😴 Take a sleep retreat

Plus: $25k for a piece of Mr. Darcy, Oscars losers' huge consolation prizes, there's no sound in space (except for these sounds), and more. View Online Long, long ago, in the year 2022, San Franciscans were in an uproar over the city installing a singular public toilet estimated to cost $1.7m. Well, after years of fighting and some clutch donations, the pricey latrine has finally been installed and taxpayers' total bill came down to $300k. That still sounds like a lot for just one toilet, but all's well that serves rear ends well? In today's email: Sleep tourism: Spend your way out of tiredness. Beer caves: Could ice-cold beers save ice-cold beer sales? Digits: Lots of soup, nowhere to live, sequel mania, and more newsy numbers. Around the web: Life finds a way, what space sounds like, and more. 👇 Listen: Gen Alpha is starting to make cash — lots of it, even — and multiple industries are lining up to help them manage it. The Big Idea Don't snooze on the booming business of sleep tourism You're getting sleepy, very sleepy — now check into a hotel. 2024-03-11T00:00:00Z Sara Friedman Everyone's tired these days. One in three adults don't get enough sleep, and 50m-70m Americans have chronic sleep disorders. And it's fueling a thriving sleep tourism industry, which is expected to grow by ~8% — more than $400B — between 2023 and 2028. Now, the hospitality industry is embracing sleep as the main event for tourists rather than an afterthought, per The New York Times. The Carillon Miami Wellness Resort has a Bryte bed — a ~$6.3k AI-assisted mattress with smartphone connectivity — in each of its 150 rooms. The Beatrice in Rhode Island offers a Sleep Wellness package starting at $419 a night that includes Therabody SmartGoggles, mocktails, and herbal teas. The Park Hyatt New York has five sleep suites with Bryte beds, starting at $1k+ a night. Hotels catering to better sleep isn't new — the Westin introduced the Heavenly Bed in 1999, and blackout curtains and white noise machines have become hotel staples — but it's reaching new heights. Next-level sleep Today's sleep tourism industry isn't just a couple of extra gadgets, it's a whole new way to travel. Hotels are offering retreats and experiences dedicated to sleep: The Carillon has a five-treatment spa circuit promoting good sleep and a ~$2.6k Sleep Well retreat. Canyon Ranch offers a five-night Mastering Sleep Retreat with doctors, dieticians, and spiritual providers; this year's is $8.8k per person. Cocooning lets travelers tuck away into dark rooms void of screens or distractions. London's Beaumont hotel offers ROOM, a $1.78k-per-night suite promising total relaxation. Some hotel brands are even employing sleep experts to help guests snooze. The Mandarin Oriental is partnering with hypnotherapist and sleep concierge Malminder Gill, and Hyatt launched a Sleep at Hyatt program in Australia and New Zealand with its sleep ambassador Nancy H. Rothstein. The trend isn't surprising given recent data — more people than ever are looking for R & R and "slow" travel. Finally, a vacation where you don't come home in need of another vacation. Free Resource ChatGPT hacks for business professionals Ballers everywhere are breaking into AI by finding ways to use it at work, and you should, too. Take our ebook of 100 ChatGPT hacks you can use across sales, marketing, management, and customer support. Your personal problem-solver: ChatGPT use cases Ideas for improving your workflow Best practices for asking questions 100 ways to try ChatGPT today You're either riding the wave or waiting for rain, and we wouldn't recommend the latter. Automate abundantly → TRENDING Feeling bad for the losers from last night's Oscars? Don't. They still walked away with gift bags worth ~$180k, including a three-night stay at a Swiss ski chalet, a red light sleep therapy device, a portable infrared grill, and a Rubik's Cube (for some reason). SNIPPETS Sam Altman is back on the board of OpenAI after the company hired a law firm to investigate the CEO's November ousting. The probe claims Altman's firing was due to his "breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust" with the former board. Apple banned, then unbanned, Epic Games' developer account to appease EU officials. The "Fortnite" studio may now release its own app store to iOS users in the EU. Rivian, the Amazon-backed EV maker, saw a $1.7B+ surge in market value after unveiling a new SUV model last week. But, to put it in context: Its market cap has dropped from $153B in 2021 to $12.5B today, and it's laying off ~10% of its employees. Honestly embarrassing: Saudi oil giant Aramco reported a $121B profit last year, the second-highest number they've ever achieved, but nowhere close to its 2022 profit of $161B, the all-time record for a public company. A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is coming April 2026. A follow-up film was a no-brainer for Nintendo after the first earned $1B+ at the box office. Speaking of the box office, Kung Fu Panda 4 brought in $58.3m over Oscars weekend, the second-best opening for the DreamWorks franchise. Moving up the food chain: If you don't have an ALDI nearby, that'll likely change soon — the grocer is investing $9B over the next five years to add 800 locations across the US. Yikes: Five Beverly Hills middle school students were expelled for generating deepfake nudes of their classmates, adding fuel to an ongoing debate about how to regulate ethical AI use. We're all suckers and that's good news: When cashiers and card terminals ask Americans to round up their payment to donate to a good cause, it works. Charities added $749m in donations through this fundraising method in 2022. Point of clarification: Our Friday top story referenced a man who threatened someone with a knife and was then fired from a tech company named Reveal. There are actually two different SaaS businesses named Reveal; the one found at Reveal.co was not involved in this story in any way. Chart Olivia Heller Has the beer cave's time passed? Also, what's a beer cave? Walk-in refrigerated beer-selling rooms are a big investment for convenience stores. Are they worth it? 2024-03-11T00:00:00Z Ben Berkley You're in a convenience store on a hot summer day when you see the glass doors that offer your salvation: a massive walk-in cooler. Once you step in, you see it's loaded up with ice-cold beer for sale. Nice. If this feels familiar, you've been in a beer cave. There are 30k-40k of them in the US today, representing ~20% of convenience stores. Should there be more caves? It's a challenging time for selling cold ones. Back in 2000, beer sales were ~2x greater than spirits; now, spirits have outsold beer for a second straight year. It'll likely get harder, too: The majority of Gen Z consumers prefer gin and vodka over beer and wine. That makes investing in beer caves a tough call for retailers, especially since smaller 8-by-8-foot caves can cost ~$15k and bigger 20-by-20-foot models can run ~$75k, per CStore Decisions. Whether it's a worthwhile investment is pondered in the newly published State of Beer Caves report from iSee Store Innovations. The answer, from a company that offers storage and display solutions for grocers, is unsurprisingly yes. But their logic is compelling… According to the report, stores with beer caves see, on average, 35% more foot traffic, with the average shopper spending $6 more per visit. It also drives impulse purchases and experimentation — Would you rather try one 28-degree can of a new beer, or a gamble on a room-temp case of it? There are challenges besides cost, like keeping the space navigable, which can require staff attention. Consumers' biggest complaints involve excess inventory blocking doors, cluttered spaces, and difficulty finding items. Also: Female shoppers tend to avoid them because, well, they're confined, poorly lit public spaces where it's easy to feel trapped and this is an imperfect world. BTW: The beer cave report didn't have anything about people sneaking into them to lower their core temperature, so you should be good to keep that up this summer. FIT THE BILL There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand? Clue 1: Some companies make things happen; this one plainly makes things. It has manufactured everything from iPads, iPods, and iPhones to Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles. Clue 2: Twenty Asian universities teamed up on a 2010 report that framed this company's factories as "labor camps." Steve Jobs disagreed, making headlines that same year for saying this company's facilities were "not a sweatshop" and, in fact, "pretty nice." Clue 3: This company takes "office politics" to a whole new, geopolitical level — it is based in Taiwan, but is China's largest private-sector employer. 👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇 By the Numbers Digits: Enchiladas all year, so many sequels, and more newsy numbers A soggy shirt, the rise of the sequel, and more wild numbers. 2024-03-11T00:00:00Z Juliet Bennett Rylah 25%+: Increase in soup and stew orders in Q4 2023, per data from Toast. Apparently, cold weather at the end of the year saw customers craving warm, savory comfort foods, with a 13% bump in ramen/noodle orders and a 12% jump in curry orders. During that same period, customers ordered fewer salads, hot dogs, and tacos. That may not be surprising, but the year-round champs are apparently desserts and enchiladas, which saw no change. $167k: The salary you'd make if you were Steamboat Springs, Colorado's head of human resources. Before you go filling out an application, however, know that the town has struggled to fill this position after not one, but two candidates were unable to find affordable housing, even with a six-figure income. Costs have skyrocketed due in part to remote workers leaving cities and settling in ski towns like Steamboat Springs. It's gotten so bad that one resort is housing employees in a hotel. $25k: Auction price for Mr. Darcy's shirt from the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Actor Colin Firth wore the shirt during an apparently very memorable scene in which his character takes a swim, then runs into his love interest in his still-damp linen shirt. The auction lot, which included Darcy's boots, pants, and waistcoat, fetched far more than its $12.7k presale estimate. 29: How many of the top 10 films of each year from 2018 to 2023 had either a colon, numeral, or number in the title, indicating a sequel. That's nearly half of the biggest blockbusters from the last five years, and significantly more than the top 10 films of each year from 1995 and 2000, which included seven such titles. This year's shaping up to be nothing new, with titles like Dune 2, Deadpool 3, Inside Out 2, and A Quiet Place: Day One on the calendar. AROUND THE WEB 🚗 On this day: In 2009, Toyota announced it had sold 1m+ gas-electric hybrid vehicles in the US across its Toyota and Lexus brands. Most of these sales were of the Toyota Prius, which debuted in 1997 in Japan. ⭐ That's cool: NASA released three new space sounds, including sonifications of another galaxy and a supernova remnant. 🎧 Another Bite: In this episode, Jorie, Ariel, and Jon chat through defensibility in apparel, the moat of military contracts, and agile manufacturing in a niche market. 🦕 Haha: Now you can be Samuel L. Jackson's character in Jurassic Park (minus the dying part). 🐱 Aww: Tiny yells. meme You're saying everything is fine but it doesn't feel that way… (Link) SHARE THE HUSTLE Hey. Don't keep us a secret. Refer just 3 people and we'll send Hustle essentials as a thank you. Share this custom referral link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Your referral count: 0 Today's Fit the Bill answer is Foxconn (Market cap: $69.59B) Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "Willing test subject for hotel sleeping suites" Berkley. 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