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Oct 21, 2023Liked by Vince Martin

Any data showing SBUX drinks are sugary/milkshakes? Thought it was just a preference change to cold…

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we were exaggerating a bit for effect there.

that said, no, I don't know of any data. we're going a little bit anecdotal, and a little bit off the menu. Even their "refreshers", which seem pretty light, are pretty rough. A frozen strawberry acai lemonade, grande size, has 35g of sugar. that's probably ~half the daily recommended value, depending on the drinker. The frappucinos are much worse (60g-plus). So I'd guess the shift to cold probably does include an increase in the average amount of sugar consumed per customer.

But one of the problems with GLP-1 impacts more broadly, I think, is that the data really isn't available, at least in the form we'd like. Starbucks (or McDonald's or whoever) isn't going to come out and say "we get 37% of revenue from drinks with greater than 40% of the recommended daily intake of added sugar, and 80% of those sales come from people who visit 3x a week or more". If you're trying to model GLP-1 impacts, you're really flying blind, and kind of the best possible for now is back of the envelope estimates.

I would certainly assume that, perhaps starting in Q3, we'll get some data from management teams that tries to disprove the GLP-1 narrative. On Twitter, we talked about the Abbott Labs CEO arguing on the Q3 call that investors were overestimating GLP-1 uptake. I bet we get A LOT of that in food, and some data points from a few companies discussing their possible exposure.

The question then, of course, is to what extent those data points can be trusted. And if you want to get a little crazy, perhaps one way to look at it is that if companies DON'T really provide a rebuttal to GLP-1 fears, then that itself is a tacit admission that there's real risk ahead.

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That's actually on the list, though not sure if it will make the final cut, as it were. Pretty amazing that LFMD and AMWL now have basically the same market cap - pretty wild to chart the two market caps over the years.

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