans had a teeny beanie baby inside their house it got to the point where kids couldn't get them anymore it was all part of the adult you know collecting and making money when McDonald's repeated the promotion a year later one employee even went to jail for stealing $6,000 worth of teeny beanies by now the internet was EXP floting trading on eBay was taking off and suddenly there were millions of Highly sought after beanie baby toys being traded globally listings range from $5 to $112,000 fans would obsessively surf the site for clues about the next discontinued animal that would inevitably Skyrocket in value what you need to do is get lucky which ones do you think are going to retire kiwi the two can's retirement announcement increase site traffic by 300% it was mind-boggling some of the things things that we had to do to keep the site up and running within the secondary Market of trading between collectors Warner was no longer in charge in May 1997 eBay auctioned off $500 million worth of the plush toys accounting for more than 6% of the site's total sales later that year Warner released a purple bear honoring the late Princess Diana and the combination of a limited edition with the death of a beloved princess caused Mayhem retailers could only order 12 princess beanies each demand was so high fans were paying up to $2,000 at auctions trade shows began cropping up across America and collectors even began publishing Beanie Baby cataloges the media hype just lent more credibility to the value guides and guess who was putting out all the value guides people that were selling beanie babies for the most part Beanie Baby fever then spread into the Sports World Beanie Babies over there in 1998 fans were lured to stadiums with giveaways from nearly 20 of the 30 major league baseball teams by the end of the year Tai sales surpassed $1.4 billion he came out with this bear which was made exclusively for Thai employees to celebrate the first year that he exceeded a billion dollars in sale in a USA weekend poll estimated that 64% of Americans owned at least one Beanie Baby One divorcing couple had so many they needed a judge to fairly split their collection worth up to $5,000 at the time that same year Warner made the Forbes 400 list with an estimated net worth of $5 billion but it was becoming clear that the fuel driving the beanie babies craze was running out then Warner decided on his biggest gamble yet announcing that the production of Beanie Babies would cease on Millennium Eve but not before they've released a final bear named the and for the first time the retirement announcement didn't lead to inflated values in the secondary market after teasing the end of Beanie Babies Warner continued to put out new product lines they're just so famous why would you get rid of something that is your namesake basically but by then the plush animals had become ubiquitous and kids were beginning to turn their attention to the next musthaves like Furby and Pokémon sales declined by more than 90% in the early 2000s forcing Warner to put his own money into Thai Inc and by 2004 he claimed losses of more than $39 million suddenly investors and collectors who had hoped to make a living out of trading plush animals found themselves with inventory that was not worth what they once paid then in 2009 came beanie booze a modern redesigned version of its predecessor with bigger eyes and Bolder colors but some believe it wasn't the Beanie Babies that went down and popularity it was the interest in trading them we coined a new phrase as the rise and fall of the Beanie gamblers because the specul of craze just bottomed out and crashed now the fatherdaughter duo hopes to preserve the memory of Beanie B's for future Generations by opening a museum I mean they're all so cute and these things are cute they're adorable uh it used to not be proper for a guy to say this but it hasn't been cheap we've probably put in close to about $175,000 doeses that number include shipping and handling no that number does not include shipping and handling this is a natural sea sponge getting trimmed and it was harvested here in Tarpon Springs Florida the sponge capital of the world no Spong is no tarp spr by some estimates about 70% of the natural sea sponges collected globally come from this stretch of Florida's Coastline generations of residents many Greek have built their lives around this foamy sea creature I don't know how to do anything else sponge divers here have harvested these animals yes they're animals since the 1900s but the industry has been struggling recently increasingly frequent hurricanes have prevented fishermen from heading out to sea some of those storm worms even killed the sponges and high fuel costs over the last year have turned some away from working in the industry at all but sponge diving has faced challenges in the past and has bounced back before sponge sales still bring in a couple million dollars a year but Tarpon Springs has found another way to leverage its storied history it supports probably close to $20 million worth of Tourism we head to Florida's Gulf Coast to find out how sea sponges became such a big business and why divers are fighting to keep their trade alive Anastasio scos arrived here from Greece in the early 1970s the 70-year-old now goes by Captain toso his name is taso cartinos ocean is uh I feel like a my house home for MEP of Springs Greek Town Greek music Greek restaurants so I fit into a place sponge diving dates back to ancient Greece in fact both Homer and Aristotle wrote about the creatures back then people used them for bathing cleaning painting and decorating the same as today when settlers found natural sponge beds in Florida in the 1800s Greek began making their way to America bringing their trade with them in the olden days they'd wear suits like this but nowadays divers wear wet suits in the summer and insulating dry suits in the winter and they strap on scuba masks and shoes I've worn anywhere from football cleat to try to basically grip the bottom to run a little faster to construction boots the Jack Boots the scuba boots I use no tools the only thing I got a knife and cut it off that's it knife they plunge as low as 60 ft deep to find the sponges hardly ever will go over 45 50 60 ft maybe they walk along the bottom for as long as it takes to fill up one bag I just keep looking I just make lot of Dives I go down and I look in the old days they used a hook to tear sponges from the bottom but now by law a diver has to cut the sponge with a knife to promote regeneration one study shows Cut sponges have a much better chance of surviving roughly 30% higher than hooked ones it's kind of like shearing a sheep or cutting a branch off a tree sponges actually show the highest regenerative ability of any animal still Captain TSO doesn't harvest the smaller ones he leaves them behind so they can keep growing they have to be 5 in and up they haul their full net up to the boat and make their way back to shore on the docks Tso and his team get to work separating and cleaning the sponges the price of the sponges depends of the size of the sponges and the quality wool sponges are the most valuable going for about $15 each they're the softest and they hold a lot of water yellows are more coarse they're also the cheapest as the fishermen sort the sponges they give them the first of many cleanings then they trim them to get rid of any discolorations and to shape them that's the reason not wearing the loves because uh Spong is like a fine sandpaper they wear you out you know the fingerprints disappear see just like glass if I almost D my coffee cup this morning overnight Captain TSO leaves his clean sponges out to dry some people stop by to ask questions or buy straight from the Harvesters on the Docks but taso says the best option is finding a wholesale buyer the sponges find themselves or rather a piece of themselves add a processing plant like this one about a mile and a half from the docks sponges get soaked in the wedding area and push down into a bath with a wooden paddle then they're drained in this net and transferred to a water extractor where they're spun to remove excess water leaving the sponges damp and ready for the next stage cutting the worker protects his fingers from this sharp wire with gloves these are sponges that are netted up for processing we'll put them in the bath tonight and they'll sit there overnight and then be processed from there Harry Barber manages the plant at armaly sponge company the armaly family founded the company in the Bahamas in 1908 and expanded into Florida about 50 years ago they opened their tarp and springs processing plant in 2018 into the washing machine they go next time to dry and get sorted by size they box the sponges and prepare them for shipment bath sponges have taken off tremendously because people want to use something on their children that's sustainable and you know clean and natural despite the sponge's near magical ability to regenerate it was almost wiped out here in the late 1930s by by a mysterious disease and then again in the 40s and 50s outof control algae called red Tides killed many local sponge beds the population survived Against All Odds and thrived during the industries Heyday in the 1980s when around 30 sponge boats and 50 divers docked here every day it was a blight of sponges in the Mediterranean and we were able to harvest here locally at higher prices and ship stuff over to the Mediterranean but when the Mediterranean Fisheries recovered the demand and the price went down again in Tarpon Springs many fishermen went out of business but some like Captain TSO stuck it out and I don't know how to do anything else 2022 hasn't proven much easier with record inflation and fuel prices maintaining and gasing up a boat is expensive and the industry is facing another problem hurricanes are happening more and more because of the climate crisis so bad years are becoming the norm divers can't go out during storms but there's something else even though sponges are technically animals they survive by attaching themselves to the ocean floor during a hurricane many get smothered by sand or hit by tumbling rocks and die lately only a handful of sponge boats and about a dozen divers go out any given day you just have to look harder because it's not everywhere generally I used to be a red TI kill him but some survivors here there Captain toso Works long days I woke all my life I grow up in a family 12 kids my father take me up 4:00 in the morning working all day long I can walk 24 hours nonstop handling his sponges the whole time from the time you pick the sponge to the bottom that's the first time you touch it by the time you sell it you have the same sponge at least 20 more times armaly mostly buys from independent contractors like TSO we purchase from them based on what they bring in and the conditions and sizes of what they have so the income isn't guaranteed sponger MIP goe goes on these long fishing trips year round he makes about $46,000 a year if you being sponges is going to be good year you don't bring him no good year sometimes hurricane you know time you don't work some years you work more and you make more some years less and you make less depends how much time you going out there that's all in addition to the financial uncertainty diving can be dangerous if your hose gets cut or you dive too deep that's why MIP and taso aren't trying to pass down a family business well cut myo a couple of times and out air and I have to swim up that's a dangerous stuff I don't want my kids or my grandkids do this job they can do better you know what I mean there's not much money into it nobody wants to go get beat up out there for 20 days people perform to be a land I ain't going to push my grandkids to this job I don't want them to do that they're doing good in the school it it is uh sad to see so few fishing but I certainly understand it uh the markets right now won't bear really high prices to offset the cost of fuel maintenance on boats is expensive we're looking at a country and a world that's trying to look at natural products so until the industry can rejuvenate itself Tarpon Springs will have to rely on its tourism visitors pour tens of millions of dollars into the community every year eating authentic Greek food and taking boat tours they also shop for sponge souvenirs to take home but many locals Wonder if tourism will be the long-term solution and if it's not what's next for the upcoming generation of spongers PanAm was once the largest International Airline in the US in 1970 alone it carried 11 million passengers to 86 countries worldwide PanAm is also known as the pioneer of multiple features of modern air travel and it also holds cult status for its iconic Aviation style but after 60 years of flight and Decades of financial turbulence PanAm went bust so what [Music] happened Pan-American Airways was founded by two US Air Force Majors it began as an air mail service between Key West Florida and Havana Cuba in 1927 and was the United States's first scheduled international flight within a year Aviation Visionary Juan trip took the controls and PanAm introduced its first passenger services to Havana an ad campaign co-sponsored by PanAm and bardi successfully encouraged Americans to fly away from alcohol prohibition in the US to drink rum in the sun in Cuba and trip quickly expanded Pam's Network by 1930 PanAm was flying Roots through most of Central and South America crucially it used a fleet of flying boats or Clippers to land aircraft on the water at destinations that didn't have concrete runways for traditional planes since they flew sea planes PanAm Pilots wore CA Captain's uniforms a decision that still influences Aviation uniforms today and there were far more important innovations that PanAm developed in its early days of flight everything from things that we take for granted today like air traffic control and different flight procedures different ways of forecasting the weather of flight planning PanAm was the first airline to fly around the world they actually set a few different records about that they were the first to fly uh from the US across the Pacific it was really a lot they launched this international service that really helped Define what we have today is just regular air travel by 1958 PanAm offered regular flights to every continent on the planet except Antarctica giving itself the title of the world's most experienced Airline Pam's modern Fleet of pressurized aircraft could fly smoothly above turbulent weather which provided a comfortable experience for passengers its lavish cabins were staffed by a multilingual college educated flight crew who served luxurious meals like steak champagne and caviar on October 26th 1958 PanAm becomes the first American airline to fly jet aircraft a PanAm Boeing 707 streaks from New York to Paris in 8 hours the world enters the jet age the powerful new jet engines which could fly non-stop over long distances allowed PanAm to introduce daily flights to London and Paris and with the introduction of economy class PanAm opened the world of air travel to tourists not just to Rich and Famous in 1970 PanAm carried 11 million customers over 20 billion miles thinking that air travel would only continue to grow PanAm invested half a billion dollars in a large Fleet of Boeing 747 jetliners but this would turn out to be a big mistake in October 1973 the organization of Arab petroleum exporting countries declared an oil embargo against Nations including the US that were supporting Israel in the yam kapor War by the end of the Embargo in March 1974 the price of oil had risen by more than 400% this hit PanAm harder than other airlines because of its exclusively Long Haul flights which required more fuel they were the launch customer for the Boeing 747 at the time that was a great airplane for them to buy that was a right choice but the oil crisis really changed things for PanAm it was all of the sudden the wrong plane to have it wasn't the most efficient it was flying routes that really weren't selling that well because demand for travel was going down and that was a very difficult time but when they made the decision to buy the planes who would have known while Pam's operating costs skyrocketed the economy slowed and America's appetite for international air travel greatly reduced leaving PanAm dangerously overc capacity with huge half empty Jets taking to the skies as a result between 1969 and 1976 6 PanAm lost about $364 million and was estimated to be $1 billion in debt PanAm had long hoped to add domestic flights within the US to its operation and even talk to a number of domestic operators including American and United Airlines to propose a merger but rival Airlines convinced the US Congress that PanAm threatened to monopolize us Aviation and the Civil Aeronautics board repeatedly denied PanAm permission to operate domestically but in 1978 the airline deregulation Act was pass into United States federal law meaning the government could no longer control Airline routes PanAm was now allowed to acquire a domestic system and it hastily purchased National Airlines for $437 million it cost a tremendous amount of money to acquire this particular airline to get the routes they obviously made a choice they couldn't build from scratch they needed to go out and buy something you basically have two cultures going on PanAm very worldly sophisticated International then you had National Airlines they were sort of puddle jumpers they were um considered country Pilots so there was a mix of culture that didn't work there then you had different kind of aircraft and some mechanics have never worked on certain airplanes I think there was a mismatch there too El different airports just in general it was really a small Southern airline that was matching up with um an International Airline within a year of the National Airlines purchase PanAm lost $18.9 million even after selling its iconic Manhattan head office for $400 million PanAm continued to self- liquidate to offset its losses in addition to trading its hotel chains it sold entire Pacific Division to United Airlines but PanAm still had a global reputation as the flagship US Airline however this claim to fame would attract a devastating terrorist attack above the Skies of logger be Scotland on the 21st of December 1988 PanAm flight 103 took off from heo it was bound from New York it was never scheduled to either touch down or land in Scotland a bomb that had been based on board accordingly blew up over a small town in the southwest of Scotland called lockerby 259 people all aboard the plane were killed passengers and crew and 11 citizens in the small community of locker Bay were also killed PanAm were held culpable and negligent in failing to have adequate security measures you can have some sympathy for PanAm because their defense if it was a defense at the time was simply that they had carried out the normal uh security measures that the entire Aviation industry did but the courts took the view that that was inadequate they had failed to properly secure their plane and as a consequence uh a bag had got on board that shouldn't have been on board in the first place but PanAm you can say took the hit metaphorically as well as literally for an industry where security standards had not got up to speed the locker B bombing cost PanAm more than $350 million and proved to be the final blow to the once giant Airline just 2 years later on January 8th 1991 PanAm filed for bankruptcy after a bidding war Delta Airlines purchased the majority of PanAm for $1.4 billion acquiring its European routs its Northeastern shuttle routes 45 Jets its mini Hub in Frankfurt Germany and its Flagship PanAm worldport terminal at JFK International Airport PanAm hoped to emerge from bankruptcy but after realizing it was losing $3 million per day Delta stopped its cash advances after failing to raise money from other sources a phone call was made to Pam's head office on December 4th 1991 the message was shut it [Music] down Pan-American Airways went bankrupt and they shut down Services it broke people's hearts really um not just the people that work for the airline but for many other people that flew it and knew it and it was it was the flagship Airline of America PanAm this legendary airline with its Legendary logo was the second most recognized trademark in the world at the time a group of friends of mine actually bought those trademarks and in fact I was one of the investors in that group we bought those trademarks unfortunately Charles Cobb who was the largest investor wanted to start the airline again and we said but it didn't work last time we parted ways he bought us out he slapped the PanAm globe on this Airline which is be sort of like putting the PanAm globe on a Greyhound bus it lasted a couple of months and it crashed all the other attempts to do something else with the trademark have failed but Pam's Legacy continues to be felt almost 30 years after its collapse its Innovations Remain the pillars of modern air travel its brand style has survived throughout the decades as an iconic mid-century fashion statement with products featuring its Sleek retro logo still being sold and the PanAm lifestyle is still romanticized in TV and movies but the airline itself remains grounded at its peak in the late '90s Blockbuster owned over 9,000 video rental stores in the United States employed 84,000 people worldwide and had 65 million registered customers once valued as a $3 billion company in just one year Blockbuster earned $800 million in late fees alone Blockbuster Video wow but fast forward a decade and Blockbuster ceased to exist having filed for bankruptcy with over $900 million in debt so what [Music] happens lockbuster was founded by David Cook a software supplier in the oil and gas industry after studying the potential of a video store business for a friend he realized that a well franchised chain could grow to 1,500 units and so the first Blockbuster store opened in Dallas on October 19th 1985 according to David Cook the opening night of that first Blockbuster store was a huge success The Story Goes that they actually had to lock the doors because of overcrowding the thing that really set Blockbuster apart at that time was their huge range of titles other independent video stores could only keep track of of 100 or so movies Blockbuster had an Innovative new barcode system which meant that they could track up to 10,000 vhs's per store to each registered customer which also meant that they could keep an eye on those lucrative late fees off the back of this success cook built a $6 million Distribution Center not only so that new stores could pop up quickly but also to house a huge range of titles so that each store's inventory could be tailored to local demographics wow w wow in 1987 Blockbuster received $18.5 million from a trio of investors including Waste Management founder Wayne haena in return for voting control but after 2 months of intense disagreements cook left Blockbuster and haena assumed control under haena Blockbuster embarked on an aggressive expansion plan buying out existing video rental chains while opening new stores at a rate of one per day by 1988 just 3 years after the first store opened Blockbuster was America's number one video chain with over 400 stores nationwide but as Blockbuster became a multi-billion dollar company in the early '90s adding music and video game rental to its stores haena was worried about how emerging technology like cable television could hurt Blockbuster's video store model after briefly considering buying a the cable company and even receiving approval from the Florida legislature to build a blockbuster amusement park in Miami haena offloaded Blockbuster to Media giant Viacom for $8 billion in 1994 in only 2 years under Viacom Blockbuster lost half of its value go one of two [Music] ways while Blockbuster and its new boss John antioco focused on brick and mortar video stores technological innovations meant that competition was on the rise in 1997 Reed Hastings founded Netflix a DVD by maale rental service at the time in part after being frustrated with a $40 late fee from Blockbuster 2 years later having passed on an opportunity to buy Netflix for $50 million Blockbuster teamed up with Enron to create a video on demand service in a deal that saw Enron do most of the work a robust video on demand platform was successfully built and tested with customers but it soon became clear to Enron that Blockbuster was so focused on its lucrative video stores that it had little time or commitment for the video on demand business as a result in 2001 Blockbuster walked away from the first major development of widescale movie streaming within a few years Netflix and other competitors began to eat into Blockbusters profits not by undercutting it but by reimagining video rental in the digital age there's a better way to rent movies go to netflix.com make a list of the movies you want to see and in about one business day you'll get three DVDs keep them as long as you want without late fees then when you're done look prepaid envelopes return one and they'll send you another movie from your list Netflix all the movies you want 20 bucks a month and no late it took Blockbuster almost 5 years to introduce its own DVD by mail service and even longer to scrap late fees more late fees no more late fees no more late [Music] fees by that time Netflix had amassed almost 3 million customers had no store overheads and Was preparing to launch its revolutionary streaming service Blockbusters troubles continued through the mid 2000s after parting from Viacom and experimenting with inore Concepts such as DVD and game trading Blockbuster was in the midst of an identity crisis in 2009 Netflix posted earnings of $116 million meanwhile Blockbuster with its continuing business problems and legal battles lost 518 million on July 1st 2010 Blockbuster was listed from the New York Stock Exchange its Fay into video on demand streaming came too late and over the next 3 years Blockbuster died a slow and painful death DVD by mail services stopped its various Partnerships folded and stores worldwide were rapidly plunged into Administration we're closing early its 9,000 strong chain had been reduced to one single franchise in B Oregon as a result of Blockbuster's complete shutdown one can only speculate about what could have been for the once home movie Giant they were too busy making money in their video stores to imagine a time when people would no longer want or need them and in a bid to rescue their business their answer at the time was to Fight Fire with Fire um at one point they even opened up rental kiosks a little bit like a vending machine but all of these attempts were based on either outdated technology or outdated business models whereas Netflix at the time they did the opposite they streamlined they were able to see the future of video rentals and then innovate for that future Blockbuster they didn't seem to understand how the Next Generation particularly Millennials who grew up in a world without hard copy me media like DVDs and CDs how they would react to video on demand as as technology improved and that's why Netflix Amazon Prime YouTube and Hulu they're still all in business whilst Blockbuster got left behind according to Netflix's former Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy as part of the fail 2000 Blockbuster Netflix buyout Reed Hastings proposed that Netflix would run the Blockbuster brand online if that deal had been successful and Hastings had replicated Netflix's Innovation for Blockbuster the face of Home Video would likely still be blue and yellow the last ever Blockbuster movie was rented on November 9th 2013 fittingly the film in question was this is the end in 2020 pelaton experienced incredible growth quickly becoming a household name in the connected Fitness space the trouble is pelaton believ the story around it a little too much and it didn't entirely recognize the market opportunities around it I'm Emily Stewart and I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider so pellon was founded in 2012 by John Foley who was a former Barnes and Noble executive it raised a total of $4 million that year in Angel investments in a series a round the next year it raised $300,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to try and bring its project to life soon after pelaton started shipping bikes and it opened its first studio in New York City too I want to welcome you to pellaton Studios New York it's kind of part of that cohort of Boutique spin Brands like Soul cycle or flywheel that were popping up all over the place during that time but paton's whole shtick of course isn't people going to a studio to ride it's the bikes that are at home with tablets attached where people can stream classes pelaton sales took off its instructors like Robin ozan and Cody rby and Ali love became stars get off the couch and move your ass do 10 squats they amassed thousands of followers on social media and appeared regularly on talk shows rby was even on Dancing With the Stars pelaton has also inspired some copycat connected Fitness Products think of mirror which is what it sounds like a mirror that hangs on your wall but also is for Fitness or tonal which is for weight training in 2018 pelaton expanded its offering and launched a treadmill to go along with its bike let's roll baby yes let's get it pelaton and nowadays it has a rower too pelaton was so popular that it grew to have 1.4 million members and was valued at $8 billion when it went public in the fall of 2019 a couple of months later pelaton made a splash after its holiday ad went viral it is a husband giving his wife a pelaton bike for Christmas which seems nice enough I guess first ride I'm a little nervous but excited let's do this then she spends the entire year making these pain looking selfie videos of herself on the bike and kind of puts them together into a video for the next Christmas and there was quite a bit of backlash around that it's not great to think that a husband is kind of giving his wife something so that she can be thin and fit and pelaton had to do a little bit of clean up after that paton's big break came with a pandemic and the onset of covid-19 everybody's stuck at home the gyms are shut down and a lot of people are sitting around and think I might as well get a Paton it sales surged by 200% in November 2020 compared to the year before and it had its first billion dollar quarter the last three months of that year obviously with that big surgeon demand pelaton had to try and react to meet that demand and a lot of customers were complaining at the time that they were waiting months and months for the bikes so what pelaton did naturally is to invest in its supply chain and in manufacturing and attempt to catch up and meet that demand pelon's stock price exploded during that time too its market cap peaked around $50 billion in late 2020 like zoom and Clorox it was a solid stay-at-home bet for Wall Street the story around pelaton was really exciting kind of going from Z to 100 very fast is an impaling narrative I know right but the problem is sort of that pelaton believed the story a little bit too much it really bought into the narrative and it didn't really see that it wasn't really real and that's kind of how it landed where it is today Paton of eventually caught up on the supply side the problem is that by the time it did the demand wasn't really there anymore the covid vaccines had come out a lot of gyms were opening back up and people didn't want to work out at home anymore people were happy to leave their homes Co also pulled forward a lot of demand for pelaton products that means somebody who maybe would have bought a bike in 2022 or 2023 did so in 2020 there's also just a limited number of people who will ever buy a pelaton at all especially given how expensive they are the basic bike now and it's cheaper than it used to be is $1500 before it was 2,000 the treadmill is$ 3,000 again these are the basic levels so the fancier ones are even more this is a really big investment and as we know with a lot of Fitness Products a lot of us have a lot of aspirations about going to the gym and getting fit and we fail at those and then we wind up with expensive stuff that we don't want anymore and even if you really are a huge Pon fan you're not going to buy Six bikes right you're going to have one bike maybe you'll get a treadmill but you're not buying a bunch of equipment pelaton pods production early 2022 in an attempt to control costs by the end of June its full year net loss was $2.8 billion peleton has also seen its fair share of leadership shakeups John Foley who led the company for its entire existence stepped down a CEO in February of 2022 he handed control over to Barry McCarthy who'd previously done stin sets Spotify and Netflix McCarthy's out now too he left in 2024 and a pair of interim CEOs took over for him business-wise pelaton just hasn't been able to find its footing its stock price has plunged and its market cap is under $2 billion remember at its peak it was valued at $50 billion so 25 times that the companies had to issue recalls for both his treadmills and its bikes it's done layoffs and some of its star instructors have headed for the exit I am moving on from pelaton I'm choosing to close my chapter at pelaton it's time to take a break from teaching at pelaton pelons had some weird PR debacles too if you think back to late 2021 when and just like that premiered which is the Revival of Sex in the City in the very first episode Mr Big dies while on a pelaton bike also not a great look and after that pelaton again tried to do some cleanup with an ad featuring The after kind of making light of the situation but pretty soon after that he was hit with sexual assault allegations and so again kind of a unfortunate oops for pelaton but pelaton is in a lost cause it has about 3 million paid subscribers who all give it $40 every month that's a great business model holding on to those subscribers isn't an easy task though pelaton is doing a decent job still given the state of its finances and debt it's not clear pelaton can make it at work a lot of pelon's problem at least According to some analysts is that it's investing in the wrong places it really again to get back to this idea that it believed its own story it's been really focused on investing in marketing and in growing its customer base and a better strategy might be to focus on the people who do have it and do like it and it's user based and really cultivating those people again it has a lot of subscribers it also wants to keep those people around and it does have a fair amount of turn it does lose subscribers sometimes but it's done so far a pretty decent job of holding on to people I think another thing to think about is that pelaton story would look different if the pandemic hadn't happened if you hadn't seen this giant surge in the middle if you hadn't seen that stock pop you might look at pelaton today and say this doesn't look so bad and they might not have also made some of the Investments that have come back to bite them there's also a reality that Fitness Trends are constantly changing we tend to treat Fitness like a fad or like fashion two alterate and if you think back to Taio in the 90s or the Thigh Master in the 80s a lot of those fads have come and go and it's hard not to look at pelaton and think that's probably where this is headed I will note here that hio does still exist which most people don't know people also get bored with workouts they're kind of looking to do a new thing all of the time and even if you really love pelaton and you think the instructors are super fun and entertaining you just don't want to be onest stationary bike forever for people who do really love pelaton like you don't have to worry that your favorite instructor is going away tomorrow there's always speculation that maybe a bigger company would buy pelaton or maybe private Equity would swoop in it's not going under tomorrow and I do think also the good news is if you don't have a pelaton and you've been thinking about buying one it's not the worst time to buy the bikes and treadmills are cheaper than they used to be pelon's mistake is that it got too high in its own Supply and it sort of believed the hype around it a little too much it thought it would grow forever now it's come back down to earth and that come down feels like a crash [Music] [Music] [Music] out right [Music]