Garbage Fruit [Or, The Fruit of Theseus]

Summary

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Hyperfixed – "Garbage Fruit [Or, The Fruit of Theseus]"

Date: September 25, 2025
Host: Alex Goldman
Featuring: Emma Cortland, Robin (podcast producer), David Karp (pomologist), Matt Vela (hospitality tech CEO), Margie (Emma's cousin)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Hyperfixed investigates a mystery familiar to anyone who’s spent time in hotel lobbies or conference rooms: Why are Red Delicious apples—an apple almost universally regarded as flavorless and mealy—so often the fruit of choice in these spaces? Listener Robin, herself a podcast producer, suspects a government/industry conspiracy, but host Alex Goldman and the Hyperfixed team set out to uncover the real story behind the Red Delicious apple’s ubiquity and decline—and in doing so, discover a tale of failed marketing, unintentional genetic meddling, and a fruit forever changed.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Question: Why Are Red Delicious Apples Everywhere?

• Robin’s Theory & Annoyance

  • Robin expresses a conspiratorial suspicion about Red Delicious apples, noting they're so widely available for free, yet almost nobody actually likes them.
  • “There is something that feels so conspiratorial about Red Delicious apples...they sort of just happen to you, and you always get them for free.” (Robin, 03:18)
  • She half-jokingly speculates government played a role in their spread to support both “Big Apple” and roadside travelers.

• Alex & Emma’s Initial Investigations

  • Both echo the question: who is actually buying these apples and why, since everyone considers them subpar?
  • “Who’s buying them?…Are people eating these under duress? Are they truly eating them out of a perverse pleasure or utility?” (Emma Cortland, 06:20)

2. The (Unflattering) Rise and Fall of Red Delicious

• The Origins: A Fruit Once Worth Eating

  • Pomologist David Karp introduces the story behind the “Hawkeye” apple—from an accident in Iowa to a prized, aromatic, delicious fruit.
  • “The original Hawkeye Red Delicious was indeed delicious. It was highly aromatic…tasted great.” (David Karp, 09:12)
  • The Stark Brothers nursery successfully marketed the variety nationwide in the 1920s, and its versatility made it extremely popular.
  • “In many ways, the original Red Delicious was the Platonic ideal of an apple.” (Alex Goldman, 12:30)

• The Shift: Selection for Looks Over Flavor

  • As demand grew, shoppers selected the reddest apples available. Growers responded by propagating “sports”—genetic mutations for deeper red color.
  • Unbeknownst to them, the desirable traits for flavor and aroma were genetically linked to variegated (less red) skin.
  • “Every time a farmer would graft a newer, redder sport, the apples it produced would be a little less sweet.” (Alex Goldman, 16:30)
  • Multiple generations of increasingly red apples led to a product that looked great but tasted worse and worse.
  • “You ended up with something that was considerably less delicious, undermining its name and a poster child for specious commercial fruit.” (David Karp, 17:20)
  • Once the apple’s reputation nosedived, supply outstripped demand, and surplus apples ended up in places where quality didn’t matter.

• Industry Consequences and a Historic Bailout

  • By 2000, the collapse in demand led to a $760 million government bailout for apple growers.
  • “Nobody should feel sorry for us. We did this to ourselves.” (New York Times quote, paraphrased by Alex Goldman, 18:34)

• Who’s to Blame? Economics, Not Conspiracy

  • The incentives rewarded color, not quality.
  • “Bad money drives out good, and so this is bad fruit drives out good…You cannot blame them for selecting the red strains…had to make the economic decision to plant what enabled them to survive, and they did so.” (David Karp, 19:57)

3. Hotels, Apples, and the Illusion of Hospitality

• Why Offer Apples at All?

  • If Red Delicious is so bad, why not offer nothing?
  • Enter Matt Vela, hospitality tech CEO:
    • The apples are not really intended to be eaten; they are largely there as decor—a low-cost way to imply hospitality.
    • “If I put an apple out, at least we've done the hospitality thing…And if no one eats them, we save costs…I can recycle that apple for five guests…” (Matt Vela, 30:38)
    • The decision most often comes from accountants, not hosts: it's done to check a hospitality box more than delight guests.

• “Garbage Fruit” as Concept, Not Consumable

  • The Red Delicious in hotel lobbies has become a symbol—“the concept of hospitality”—not a sincere offering.
  • “It is confirmed true. All style, no substance. These apples.” (Emma Cortland, 33:33)

4. The “Ship of Theseus” Apple and a Taste of the Past

• The Final Revelation:
  • The Red Delicious apple epitomizes the Ship of Theseus paradox: continually modified for appearance until nothing of its original remained but the name.
  • Yet, you can still find a taste of history—if you look hard enough.
  • Emma’s cousin Margie visits a farmer’s market and tries one of the original “Hawkeye” apples.
    • Her verdict: “It does not taste like a trash apple. It tastes like a good apple. Fuck, yeah. Fuck, yeah.” (Margie, 35:13)
  • Emma is delighted by this discovery: “Wow, guys, I am so tickled. I’m charmed. I love this.” (35:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It looks like the Snow White apple. Death is hot.” (Emma Cortland, 07:19, as the group jokes about the Red Delicious aesthetic)
• “That's like anti-hospitality…putting these out on the bet that more people won't eat them than will.” (Alex Goldman, 31:14)
• “Hyperfixed is produced and edited by Emma Cortland Amore Yates and Sari Sofer Sukanek…We cannot exist without your problems. So if you have problems that you need solved by us, please submit them…thanks so much for listening.” (Alex Goldman, 36:04)
• “Have you ever heard of Gresham's Law?...Bad money drives out good, and so this is bad fruit drives out good.” (David Karp, 19:57)
• “These Red Delicious apples we've experienced in our lifetime, they're like the myth about the ship of Theseus…growers stripped the fruit of everything that made it great…then slapped some shiny red paint on the side.” (Alex Goldman, 32:27)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:18] Robin asks: “What’s the deal with Red Delicious apples?” Conspiracy suspicions aired.
• [09:12] David Karp recounts the actual origins of Red Delicious apples.
• [13:51] The genetics of selecting for color and its detrimental impact on taste.
• [17:20] How selection led to "specious fruit"—the beginning of the end.
• [18:34] The apple industry bailout and self-blame.
• [19:57] Explanation of Gresham’s Law as applied to fruit.
• [30:38] Matt Vela explains why hotels use Red Delicious apples as decor.
• [35:00] Margie, Emma’s cousin, tastes an actual Hawkeye apple: “It tastes like a good apple.”
• [36:04] Episode credits and call for listener problems.

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

The episode is humorous, mildly irreverent, and genuinely curious in tone. Alex and team balance skepticism about conspiracies with a willingness to dig deep for the real, often less dramatic answer. The result is as much a tale of marketing, economics, and unintended consequences as a quirky fruit mystery. The story ends on a hopeful note: if you seek out the old varieties, you can still reclaim a taste of what once made the Red Delicious apple so aptly named.

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For more fun mysteries and solutions, visit hyperfixedpod.com.

Transcript

[Alex Goldman]

Do you have a question that no one in your life can help with?

[Co-host or Announcer]

Something that makes the people around you go, yikes, What a weird question.

[Alex Goldman]

Well, freak here on how to do everything we want to help you out. Each week we get fantastic experts to answer your questions.

[Co-host or Announcer]

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[Alex Goldman]

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[Alex Goldman]

Deals this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Praise & Coverage Match Limited by state law not available in all states hey, this is Alex. Really quick, before we start, Hyper Fixed was nominated for a couple of signal awards and we would love it if you could vote for us in the People's Choice Awards for Best New Podcast and Best Live Podcast Recording. There will be links in the show notes for you to do that and that is all I have to say. Thanks so much. Enjoy the episode. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. This is Hyperfixed on the show. Listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. This week, Garbage Fruit or the Fruit of Theseus.

[Emma Cortland]

So these days I am working on a bunch of freelance projects.

[Alex Goldman]

This is Robin. She lives in D.C. and she works as a podcast producer. Which is why when I asked what she's been working on recently, I didn't think it was super weird for her to say this.

[Emma Cortland]

For a long time I was living professionally in the world of like spooky history and dark stories, and I have a wealth of knowledge about ghosts.

[Alex Goldman]

When you work in narrative podcasting, you spend a lot of time learning weird stuff, walking down roads that other people might not walk, looking at things that might otherwise be overlooked, and wondering what's the deal with that? Which is how Robin came to be thinking about today's question. But the reason that question made it to us, the reason that Robin didn't go chasing the answer herself is because Robin's best friend is also a podcast producer. My podcast producer, Emma Cortland.

[Amore Yates]

I'm going to recuse myself from reporting on this story, but because this is an audio medium, I feel like I need to tell the audience that my best friend is shockingly beautiful.

[Alex Goldman]

So, anyway, this whole thing started back in January. Robin and Emma were texting about work. Robin was telling Emma about the story she was writing, and Emma was talking about the question she was trying to answer. And suddenly Robin says, hey, I have a question for you, my boo.

[Robin (Podcast Producer)]

There is something that feels so conspiratorial about Red Delicious apples, because we all know that they are total garbage fruits. I don't know anybody in my life who pays for them. And they sort of just happen to you, and you always get them for free. And where do we get them for free? Most of the time we get them in conference rooms, hotel lobbies, roadside motels. That's where they sit, and that's where they languish until we take them home. I don't, like, know their provenance or origin, but I have to imagine the reason they proliferated is because the Federal Highway Administration was like, yo, we're going to build lots of roads. We are going to, like, link this country up over roadways. People are going to travel. They're going to see the country. They're going to do some leisure time. I feel like the government got into cahoots with Big Apple and was like, yo, put your apples along our highways, and we will both support each other and the American people and their appetites.

[Alex Goldman]

So I'm convinced that this is a pretty ludicrous conspiracy theory. But Emma insisted that there was an interesting question underneath the question and that I should interview Robin.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

But you'll forgive me if, when I.

[Alex Goldman]

Went into my interview with her, I was more than a little skeptical. I think this is, like, a case of being kind of D.C. brained. Like, you're, like. You're, like, around lobbyists, and so you automatically assume that every benign object in.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

The world has some kind of nefarious lobby behind it.

[Alex Goldman]

Tell me a little bit about your hatred of Red Delicious apples. I mean, I want to know what it is specifically you do not like about them.

[Robin (Podcast Producer)]

Oh, my gosh, Alex, have you ever.

[Emma Cortland]

Had one that you liked?

[Alex Goldman]

The truth is, I have not had a Red Delicious apple that I liked, but also, I just don't really like apples of any kind. I eat maybe one apple a year, and that's a very generous estimation. So When Emma told me that we should pursue this question, I don't think I realized that the Red Delicious apple was so widely derided that among people who actually like the fruit, the Red Delicious apple is iconic, not as a representation of the peak fruit form, but of how far a fruit can miss the mark. So as I was listening to Robin describe everything that she hates about this apple, about its mealy texture and its flavorless flesh, I too, started to wonder, why the heck are these apples everywhere?

[Emma Cortland]

Truly? It's like, why are they everywhere? And does anybody like them? Like, who is doing the market research on the saleability of these apples?

[Alex Goldman]

Like, such a good question.

[Emma Cortland]

Who's buying them? You know, like, are people eating these under duress? Are they truly eating them out of, like, a perverse pleasure or utility? What's the nature of it?

[Alex Goldman]

What if it's just, like, the esthetics of them because they're shiny and red? Like, maybe that, like, they are the archetype, Archetypical, archetypal apple. Maybe that's it. It's just like, well, they got curb appeal.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

You know what I mean?

[Emma Cortland]

Yeah. Do you think that's enough, though? Do you think they would have such staying power if it was only esthetics?

[Alex Goldman]

Look at Apple, the computer. They're no better than a PC. They're so much more expensive. They are very attractive.

[Emma Cortland]

Yes, but they also have sexy marketing, sexy shape. Sexy marketing.

[Alex Goldman]

Does Red Delicious apple kind of has a sexy shape?

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

Unfortunately, it's very curvy.

[Emma Cortland]

Yeah, very curvy. But does it have sexy marketing? I don't think so. I see no marketing for these apples. So I'm like, so how.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

I'm sorry.

[Alex Goldman]

I'm laughing. Amor just typed in our prep. It looks like the Snow White apple. Death is hot.

[Emma Cortland]

Yeah.

[Alex Goldman]

At the end of the day, Robin's question was this. She wanted to know how this flavorless, sterile, mealy apple became so ubiquitous and why it was the apple of choice for hotel lobbies and conference rooms across America. And those felt like questions I could answer. But I was a little bit worried that whatever answer I found would be underwhelming compared to her conspiracy theory. So I asked her. Given the fact that this is almost certainly not going to link back to government collusion, what would feel like a satisfying end to the.

[Emma Cortland]

The thing that would be the most satisfying to me is if you just found, like, a single nugget of weird in the truth, which I'm sure is, like, pretty straightforward, but, like, you just found, like, a weird, unexpected twist for me. Like, that would be. That would be good.

[Alex Goldman]

All right, well, I think we have everything we need, so we're gonna look around and see what we can find.

[Emma Cortland]

Thanks, guys. Well, cool. So good to see you both.

[Alex Goldman]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I do have to tell you guys up front that there is no apple conspiracy. The reason Red Delicious apples are the go to apple for so many hotel lobbies is because they're cheap. And the reason they're cheap is because the supply is so much greater than the demand. And the reason the demand is low is because Red Delicious apples are generally bad. Pretty gross. So the real question here is, why is the supply so high? Why did so many farmers elect to plant so many orchards filled with so many gross apples? And the weird answer we found is that those yucky apples, they were not always so yucky.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

The original Hawkeye Red Delicious was indeed delicious. It was highly aromatic, at least in its proper season. The first few months after harvest in September or early October, it tasted great.

[Alex Goldman]

This is David Karp. He's a pomologist, which means that he studies fruit and cultivation of fruit. He's based in Los Angeles, and he spent the majority of his life ensconced in the fruit world. He's written about fruit for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He was the produce correspondent for Gourmet magazine back when that was a thing. And today he is the co editor of the Register of New Fruit and Nut Cultivars, which is an authoritative reference work about fruit. So we asked David, what is the deal with Red Delicious apples? And of course, he knew the answer. Not just because David knows everything there is to know about fruit, but because apparently the story of the Red Delicious apple has become kind of a cautionary tale for the fruit world. Okay, so the whole thing starts innocently enough with an Iowa based apple farmer named Jesse Hyatt. And the story goes that one day in 1870, Hyatt decided to take a walk in his orchard. And as he's strolling down these neat and tidy rows, he notices this one weird little tree growing up from the ground, like in between his existing rows of bellflower apple trees. So Hyatt goes and gets an axe, chops down the weird little tree, and he walks away. But the next year, the tree's grown back. Hyatt cuts it down again and again. The tree grows back. On and on this goes, until Hyatt finally gives up and he just decides to let it grow. And when the tree begins to fruit, it's unlike Any apple he's ever had before. In fact, it's the best apple Hyatt's ever had. And he gives it a name. He calls it a hawkeye apple, after the Iowa Hawkeyes. And in each 1893, he sends it off to compete in an international fruit fair hosted by the stark brothers nursery. And this is where the story of the delicious apple really begins. Because once Clarence Stark of stark brothers nursery takes a bite of this apple, he realizes it's going to be the next big thing, and he is going to be the guy that gets it there. Stark buys the rights to the hawkeye apple, and he gives it a new name. He calls it delicious. And in the style of a small time drug dealer, he starts sending out delicious apple trees as a free gift with purchase from his family's nursery. And it's a huge expense. But Stark is betting that once people get a taste of these apples, they're going to want to come back and order more. And time proves him right. By 1922, Stark's delicious apples were estimated to be generating about $12 million a year, which today would be over $200 million. And the success of this apple, the proliferation of it, is due in no small part to its versatility.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

It was relatively robust and productive and firm and long soaring for its era. It was cosmopolitan. It grew in many different areas. So, for example, the stark brothers nursery, which first popularized it, could sell it all around the country.

[Alex Goldman]

And most importantly, people actually enjoyed eating it. Its texture was described as being crisp and firm. It was highly aromatic, and the flavor was said to be reminiscent of a very ripe melon. In many ways, the original red delicious was the platonic ideal of an apple. So naturally, consumers went crazy for it.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

It took off fairly quickly in the 1890s through 1920s and was the most popular, the most grown apple, oh, from the mid 20th century to the end of the 20th century. I don't know the exact statistics, but I think it was 40% of production as recently as 30 years ago.

[Alex Goldman]

This is the reason why the red delicious is so ubiquitous. Because back when it was delicious and people couldn't get enough of it, American farmers planted acres and acres and acres of these trees, and many of them are still being cultivated today. But the biggest question remains, right? And that question is, how did we get from the genuinely delicious apple that made this fruit so popular to the fruit that we have today, which is so not delicious, that it's become fuel for conspiracy theories? Well, it turns out that despite being crisp and flavorful and aromatic, There was one problem with the original Red Delicious.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

The consumer and the marketer all wanted the Red Delicious to be even redder.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so I know this sounds crazy because you're probably picturing a contemporary Red Delicious apple and thinking, how could an apple get redder than this? That's the reddest apple I know. But the thing we haven't mentioned yet is that the original Red Delicious apple wasn't actually very red. I mean, it was red enough to be called a red apple, but when I look at photos of it, I don't even really see a red apple. I see a green apple with red variegation. And apparently, in any given batch of these apples, the amount of variegation would vary from one specimen to another. So when a batch of these original apples would get set out at a supermarket or a farmer's market or a roadside farm stand, retailers would watch the way that consumers engaged with the producer. And what they saw on a fairly regular basis was that consumers would gravitate toward the reddest of the apples, and.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

Maybe rightly so, because the reddest ones would have enjoyed a favored position on the tree in that close to direct sunlight where the leaves were soaking up that sunlight and turning them into starch, which would be turned into sugar. So those were the best specimens. So within a certain batch of fruit of one cultivar, maybe it was right for the consumer to select the red specimens.

[Alex Goldman]

But that perfectly natural preference had unintended consequences. Because once marketers realized that consumers were favoring redder apples, they started paying more money to the farmers who could supply them, which left farmers scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get more red out of more apples without compromising the qualities that people actually loved about them.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

So the problem was that the older strains would get fairly red, but often not until they were over mature from a commercial point of view, in that they had shorter shelf life, they would turn me. There's one obligation of an apple when you buy it at the market. It's to be reasonably crisp, crunchy, firm. When you can put your finger through it, that's not good, is it? That's a real screw you. When you go to a hotel and they've got a free Red Delicious and you bite into it and it's mushy and yuck. So what farmers started to do was to keep their eye out for red sports.

[Alex Goldman]

In the world of fruit trees, a sport is a spontaneous genetic mutation that leads to some different characteristic. It can happen to a whole tree or just one limb or Just one bud. And if this new characteristic is desirable, say, if it produces redder fruit, then you can graft the sport and propagate new trees that share this new trait. So in the early 20th century, that's what these apple farmers started to do with the red sports they found in their orchards. The thing that nobody really appreciated at the time, because we didn't know very much about genetics, was that the genes that gave this apple its delicious flavor were on the same chromosome as the genes that gave it variegated skin. So every time a farmer would graft a newer, redder sport, the apples it produced would be a little less sweet.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

And maybe it was 5% less sweet. But that's not a big difference, is it? The problem is that when you have five or six generations of that, you, ended up with something that was considerably less delicious, undermining its name and a poster child for specious commercial fruit.

[Alex Goldman]

And from there, the red delicious death spiral continued. Because once consumers started to realize that red delicious was no longer delicious or that it had much flavor at all, they stopped buying it at the store. And when they stopped buying it, these uneaten apples started piling up in warehouses and storage facilities, where the already compromised apple would become even more compromised by months of sitting in the cold.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

I would say that red delicious was relatively low in acidity, and by the time it had been stored for six months, or, God forbid, right now, 11 months, you'd have something that had lost its texture, that had lost its acidity, and. Ooh, that is a nasty piece of work.

[Alex Goldman]

The more farmers tried to make the red delicious apple a perfectly marketable apple, the worse the apple got, the less people wanted to buy it, until finally, they were forced to confront the fact that it cost more to grow these apples than anyone was willing to pay for them. And even though many farmers had started to rip up their orchards of red delicious trees and replace them with more popular varieties like fuji and gala, the change wasn't happening fast enough. Money was flying out the door, and In October of 2000, the situation got bad enough that congress and president Bill Clinton signed an emergency bailout, the biggest in the history of the apple industry, to cushion the $760 million that the American apple industry had lost over the last three years, primarily because of its devotion to the red delicious apple. Certainly, it was a rotten day for American apples. But when the New York times asked farmers for comment, one grower was quoted as saying, nobody should feel sorry for us. We did this to ourselves. So who should we blame for the decline of this apple.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

What professionals in the field blame is the marketing schemata for public varieties such as Red Delicious. Basically, it's a matter of. Have you ever heard of Gresham's Law?

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

No.

[David Karp (Pomologist)]

Bad money drives out good, and so this is bad fruit drives out good. Why is that? Farmers were paid for growing the reddest possible Red Delicious. You cannot blame them for selecting the red strains, even if they don't particularly taste good. The reputation of the Red Delicious was established by the older, less red strains. But individual farmers had to make the economic decision to plant what enabled them to survive, and they did so. So, getting back to your first question, Is there some kind of conspiracy or a lobbying group or something? What accounts largely for the popularity of Red Delicious apple as a free apple handed out at like, conferences and hotels and so forth, is that it's cheap. The people who are buying these apples for hotel chains are not homologous. They are not connoisseurs. They are presumably told to get the cheapest possible apple, and they're not the ones who are necessarily even eating them themselves. Red Delicious, because of its flaws, has become less and less popular. And acres are being pulled out year to year, maybe not every year, but on average. And the prices have dropped, particularly for small size Red Delicious. You can get them real cheap and that's highly attractive to commercial interests at hotels and conferences, etc. It is the worst when I go to scientific meetings where fruit experts are meeting and we are given Red Delicious apples by the hotel. Gag me with a spoon, man. I mean, don't you just yuck. I usually bring my own fruit with me wherever I go. I grow grapefruit myself, stone fruit. And I need to have good fruit with me or I'll just go to, you know, a decent market and ideally a farmer's market. I would never eat those nasty Red Delicious. There might be other varieties that are okay. I mean, if they have a gala and it's in season, sure, that's fine. And maybe, just maybe, a Red Delicious in season. Late September, October, November might be pretty good.

[Alex Goldman]

Thanks so much, David. I really appreciate your time. After the break, how the hospitality industry turned the Red Delicious apple from a fruit into a concept. A pretty unappetizing concept at that. This episode of hyperfixed is brought to you by gusto. Let's be so for real besties. No one starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings.

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[Alex Goldman]

It's up to you. Welcome back to the show. So, before the break, we learned all about the rise and fall of the Red Delicious apple. And along the way, we answered all of Robin's questions. But there was still one small thing that we didn't totally understand. So Robin had come to us and asking why the Red Delicious was so ubiquitous, why it was the go to Apple for hotels and conference rooms when it's generally considered to be such a garbage fruit. And we'd learned that it ultimately came down to a question of cost. In the US The Red Delicious apple is the cheapest apple because the supply vastly outweighs the demand. And that's more or less the end of the story. The thing we still didn't understand was why hotels were offering up the apples at all. Because, yeah, the apples are cheap, but wouldn't it be much cheaper just to serve nothing? I mean, if the hotels are disconcerted with money, then why spend it on an amenity that people don't actually want, right? Wouldn't it be better to just save the money? You have to admit, it is kind of mysterious. So just very quickly, before we circled up with Robin, we reached out to someone who could help us understand why hotels were making a choice so illogical that it was fueling her conspiracy theories.

[Matt Vela (Hospitality Tech CEO)]

I went down the apple rabbit hole at some point, but, like, I am not the. Like the. The. The. What you call it the professional apple expert, but it's just a thing that I care deeply about.

[Alex Goldman]

This is Matt Vela. He's Dutch. And the reason we reached out to him instead of, like, an actual hotelier is because, one, we actually did reach out to an actual hotelier, and they were like, I've never worked at a hotel that offered apples at the reception desk. And then we realized that even if we talked to a hotelier that did offer apples at the reception desk, that would still only tell us why this specific hotel offers apples. We needed more of an aggregate view, which Matt is pretty uniquely qualified to provide. From the time this guy first stepped into a hotel at four years old, he knew he wanted to be in the hospitality business.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

Business.

[Alex Goldman]

When he was 16, he started working at restaurants, and then he went to hospitality school, and then he started working for one of the leading hotel chains in the world. But that's where he started to realize that there were things about the hotel business that didn't really make sense. Like, while the rest of the world was using iPhones, for example, this very famous hotel chain he was working for was still using dos. So Matt left his work with the hotel to build a company that could make all hotels just a little bit better and a little more logical. And that's what he does. Today as CEO of a hospitality tech company called Muse, Matt travels around the world staying in hotels and figuring out what parts of the hotel experience can be improved through automation.

[Matt Vela (Hospitality Tech CEO)]

We take care of the entire hotel operation. Everything that feels manual. Like, why is housekeeping always knocking on your doors in the morning when you're sleeping? And it's because technology wasn't given to the housekeepers, and we don't really think about every kind of Persona in hotel and fix their job.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

Oh, that's smart.

[Alex Goldman]

So you can put, you know, specific preferences about wake up time and do not disturb and all that stuff in one central place.

[Matt Vela (Hospitality Tech CEO)]

Yeah, anything that frustrates you, that creates a manual workflow on the other side is a thing that we'd love to automate.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, great. So what does all this have to do with apples? Well, cuz Matt is traveling every single week and staying in different hotels all the time. And because it's his job to notice things that could make the experience of a hotel better, he has noticed the bad apple issue. And I want to say Matt has a lot of really fascinating things to say about apples and the changing landscape of the hospitality industry. So we're going to put the full interview up on our premium feed. But for the purposes of this episode and this question, the most important thing that Matt told us is that when a hotel puts out colorful apples that don't taste good, it's because they're not really meant to be eaten. Like that bowl of limes in the Architectural Digest video of Dakota Johnson's house. Their primary purpose is to serve as decor. And even though you can eat these apples, from the hotel's perspective, it's actually better if you don't. So hotels are putting them out with the expectation that guests are not meant to eat them.

[Matt Vela (Hospitality Tech CEO)]

I think if you were the accountant, they're like, right, if you don't use toilet paper, I'm making a saving in that room. And it's the same with the apples. If I put an apple out, at least we've done the hospitality thing. We've put the apple out, it's free, you can take it. And if no one eats them, we save costs because I can recycle that apple for five guests until the fifth guest who does like an apples eats them. So that decision was made by an accountant, not by someone who deeply cared about the experience of their. Of their guests.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

Oh, my God.

[Matt Vela (Hospitality Tech CEO)]

Yeah, that's underlying. There's a depth of thinking that went behind the apples.

[Alex Goldman]

It's just crazy to me that they.

[Co-host or Ad Reader]

Are putting these out on the bet.

[Alex Goldman]

That more people won't eat them than will. That's like anti hospitality. It's like exactly. Before we got off our call, Matt stressed to me that there are hotels that put out good seasonal apples. And every time he stays at one of those places, he makes a point to tell the manager how much he liked the apples. It tells them that you notice the little things they're doing to make your experience better and that those things are worth doing. So armed with the answers to Robin's questions and the answers to mine, producer Emma Cortland and I scheduled a follow up interview with Robin to share what we'd learned. And the first thing she asked was whether or not we talked to former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

[Amore Yates]

No, we didn't talk to Pete Buttigieg. We did not talk to Pete Buttigieg. So before we get into the answer to your question, do you have any theories about what I'm going to tell you now that you know that we did not speak to Pete Buttigieg?

[Emma Cortland]

Okay, so I have to assume y' all went on a little bit of a goose chase, perhaps to warrant such a long episode. So I'm wondering if what you found is weirder than I personally concocted.

[Alex Goldman]

We told Robin about how red Delicious apples actually used to be called hawkeyes and actually used to taste good. How being so popular was their undoing. About the massive bailout of the apple industry in 2000 and how these new, ersats Red Delicious apples are so far removed from their origin that they're no longer even meant to be eaten and instead are only out to suggest the concept of hospitality. These Red Delicious apples we've experienced in our lifetime, they're like the myth about the ship of Theseus, except that in this case, the growers stripped the fruit of everything that made it great, of what earned it its name, then slapped some shiny red paint on the side and sold it as if we were buying the same ship or apple or whatever. We told all of this to Robin, and she was thrilled to hear that there was a weird story behind the proliferation of this terrible apple. But there was still one thing that we hadn't told her, and we were waiting for the right moment to do that. So when Robin said this.

[Emma Cortland]

Ah, that is so crazy. Oh, My. Oh, my gosh. So what you're telling me is, like, it is confirmed true. All style, no substance. These apples.

[Alex Goldman]

Yes.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

Yeah.

[Emma Cortland]

But at one time, they were really something to behold. Do we know what they tasted like?

[Alex Goldman]

Emma decided it was time to share one last discovery that we'd made in our reporting.

[Amore Yates]

So you actually can get a Hawkeye apple? It has a very short window of sale. You can't get it at a grocery store, but you can get it at certain farmers markets. So I didn't know when we were going to be able to find one, but we sent cousin Margie to the.

[Alex Goldman]

Farmer'S market for our audience. Emma's cousin Margie is a veteran reporter who works with us in a fairy godmother type capacity. Hi, Margie.

[Amore Yates]

We sent cousin Margie to buy one of these Hawkeye apples and see what the fuss is about.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

Okay, are you ready?

[Amore Yates]

Yeah, I'm ready.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

Okay.

[Alex Goldman]

Well.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

It'S very sweet, but it's not as crunchy as I expected.

[Amore Yates]

That's still very interesting.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

Yeah. Hang on, Let me try one more bite.

[Alex Goldman]

Hmm.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

I mean, the flavor is really good, but it's just. I thought it was gonna be crunchier. Yeah.

[Amore Yates]

Can you describe the flavor? Does it have that tannin thing?

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

It does that.

[Alex Goldman]

Yeah, that.

[Margie (Emma's Cousin)]

Yeah. And it is. It does not taste like a trash apple. It tastes like a good apple. Fuck, yeah. Fuck, yeah.

[Emma Cortland]

Wow, guys, I am so tickled. I'm charmed. I love this. I love this. I have my neighborhood farmer's market tomorrow morning, and the apple stand is my first start, and I'm gonna hit that with a new appreciation.

[Amore Yates]

Ask them for the stories of the apples at the market.

[Emma Cortland]

I wonder if they have them. And I wonder if there's a Hawkeye. Well, if I find one, I will send you guys a voice memo about it.

[Amore Yates]

Yes, please. All right. My vu.

[Emma Cortland]

Awesome. Guys, this was so fun. Thank you so much for all the work you put in on this. I just. I'm so delighted. This is just lovely.

[Alex Goldman]

Hyperfixed is produced and edited by Emma Cortland Amore Yates and Sari Sofer Sukanek. It's engineered by Tony Williams, music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and me, Alex Goldman. You can find bonus episodes. Join our Discord and much, much more at hyper fish. Hyperfixedpod.com join. For our premium members, we are going to be having a watch party of the Night of the Living Dead on our Discord on October 16th. We'll all be hanging out. I will undoubtedly be sharing trivia because I love that movie. It'll be fun. Hyperfixpod.com join Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator owned listener supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia fm. Also very important, Hyperfixed cannot exist without your problems. So if you have problems that you need solved by us, please submit [e-mail] thanks so much for listening. We'll see you soon.

[Co-host or Announcer]

Radiotopia.

[Emma Cortland]

From PRX.