The Hidden Supply Chain Making Every Menu Feel Familiar

Summary

Odd Lots Podcast Summary

Episode: "The Hidden Supply Chain Making Every Menu Feel Familiar"

Date: October 25, 2025
Hosts: Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway
Guest: Austin Frerick – Antitrust & Agriculture Expert, Author of "Barons: Money, Power and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry"

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Episode Overview

In this Odd Lots episode, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway delve into the opaque but massively influential world of food distribution—specifically focusing on Sysco (not the tech company), the supply chain giant responsible for provisioning many of America's sit-down restaurant chains. They are joined by Austin Frerick, who discusses Sysco’s origin story, its market dominance, the consequences of scale and centralization, and the wider impact on food quality, prices, and local economies. The conversation weaves together supply chain logistics, antitrust issues, personal anecdotes, and the economic realities behind the familiar menus of American chain restaurants.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Connection to Chain Restaurants

• The episode kicks off with Joe and Tracy debating their favorite sit-down chain restaurants, highlighting the ubiquity and nostalgia associated with these brands.
  • Joe: Chili’s and Cracker Barrel.
  • Tracy: Red Robin and a fondness for Chili’s, never visited Olive Garden.

[02:00, Tracy Alloway]: “What is your favorite chain restaurant? It has to be a sit down chain restaurant.”

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2. Why Focus on Food Distribution and Sysco?

• Stemming from their previous series on antitrust and "Beat Capitalism," the hosts explain their interest in "middleman" companies—giants operating out of public view but wielding disproportionate influence in the economy, especially food supply.
• Sysco surfaces repeatedly during Austin Frerick’s book talks as a central, under-discussed player in this ecosystem.

[04:16, Tracy Alloway]: “There are all these companies out there that you have probably never heard of but have massively dominant positions in the economy and charge a lot for their services. And one of those happens to be a very large company that provides food for all these sit down chain restaurants.”

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3. Sysco’s Growth and Business Model

• Origin Story: Founded by John Bott, who envisioned growth in eating out due to the rise of frozen foods and more working women post-WWII. He pioneered the idea of being the "everything store" for restaurants—bundling products to simplify purchasing for food service clients.
• Sysco was registered in all 50 states from its inception and grew by acquiring nine companies to create a one-stop shop.
• Business Model: Broadline distribution—essentially the Amazon for food service, offering a wide variety of products and acting as the logistics backbone for restaurant supply chains.

[09:18, Austin Frerick]: “He saw two important things. Number one, the rise of frozen food…and also frozen food mixed with women entering the workforce, knowing they want to make quicker meals. So he thought, oh, people are going to eat out more...He realized someone’s going to fill this at some point.”

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4. How Sysco’s Dominance Shapes the Industry

• Sysco operates as the primary logistics and distribution company, not the producer—think FedEx for food.
• Distribution centers are scattered across the country; Sysco mostly owns warehouse and transportation assets, not production facilities.
• Contracts with restaurants are often not transparent and largely shielded from public scrutiny—even public universities could not compel contract disclosure.

[17:33, Austin Frerick]: “Most of their employees are truck drivers.”

[16:03, Austin Frerick]: “There’s not a lot of disclosure here.”

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5. Antitrust and Market Power: Mergers & Rollups

• The competitive landscape has consolidated into three national broadliners (with Sysco being #1).
• Sysco’s attempted merger with rival US Foods was blocked, but the company has engaged in over 200 smaller acquisitions (or “rollups”) of local and specialty distributors—effectively achieving consolidation by other means.
• This rollup strategy often escapes FTC scrutiny because smaller acquisitions fly under the regulatory radar.

[21:27, Austin Frerick]: “I think this is the biggest, one of the biggest loopholes of modern competition policy in America…with big companies like this, once you reach a certain size, you basically don’t allow them to acquire…”

[23:08, Austin Frerick]: “It’s unclear what the market share is…sometimes you’ll see 40, sometimes you’ll see 30…when the FTC looked into it…in like Las Vegas and San Diego [Sysco] would have like an 80% market share.”

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6. Effects on Restaurants, Quality, and Local Producers

• Sysco’s scale leads to widespread menu homogeneity and declining food quality—particularly apparent in institutional settings (e.g., nursing homes, local diners).
• Contracts and product selection are dictated centrally, eroding uniqueness and connection to local suppliers.
• Sysco’s procurement power drives restaurants to select from the same limited menus and ingredients, making every venue feel alike and stifling innovation.
• Big contracts mean that in many regions, smaller producers can’t get access to restaurant markets unless they scale or relinquish control.

[30:15, Austin Frerick]: “The biggest critique I’ve heard is just the lack of selection. Sysco has such dominance…Local restaurant owners really don’t have a lot of choices.”

[32:56, Joe Weisenthal]: “The restaurants can’t distinguish themselves to the same degree because of the sort of decline in quality.”

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7. Personalization, Pricing, and Hidden Power

• Sysco likely uses personalized and opaque pricing strategies; buyers may get protein at a discount, but pay marked-up prices on napkins or sides.
• This lack of transparency could violate anti-discrimination price laws, but the arrangements are a black box.
• The harms of dominance are hard to quantify but felt in declining quality, pricing power, and reduced consumer/producer choice.

[24:23, Austin Frerick]: “They might sell you your center of the plate, the protein, at a loss or cost to get you in the door, but then they’ll make the margins up by tweaking the napkin prices…one could argue that's in violation of the Robinson-Patman Act…”

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8. Food Pricing, Volume, and Quality Trade-offs

• Scale brings both lower costs and downward quality pressure.
• Paradoxically, Americans pay a higher percentage of income on food than many comparable countries, and food inflation remains high, despite increased supply chain efficiency.
• Quality and price effects are unevenly distributed; rural areas, despite producing food, often have worse choices and higher prices due to broadliner dominance.

[26:27, Austin Frerick]: “Americans spend more on average on food than most western democracies...I think that’s how you’re seeing the system play out because you basically have all these big boys kind of like going at each other and it’s just kind of this race to the bottom.”

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9. The Producer Side: Squeezing Suppliers

• Sysco’s focus on price leads to neglect or abuse in supply chains (e.g., seafood sourced from questionable overseas operations).
• Producers struggle to sell higher quality localized goods to restaurants due to Sysco’s preference for large-volume, homogenized products.

[29:13, Austin Frerick]: "The best example of that is in seafood...Sysco doesn’t really care how their seafood is sourced, all it cares about is price."

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10. Centralization vs. Local Control & the Loss of Distinctiveness

• The centralization of procurement has destroyed the old model where regional managers could source locally and respond to community tastes.
• The original founder of Sysco opposed such centralization, believing it eroded the company’s identity and quality.

[32:12, Austin Frerick]: “The old man hated consultants…First thing (the new CEO) says is centralized procurement…You see the quality decline…”

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11. Wider Societal Consequences: Homogenization and Platform Dependence

• Parallels between physical and digital platforms: just as local restaurants lose distinctiveness plugging into Sysco, so too do businesses flatten themselves to suit the demands of digital delivery apps and algorithms.
• Antitrust frameworks struggle to account for the intangible harms of lost local flavor, tradition, and uniqueness.

[34:19, Austin Frerick]: “That is my critique of the current antitrust framework—not everything can be put into Excel…these local little things make a place a place. And you’re losing this in the homogenization of the American food system.”

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12. What Can Be Done? Limits and Grassroots Innovation

• Ideas: Cap or halt further mergers/acquisitions by giants like Sysco, enforce stricter transparency, and support hyper-local or nonprofit distributors.
• Example: Featured a farmer, Ellen, who created her own nonprofit distribution hub for local products when Sysco wouldn’t work with her.
• Political will is needed to create alternatives and break cycles that force producers and restaurants into collective scale over individuality.

[40:32, Austin Frerick]: “Also something, we gotta reign in Sysco…I think we should put merger acquisition freezes on these large entities…At some point it’s like you can’t buy anymore. Like, you’ve hit your cap.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [09:00, Tracy Alloway]: “This is going to be a very Odd Lots-y episode because it brings together baking, warehouses, logistics, trucking, antitrust, all that good stuff.”
• [11:57, Austin Frerick]: “Texas Roadhouse.”
• [12:12, Austin Frerick]: “You want to understand America, go to a Texas Roadhouse on a Friday night.”
• [14:35, Tracy Alloway]: “How does it work, the contracts between a restaurant and someone like a Sysco? What do we know about those specific agreements?”
• [29:13, Austin Frerick]: “The best example of that is in seafood…the seafood system in general, America is just a dumpster fire.”

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Important Timestamps

• 02:00: Favorite chain restaurants – setting the stage.
• 04:16: The hidden power of middlemen like Sysco.
• 09:18: Sysco’s origin and how dining out became the norm.
• 16:03 & 17:33: Sysco’s business model; how distribution works.
• 19:23 & 21:27: Market structure, blocked mergers, and rollup strategy.
• 23:08 & 23:47: Murky market share and potential for abuse.
• 26:27: Pricing, quality, and America's food cost conundrum.
• 29:13: Sysco’s impact on producers and supply chains.
• 32:12: Centralization, consultants, and the loss of local flavor.
• 34:19: Homogenization of food—antitrust perspective.
• 40:32: Solutions and grassroots action.
• 42:29–43:54: Hosts’ reflection on the balance between efficiency and uniqueness.

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Conclusion

This episode lays bare the hidden supply chain that ensures every restaurant menu looks familiar—a system dominated by Sysco and its ilk, achieved through acquisitions, centralization, and focus on logistics. The efficiency and cost-savings come at the expense of food quality, local flavor, and producer opportunity. The hosts, with a blend of humor and concern, reflect on what's been lost in this quest for scale—and what might be possible if the system were rebalanced toward local control and diversity.

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Recommendation:
For policy wonks, eaters, and restaurant-goers alike, this episode is a masterclass in how invisible economic forces shape everyday experiences—right down to the breadstick on your plate.

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Guest Plug:
Check out Austin Frerick’s updated book, "Barons: Money, Power and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry," now including the new chapter on Sysco.

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For further discussion:
Chat 24/7 on Odd Lots’ Discord (discord.gg/oddlots), and watch for future episodes on food, dairy, and distribution platforms.

Transcript

[Austin Frerick]

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[Tracy Alloway]

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[Joe Weisenthal]

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

[Tracy Alloway]

Joe, I have a question.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Go on.

[Tracy Alloway]

What is your favorite chain restaurant? It has to be a sit down chain restaurant.

[Joe Weisenthal]

A sit down chain restaurant? That's a really good question. You know, I actually really like Chili's. I think they have their fajitas are absolutely legit. And I say this as someone who has eaten quite a lot of Tex Mex fajitas from my time in Texas. And so I think I have credibility and, and as a kid and I haven't been there in years, but I still think my memory of the food is really good. I love Cracker Barrel.

[Tracy Alloway]

Ooh, breakfast at Cracker Barrel is really, really good. Well, I bring it up because today we are going to be answering the question of where all of these restaurants actually get their food from.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That's a great question. I don't know anything about. I don't know anything about sit down chain restaurants. I mean, I don't know anything about most chain restaurants period. Let alone fast food ones, but the world of sit down ones that are real restaurants or there's waiters, waitresses, etc. I don't know anything about.

[Tracy Alloway]

You're not interested in my favorite restaurant? Oh, so this is how it works. I asked you a question and you reciprocate.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I was going to and I was planning to, and then you, like, turned a 90 degree angle to talk about. Like to talk about. We are going to start answering the question of where these come from. I was like, oh, okay. I guess we're going on to some new direction here. We could just keep talking about favorite restaurants. Tracy, what is your favorite restaurant? To sit down.

[Tracy Alloway]

And I actually have many.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay, go on.

[Tracy Alloway]

Red Robin. Oh, I still love that place. They had a salad that was basically just a plate of chicken tenders. It was so good. But Bill does a salad Fridays. Used to love that place.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's so American.

[Tracy Alloway]

I know. And there was one in London and it was like my anchor to America in the early 2000s and Chili's. Chili's with my boys.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You like Chili's too? Yeah, yeah, it's legit. Keep going. We're going to make up for the fact that I didn't ask you, but now I'm just. Keep going. Let's.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, one thing, one thing I did realize recently. I've never been to an Olive Garden. I don't know why that is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I've been a few times. It's not terrible. I don't think, like I've even been to the one in Times Square.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, I feel like it's very hard to make carbs badly. Right. It's just pasta and bread.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, it's good.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay. All right, I am going to move the conversation on now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Applebee's a bit of the one in Times Square there. Solid.

[Tracy Alloway]

I do not like Applebee.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Why do we have to move the conversation on? I don't get it. Why can't we just keep talking about sit down restaurants?

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, well, we'll get back to them. We'll get to our recommendations. But on a serious note, one of the reasons we are interested in this subject is because we did a series last year called Beat Capitalism where we talked a lot about agriculture and the chicken industry specifically, and antitrust and monopolies and things like that. And one of the things that stood out to me from that series was a comment from Doha Mekhi, who is the former Assistant Attorney General, where she talked about the tyranny of the middleman in the economy. And I think this is something that people are perhaps just wa waking up to. There are all these companies out there that you have probably never heard of but have massively dominant positions in the economy and charge a lot for their services. And one of those happens to be a very large company that provides food for all these sit down chain restaurants.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know, I'm going to play devil's advocate on this episode because as you know, I love.

[Tracy Alloway]

Because you love chilies so much.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Because I love chilies and, and I love food production at massive scale and I love all of this. But it is true that there are all these companies that are really important that sort of sit between whether the retailer, the customer or more in the case of food more frequently, the farmer and the end retailer, the farmer and the restaurant that we literally know nothing about. And they're huge and they're massive and they don't get any attention. And so I am very interested in this topic.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, well, we do have the perfect guest. It is someone who has been on the show before, I think maybe a year, year or two ago now. Yeah. Wow. Time flies. But we're going to be speaking with Austin Frerick. He is an antitrust and agricultural expert and also the author of Barron's Money, Power and the Corruption of America's Food Industry. It's a great book, even if you're not interested in agriculture or antitrust specifically. It says a lot about the US Economy, so I would highly recommend it. And Austin actually has just written a new chapter for his book that is all about this particular company. And I guess I should just say what it is. It's called Cisco.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's not the networking gear company.

[Tracy Alloway]

Not the networking gear company. Although it does have the most generic origin story ever. So Cisco stands for systems and services company.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yum, yum. Delicious.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, Austin, welcome back to the show.

[Austin Frerick]

Thanks for having me on again. And I just want to say you guys having me on last year really changed the course of my book. So I appreciate that.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, thank you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Good to hear it.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, it was genuinely excellent. I am not just saying that. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Speaking of which, how does it work when you decide to add a new chapter to a book? And why did you decide to do that?

[Austin Frerick]

Yeah, so the funniest thing about this book was when I would do book talks, people kept telling me about barons. I missed, like when I was in Idaho, they're like, let me tell you about a potato baron. When I was in Indiana, we're getting.

[Joe Weisenthal]

The name of the potato baron after the episode.

[Austin Frerick]

Oh, yeah, I have a whole Purgatory folder that I just put this information into. But Cisco kept coming up and it was the weirdest placed origin story where. So I talk fast and I know it. So I purposely been doing book talks in nursing homes, so you have to.

[Tracy Alloway]

Slow down and practice. Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

I blame it on. I listen to podcasts like 1.5, 2.5, and especially Midwestern older people. You gotta take it down. And what kept happening when I was doing.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You realize if you're speaking fast because you're used to it, then people who listen to you on those podcasts are now listening to you at 2 1/2 to 3x speed.

[Austin Frerick]

Anyway, it's bad cause my husband listens to them on 2x too. So we talk that way. And it's the. So a lot of times when you do nursing home gigs, they'll invite you for dinner before and after. And it was. People kept complaining about the food. And I mean, anyone that's been to a hospital or a nursing home in America, it's pretty bad. I mean, we're serving our most vulnerable people the worst food. And it kept coming up. But Cisco's one of those things everyone kind of complains about, but no one knows. And my mom used to have a bakery, and I write about that in my coffee chapter. And she had a broadliner and her broadliner disappeared. It got bought up by a bigger entity. And so I was just curious.

[Tracy Alloway]

And then that's broadline distribution, right?

[Austin Frerick]

Yes, thanks for. That's an industry term. I think of them as grocery stores. For restaurants, they were Amazon. Before Amazon, they were the everything store.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This is really important because when we're talking about food distribution, so there are broadliners, you get everything there from, you know, your huge jar of olives to cheese or whatever. But then also a restaurant might also have specialty distributors too, that like, just really focus on one thing. Right.

[Austin Frerick]

If they have the option.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

In certain markets, usually most rural communities, there's very few options. But like, for example, New York has one most competitive broadliner market. So restaurants here have a lot of different sourcing options.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

I should just say this is going to be a very odd, lotsy episode because it brings together baking, warehouses, logistics, trucking, antitrust, all that good stuff. So I'm very excited. Okay. Well, on that note, how did Cisco get to be a dominant player in this particular space?

[Austin Frerick]

I love this origin story. John Bott, he's a different type of character compared to other barons in my book. I really like him, like he's like a model businessman where he's one of those people comes out of Waco, Texas, his brother and dad died young, dropped out of college bleed Baylor to support his mom, worked at A and P, got transferred to the A and P in Houston. And he's one of those people you see in business history that just saw things before other people. He saw two important things. Number one, the rise of frozen food. We're talking like right after World War II and how that was going to. And then also frozen food mixed with women entering the work workforce knowing that they want to make quicker meals. So he thought, oh, people are gonna eat out more. And thing to keep in mind here is our norm of eating now is a very new thing in America. Historically you used to bring a dish to something, it was like a church function. Now we eat about once a day. So he saw that thing ahead of people and he didn't think A and P was moving fast enough. So he founded a frozen, potentially a frozen berry company. But going back to this point, you made Joe about all these different things. That's how the idea from Cisco came from where literally some Irish oil man was opening a fancy hotel in Houston and he was working the loading dock that night and he saw in the day a frozen strawberry. It's a frozen strawberry. I don't have a competitive advantage, but what I can do is this food buyer has like 30 different vendors for all these different things. What I can do is offer him as much as possible. So the origin of Cisco was he brought nine companies together to create it and he realized someone's going to fill this at some point. So even though he only did business in a few states, he registered in all 50 states. So that's how Cisco was created.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I am fascinated by this idea because it's just one of those things that hadn't really occurred to me until like I read your chapter. Just like, yeah, like it's really weird how much we eat out, isn't it? Or it's just really novel in terms of the prevalence of restaurants. I mean I eat out way more than I did like when I was a kid growing up.

[Austin Frerick]

I think about that all the time. We used to like Bonanza was like a buffet, was like a special occasion once a week.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And now I do like a sit down Pizza Hut. That's another one.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, that was such a big deal.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

And now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, now you just do it now.

[Austin Frerick]

But let me pose a question to you. What do you think? And there's a new king. The number One sit down. Chain restaurant in America is where you order off a menu.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, this is tough.

[Austin Frerick]

And before I tell you, it's my favorite chain. Your favorite chain, maybe my husband.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I'm worried that, like, I'm not going to know it, and then I'm going to be really embarrassed at how out of touch because you're going to say it. It's going to be really obvious.

[Tracy Alloway]

What is it, Cheesecake Factory?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, no. Are we. Are we talking about by dollar volume?

[Austin Frerick]

Dollar volume? Okay.

[Joe Weisenthal]

All right.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. You're gonna have to tell us.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think I'm having stage fright. What's the answer?

[Austin Frerick]

Texas Roadhouse.

[Tracy Alloway]

I love Texas Roadhouse. Oh, my God, they have the best bread rolls.

[Austin Frerick]

My mom brings Ziploc bags.

[Tracy Alloway]

And, like, I should have said that was my favorite. They had one of those, actually. Been to one when I was living in Abu Dhabi. They had one, and it was absolutely fantastic.

[Austin Frerick]

You want to understand America, go to a Texas roadhouse on a Friday night. Yeah, I was in 1, Dubuque, Iowa. I was on book tour last week, and I got a steak, vegetable, and mashed potatoes. Homemade. $14 unironically.

[Tracy Alloway]

Their steaks are really good. Like, they're good. I always have the filet.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Where do they get their. Where do they get their food?

[Austin Frerick]

Oh, I mean, who knows how they. I mean, the unique thing is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But they get it from Cisco and they.

[Austin Frerick]

You don't. I don't know.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But they only charge $14 because of the incredible miracle of capitalism and scale.

[Austin Frerick]

Joe. My hot take is two things. They do scratch cooking. Most chain restaurants now do frozen food. They actually cut up broccoli in the back. And number two, volume.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay. Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

Their servers only have three tables and they move you so quick. Your best bottling plant employs 3,300 people. How do you get 3,300 people working at peak efficiency? Your best store has reduced waste water and energy usage. How do you make every store like your best store? Your best property has every guest raving. How do you make every property like your best property? The answer is Ecolab. Better performance, better outcomes, better impact. Ecolab. Now, every location is your best location.

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[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Tracy Alloway]

I love that you're doing in person research on the subject of, of chain restaurants. But you know, you mentioned that we're not entirely sure where Texas Roadhouse gets its food from. How does it work, the contracts between a restaurant and someone like a Cisco? What do we know about those specific agreements?

[Austin Frerick]

So a few things. One, we can kind of figure out what change Cisco does based on its website. So it has a subdivision called Sigma. So if you go to Sigma's website, it will brag about its corporate clients. Some of them are Olive Garden, Red Robin's one. You know, different chains like that, the agreements. There's a, I mean what I do know from these agreements is what we see with public universities and even that are not transparent. There's a famous one at the University of Iowa. Someone wanted to know what's the contract for food here? And it went up to the Supreme Court in Iowa and it was rejected. Which is kind of a weird thing. Like you think the agricultural state would have really good sourcing the food. You would know the contracts. There's not a lot of disclosure here.

[Tracy Alloway]

They filed to see the actual contract.

[Austin Frerick]

To keep it closed.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay, so let's say a Red Robin is. Or an Olive Garden is a client of Cisco. Would that be a national contract that would cover every Red Robin or Olive Garden or would there be any variation and Red in regional distribution or anything like that?

[Austin Frerick]

Like I would think so. I would contextualize Cisco. I think of it as like FedEx for food.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

A lot of these companies have patent products and Cisco is just moving their patent. Patent and fries. You know what I mean? Like they all have their kind of. That's what Cisco is there to do is outsource that part or handle that.

[Tracy Alloway]

Is there some giant like Cisco food production center in like, I don't know, the wilderness of Wyoming or something? Or are they sort of like scattered around the United States?

[Austin Frerick]

Scattered around. I mean, this is. This is harder to understand. There was a good Wall street journal article like 20 years ago, how a lot of your jalapeno poppers in a restaurant all being made at one factory in Mexico. It's cheaper to pay someone offshore, essentially stuff it, but then you are sacrificing taste at some point. But Cisco doesn't own production facilities. It owned a slaughterhouse in Iowa at one point, but then it sold it off. I can't quite figure out why they got into that. My guess is for most restaurants, people pick their vendor based on they call it center of the plate, the protein. So they were trying to probably do quality control.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, let me start using center of the plate a restaurant to refer to whichever protein I ordered. But this is. So they don't have production. What basically it is. And you already said it's like FedEx at its core. It sounds like it's a logistics company.

[Austin Frerick]

Yes. Most of their employees are truck drivers.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Huh.

[Tracy Alloway]

Your dad was a truck driver, right? You talk about this in the book.

[Austin Frerick]

He is. He works from a corn syrup company.

[Tracy Alloway]

So what did that experience of growing up with a truck driver dad teach you about a company like Cisco?

[Austin Frerick]

So my dad used to be first he used to be in the beer business. He was a beer truck driver and then he worked in beer sales. So that's actually where a lot of my I look at looking at displays in grocery stores because my dad used to merchandise. So I love good merchandising. So like my favorite grocery store is H A B in Texas.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Love H E B.

[Austin Frerick]

No one merchant, no one merchandise is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Like, yeah, this is fact.

[Austin Frerick]

And so you look at that. And so like my dad always taught me, like he could. He knew the type of demographics of a grocery based on the number one beer. Like, oh, this is a blue moon Hy vee, or this is a, you know, red red dog Hy vee. So there's different price points. And so my dad now does corn products. But just understanding because there's independent truck drivers, there's in house truck drivers, and there's kind of a hierarchy to these different worlds, all that kind of stuff.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So let's talk about the competitive landscape because that's in addition to the fact that, you know, you are a big fan of the stakes at Texas Roadhouse. That's why we're here. What does the competitive landscape for sort of this sort of broad line or food distribution a restaurant really look like?

[Austin Frerick]

So that, I mean that's, that's the big question. Antitrust market definition. I mean that is. This is like my little pet peeve is how you define a market's everything. So like Cisco tried to buy US Foods back in 2015 and they argue their competition includes Sam's Club. I think people like. I just remember personally, anecdotally, my mom, we only went to Sam's Club when she ran out of cups and needed to get cups between her next truckload. Most people would not include Costco and Sam's Club as a broad liner.

[Tracy Alloway]

And Texas Roadhouse isn't going to Costco to buy steaks.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But in theory a restaurant, I mean, I take your point. It's not really, really a comp. But in theory, there probably are restaurants that source from some of these wholesale. Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

I mean you can tell when you go into certain local restaurants, you'll see Costco branded products in the back. My bigger thing here is right now, a lot of what is a market is defined by highly paid economists. And these things aren't publicly disclosed. Usually I kind of keep in mind I come out of the treasury tax analysis office. The beauty of that world is you have treasury doing tax revenue estimates. You have CBO and then you have independent academic institutions like UPENN doing revenue estimates.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

So you have three different estimates coming at you for the same thing. I would love if we did something like this with market definition because here's the thing, these markets are pretty stable.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

Having like there should be a government agency doing market definition reports.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So based on how you. So the merger attempt was blocked. Yeah. So based on however the regulators at the time defined. Okay, this is the market. This is the circle we're drawing. What are we talking about in terms of market share in so forth.

[Austin Frerick]

So keep. So at the time too, there's basically three national broadliners and they were. Number one, Cisco was trying to buy. Number two, US Foods that was rejected. But what's really interesting here is basically even though Cisco got stopped, two things. Number one. Number two is trying to buy. Number three, right now, US Foods is trying to buy. I have to write it down. Performance food. But then Cisco basically is. It's engaged in what people call rollups. To my calculations, it's buying over 216 companies. So even though got it got stopped Once for this big merger, its market dominance really comes from rolling up, you know, a local Miami seafood place, local produce place, and not Anaheim, that kind of stuff.

[Tracy Alloway]

So I know roll up strategies started to get more attention under the Biden administration. But historically it does seem like regulators kind of go after the big M and A deals and they kind of ignore all the small ones. Even though once you add up all the small ones, it can get a company into a very, very dominant position. Like with Cisco.

[Austin Frerick]

I think this is the biggest, one of the biggest loopholes of modern competition policy in America. I mean, go back to my coffee bearing jab. Their second move they did was vet clinics because they. This sounds awful. They realize people are economically irrational with their pets when it comes to healthcare. So they bought over like 1500 vet clinics. They rolled up. Commissioner Khan helped put a stop to that. I generally think with big companies like this, once you reach a certain size, you basically don't allow them to acquire because you just know they're not buying a company for pro competitive reasons. But a lot of this flies under the radar because the Federal Trade Commission, you know, it's very understaffed. They can't keep. They can keep tracking a seafood provider in Miami and who's buying it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Talk to us more about what they rolled up or what they've been trying to roll up. So I take it these aren't other broadliners. Are these specialty? Are these niche? Are these regional? Like, what are they, what. What are the fragmented assets that they're consolidating under the Cisco umbrella?

[Austin Frerick]

All the above.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

I mean, they generally don't compete. They buy. So like in Iowa, they came to Iowa because they bought a broad liner, a local broadliner. That's essentially what they did for earlier, their history. Now they tend to buy more specialties. So they'll buy like hotel things like little soaps. They'll buy a company that does like Asian food. They'll all these little things and they're starting to buy foreign, like an Irish broadliner, Canadian broadliner, Costa Rica broadliner. It's just kind of a blob that keeps growing.

[Tracy Alloway]

Am I a tomato broadliner? I brought Joe tomatoes.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy brought me tomatoes. Yes, thank you.

[Tracy Alloway]

Really nice tomatoes.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think you're a specialty distributor.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. Okay, fair enough. I certainly don't do it in volume, especially this year. Okay, well, on that note, in your chapter, it says that Cisco has something like 27 market share.

[Austin Frerick]

It's unclear what the market share is.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay, so originally, this is going to be my question. Like when we say that, what do we actually mean?

[Austin Frerick]

We don't know. I originally in that chapter have a quoted as a 50% market share. But you sometimes you'll see 40, sometimes you'll see 30. It really comes back to that market definition. That's why I want to go back to having some public entity debate this. So it's transparent, but also partly what stopped that purchase of US Foods is when the FTC looked into it, they started looking at metropolitans and they realized like in like Las Vegas and San Diego it would have like an 80% market share. So even with food we tend to talk national food is so local food markets particular, we really need to drill down regionally.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What do they use this power for? Setting aside the fact that they want to make a lot of money, like all companies do. Like when I think about the risk of anti competitive abuse or why I wouldn't want one company to have such a dominant share of a given market, I think, okay, what is the potential for abuse? So maybe they say, no, you're not, you can't get access to all of this stuff unless you buy our olives. Maybe could be one sort of thing. Or they tell a restaurant you can't buy X unless you buy our soaps. Like what is the fear or what is the reality of what Cisco currently does with the amount of power that they have?

[Austin Frerick]

Yeah. So two things. Number one, so it's, it's not like you get a big sales book with the prices of Cisco. Those days are gone. Most of it's on an app and this is a black box. My understanding from people I've talked to is they always want to make their margin. So they might sell you your center of the plate, the protein, at a loss or cost to get you in the door, but then they'll make the margins up by tweaking the napkin prices. Yeah, here's the thing. One could argue that's in violation of the Robinson Batman act because in theory you should charge everyone the same price for X amount of units. But we don't know because of.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, so we think it might be personalized pricing, but we're not sure.

[Austin Frerick]

We're not sure.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

That is what some people have accused. The other thing to keep in mind here and the biggest, honestly part of the reason why I wrote this chapter is just the quality decline. I feel like most eating out in America, especially local places, it's all kind of because companies like Cisco, they don't want to buy from like a local beef provider. They want one Entity to do a bunch. And so it's just stifling out that kind of innovation, the quality. And especially in rural America, Cisco doesn't want to deal with local things. And so especially in rural. I think in undercurrent two of my book, I realized after the fact was the communities producing our food are actually being hit hardest by the food system. We saw in the Kroger Albertson merger case, failed merger, that they're gouging the most in rural communities. Most. The broad liner dominance tends to be highest in rural communities. And rural communities tend to have the most fast food. So it's kind of getting the worst of all these worlds. So like New York has the best food. Like it's kind of the more yuppie you are in America, the probably the better food selection you have.

[Tracy Alloway]

That seems fair, actually seems right. And again like that's pretty ironic given that most of the food is grown outside of cities. Obviously I'm going to ask the question that is very close to Joe's heart. But with market dominance tends to come pricing power. But on the other hand, with market dominance and scale comes savings from volume. Do we have any idea of like the net effect of a Cisco on food prices in restaurants?

[Austin Frerick]

We don't. I mean kind of what I realized writing this chapter and just in general with this book is I just kind of view everything as Goldilocks. And you know, there is, there is beauty to scale, but things have just gone too far and things are out of whack and I think with price and I brought this up last time and it's the first slide I show people anytime I talk anymore is Americans spend more on average on food than most western democracies. And I think, and it's like cliche to say I went to Europe and had cheaper food and it was better. I think that's how you're seeing the system play out because you basically big baguettes, big. You have all these big boids kind of like going at each other and it's just kind of this race to the bottom.

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[Austin Frerick]

There are two kinds of people in the world. People who think about climate change and.

[Tracy Alloway]

People who are doing something about it.

[Austin Frerick]

On the Zero podcast we talk to both kinds of people. People you've heard of, like Bill Gates. I'm looking at what the world has to do to get to zero. Not using climate as a moral crusade. And the creative minds you haven't heard of yet. It is serious stuff, but never doom and gloom. I am Akshat Ratty. Listen to Zero every Thursday from Bloomberg Podcasts on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Talk to us more about the, the food creator side of the business. If I'm, I don't. If I'm growing tomatoes or if I'm, or if me and Tracy are growing tomatoes. To what degree does Cisco play us off of each other or squeeze our margins in order to get within the Cisco distribution system?

[Austin Frerick]

I think the best example of that is in seafood.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Austin Frerick]

The seafood, seafood in general, America is just a dumpster fire. To be. To be blunt with you. There's a really and I'm going to make a comparison here. CNBC came with a really good story the other day where Walmart, Amazon are this big fight right now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

And Walmart basically has very low standards for its third party platform. There's a lot of fraud, a lot of abuse going on that platform because it's trying to get market share from Amazon. I would compare Cisco to that where they don't, here's the thing, they don't really care how their seafood source. I mean there's been so many allegations of the calamari coming from Chinese slave labor fish. That's saying it's golf shrimp from the, you know, from America. It's not just all these like these constant abuses in this seafood system basis not caring because all it cares about is price. Think of Cisco like the Walmart food distribution.

[Tracy Alloway]

That makes sense. So when you were reporting out this particular chapter, did you hear any specific stories from either restaurant owners or food producers about dealings with Cisco and what it's like to actually negotiate with them?

[Austin Frerick]

The biggest critique I've heard is Just the lack of selection. Cisco has such a dominance in a lot of these markets. Local restaurant owners really don't have a lot of choices. That's probably the biggest critique I heard. And just my favorite phrase, and it's a subtitle of a chap of this chapter, is tonight's dinner fell off the Cisco truck. We've all had those meals, you know what I mean? You go to a wedding, you can just tell it's like the lowest tier of Cisco where it's just so blah and tasteless. But a lot of restaurants, I mean, that's kind of this whole undercurrent of this book. This chapter is. I kind of think of this as my Frankenstein chapter. What started off as an aid to local restaurants make their life easier is now undermining them because they're losing their specialness.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, yeah. On that note, didn't the founder at one point try to. I guess he retired, but was still connected to the company. And then he tried to correct some of what you're describing.

[Austin Frerick]

Yes. I mean, I can't say this enough. He is a model businessman. I mean, this guy, he retired in the late 80s. He stepped aside, donated the charities, kept coming into the office each day, didn't want to sign parking. And he always trusted his people especially. He let basically each warehouse do its own thing. And I would compare it to like Whole Foods. Famously, Whole Foods let the managers do its own thing pre Amazon. So if they saw a good thing at the farmer's market, they could bring that producer in. He retires, few CEOs come along. One comes along and the old man hated consultants. Number one, he's like, they don't know my business. Number two, they'll probably share, even though they're not supposed to, they'll share my secret sauce with my competitors. New guy comes in, hires consultants and what the first thing he says is centralized procurement. You know, instead of having all these local different things, get all your berries for one person. And what John saw is he saw change in the numbers. So he wanted to go to the board to talk about this CEO. Time was kept being like, no, no, no. This is a nine year old man who built this company. This is his everything. He went around and got it to the board. According to one executive, he was then escorted out the building. This broke the old man.

[Tracy Alloway]

Did he like literally go into the building and like find the board?

[Austin Frerick]

No, he had a certain staffer get it to all the members and he was shown the door. This broke the old man. And you see the Quality decline, you know, centralized procurement. Like you in I don't want to romanticize a jalapeno pepper or like this kind of stuff, but you are cutting corners at some point when you're doing these. Like, not everything can be frozen and tastes just as good as a fresh thing. Like a good example is actually a tomato. Like a good summer tomato. Like, there's no reason I can't get a good summer tomato. It's so easy to grow a tomato there. But they're all the same blah tomato grown who knows where. And that's kind of that kind of story. And part of it, the argument I'm making there is part of regulation guard rails, whatever you want to call them, is almost to prevent companies from themselves to stop a race to the bottom.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's interesting, this idea that the restaurants can't distinguish themselves to the same degree because of the sort of decline in quality. And it strikes me we did an episode with some guys who actually opened up a pizza restaurant right around the corner from Bloomberg. And in that case we were talking about the delivery apps and the idea was like, you know, one point in theory, service, delivery, etc. Might have been a restaurant's calling card, right? We have really good, we really know you, et cetera. And we have we'll get to your.

[Tracy Alloway]

House in under 15 minutes or the pizza's free.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But then everyone, in theory, it's like this game theory thing where everyone feels compelled to okay, we're going to distribute through the well known delivery apps that everyone has heard about. And that's great. And on some level it makes markets more efficient perhaps, although they've gotten so expensive, I think for me it's more efficient often to just go pick it up, but that's besides the point. But the long term effect is essentially this sort of elimination of the specialness of the place. And so maybe there is more efficient, maybe the food is cheaper, maybe it does get too faster, maybe even gets too faster and hotter, et cetera. But this idea that we have this sort of textured economy with this sort of flora and fauna of businesses that are distinct, that have texture sort of disappears once they plug into these giant platforms.

[Austin Frerick]

You just made a great Neo Brandeis argument.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, great.

[Austin Frerick]

I mean this might not shock anyone, I'm a Neo Brandeis person, but that is my critique of the current antitrust framework is not everything can be put into Excel. How many hogs one person shown? It's a question society has to wrestle with. And I make that kind of point in this chapter Was at my wedding. I'm part Czech and we serve colachas. Which cola's in Iowa are very different than the ones in Houston. Houston. They put meat in them. But like you can't buy colaches from Cisco. It's like these local little things make a place a place. And you're losing this in the homogenization of the American food system. Everything's kind of the same. It's kind of blah, blah. And that's what's. It's hard to. You can't. That's what's the thing that's missing. That's why it is a little.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It does seem frankly a little hard to quantify this effect that everybody feels.

[Austin Frerick]

I think of two little examples is my mom had her own coffee store and then she worked at Starbucks. And what drove her the nuts the most were something called planograms. She was told where to put every single thing on the shelf. And my mom worked next to a General Mills plan. She knew that audience and she knew how to merchandise. But they didn't trust her. It's like the lack of trust in employee.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We learned about plenty grams.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh yeah, that's right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

With the Celsius CEO and he was talking about beverages.

[Austin Frerick]

Yeah, yeah. That was a good episode.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. I have since walked into CVS's looking at the shelf space very, very differently than I used to.

[Austin Frerick]

Oh, I'll just add on. The thing to keep in mind is no one gets rich. No one opens a restaurant to get rich. Everyone. It's a really, really hard industry. You're willing to sacrifice incomes because you do it, because what you love and you just, you feel that pride in local places and they're just running. They're running uphill more and more based on. Because of these structures.

[Tracy Alloway]

You know, you mentioned frozen berries earlier and I know Barry Barons are in your book. Do the dominant companies like a Cisco or a Berry Baron, do they kind of like feed on each other? You think like, does Cisco naturally lean towards producers who are making stuff in huge volumes?

[Austin Frerick]

I mean, I think it goes back to Walmart. I mean, part of it was people in negotiating power when they negotiate deals with these companies. So you've got to get big so you have some volume so you can negotiate. Like I think of, I go back to Walmart just because I think of Walmart as the closest thing America's ever had to a Soviet Union Sao Paulo bureau. That's the weirdest chapter people have reached out to me about is all these suppliers. Like you don't negotiate With Walmart. Walmart dictates to you, I think with Cisco is. They're just so big.

[Joe Weisenthal]

These are centrally planned internal economies. Absolutely.

[Austin Frerick]

And it's. I think the best example of the bad quality is actually the produce system in America, partly is because of the farm bill. We subsidize corn. We don't subsidize carrots. So our produce system went offshore, you know, because you can exploit labor, exploit environmental stuff. So that green pepper is coming from who knows where, traveling long things. And so. And it's also designed for durability, not for taste. And you're seeing this play out in your local restaurants where just the food's kind of.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's interesting you used the phrase earlier, saving companies from themselves. I. I think even the companies seem to be aware of this. And you mentioned Starbucks is a great example. I forget. What's the name of the Starbucks founder?

[Austin Frerick]

It's not Howard Schultz. That's what we think it is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, well, Howard Schultz. Every few years, his name is back in the headlines. And he himself seems to rue the fact that this company, which early on sort of had a local coffee shop vibe, which I think he really liked, has not been able to sustain that, in part because of. Yeah. The required polygrams and stuff. And he complains about that every once in a while. It's like, we got to get back to feeling like a real Italian coffee shop. It never seems to happen.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, one of the Ben and Jerry's founders just quit as well, because Ben and Jerry's was bought by Unilever.

[Austin Frerick]

So the funding, each chapter, I realized there's. They all have these, like, niche. Every commodity is different in America. And they all, like. Dairy is actually, to me, the most complex commodity. The whole dairy regulation in America is written in the 19 before we had refrigeration. So it makes no sense. The joke in dairy is only five people understand the dairy program and four are dead. And I was kibitzing with this dairy guy in Wisconsin last week, and there's a glut right now in the butterfat market. We engineered soybeans to increase the butterfat. And the rumor right now in the street, too, is they're feeding palm oil to the cows.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, wow.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Speaking of dairy, you know, when we. We did that episode with Mike Froman recently, and you mentioned that you asked him what was the big surprise he learned as U.S. trade rep, and he's like, oh, there's 500 different things you could do with a dairy molecule. And because of trade rules anyway, by the way, Just, just following up. I am currently in touch with someone from the big New Zealand dairy cooperative Fonterra.

[Tracy Alloway]

So I'm working on finding from Big Dairy.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I am working on finding the dairy molecule specialist for that episode.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, well, that's very exciting. Maybe we'll end up doing a three part milk series.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, we could. I'm sure we could.

[Tracy Alloway]

Who knows, we better hurry it up since it's almost October. Okay. Is there anything that can be done about this? Like now that a Cisco has rolled up all these different companies and it has substantial market share, Although as we were discussing, we can debate what that actually means. Is there like what swings that dominance the other way?

[Austin Frerick]

Yeah, I mean to Joe's and just. I just want to add on to Joe's point early about the companies not wanting to have to do this. But if they don't engage this be like the system design right now is they have to do this behavior. And I actually think about that with farmers now in America. The farm billing right now is designed to maximize corn. So you have to over plant corn even though it's bad for the environment, else you go broke. So everyone's behaving this way because we're in a laissez faire era, what to do about it. And that's kind of why I profiled this woman named Ellen in that chapter. I think people crave heroes right now. No one's really articulating hope on whatever your political party is, what is a positive food system. And Ellen, Ellen's fascinating where she's a farmer, she has two kids, she opened her own restaurant and then she opened her own like Cisco. Because the problem she has with Cisco didn't want to take her product and sell it to restaurants on Omaha and Des Moines. So she created a nonprofit, got it up. They would basically pull different farmers in western Iowa to sell into these. It was using. And they were also doing schools. That was a big one. But then they got really hard hit by the dogecots. That to me is like maybe one possible thing is maybe extension. You have extension all across rural America. Maybe they can kind of get into that help this kind of procurement.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, maybe you don't try to compete against Cisco on volume, but you go like hyper localized, hyper local.

[Austin Frerick]

But also something we got to reign in Cisco. I mean looking at the black box of the pricing strategy would be huge. But also I think we should put merger acquisition freezes on these large entities. At some point it's like you can't buy anymore. Like you've hit Your cap.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's interesting, Tracy. Like, the other great homogenizing effect, of course, on society is big digital platforms, Right. Instagram, et cetera. And everyone feels that they have to constrain whatever they do, whether it's a restaurant or media company, et cetera, in order to serve the Elgo God. That is sort of capricious and unpredictable in some way. And it feels like the story, whether we're talking about the physical world or the digital world, is that scale has this homogenizing effect, which nobody really likes. These conditions.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, I think that's right. But also, there are these, like, hidden tiers of scale vision, these middlemen, companies. All right, well, Austin, thank you so much for coming back on Odd Lots. Congrats on the new chapter, and I'm sure a lot of people will be looking forward to picking up the revised book. Yeah.

[Austin Frerick]

Thank you so much for having me on again.

[Tracy Alloway]

Joe. That was really enjoyable.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

I always love talking about food, although I haven't had lunch today, so I'm a little bit hungry. Can we go to Olive Garden in Times Square? Let's do it. Right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's go soon. I'll go. I'm happy to go there soon.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay. I. I actually would like to go see Olive Garden.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's got great views. It's actually really fun, and it's got great views.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, you've been to that specific one?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, I didn't realize.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay. So there's a lot to pick out from that. I know you're on the side of cheap and plentiful food, but perhaps, perhaps, I guess the homogeneity of the offering, maybe that concerns you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It definitely concerns me. And this idea that. No, this idea that restaurants, if they, you know, so much of the preparation is done off site, et cetera, for various things that you eat. And so what is the restaurant anymore?

[Tracy Alloway]

Right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And so this is a thing where scale is great and cheapness is great, and I'm all for this, and I think food should be a lot cheaper than it is because we've had a lot of food inflation in this country, and I think it's very worrisome. And so food should be a lot cheaper and more efficient, et cetera, than it is. But when we think about the things that sort of make a society nice, if a restaurant is really just a sort of Cisco manufacturer giant microwave. Yeah. Or a Cisco manufacturer. Right. A giant microwave that connects a Cisco manufacturer distribution System to a GrubHub delivery system, what world are we living in?

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. And I think it gets back to the flora and fauna point that you were making. So maybe you could have, you know, food that's cheap and maybe not of the highest quality, but it is plentiful and inexpensive. But then you should have, you know, more local options.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, you brought me those really nice tomatoes.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yes.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So thank you for those.

[Tracy Alloway]

You're welcome.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And so they're obviously, I'm doing my part, but I do not think that is a scalable solution for most people.

[Tracy Alloway]

No.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I grew up hating tomatoes because I thought that they were all really bland because I only got them in the grocery store markets.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. It is phenomenal how different a supermarket tomato tastes from a homegrown one. Anyway, shall we leave it there?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's leave it there.

[Tracy Alloway]

This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our guest Austin Ferk. He's and check out the new edition of his book Barron's, which has the whole chapter about Cisco. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armand, Dashiell Bennett at dashbot and Cale Brooks Alebrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com oddlots we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can chat about all of these topics 24. 7 In our Discord, Discord ggodlots.

[Tracy Alloway]

And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you want us to dig into dairy, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

[Austin Frerick]

This is Jim. Hello. Jim started advertising with iHeartRadio way back in April and now I have customers out the door.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And this is Sarah. Hi.

[Austin Frerick]

She started putting a portion of her.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Marketing dollars in podcasting back in June.

[Tracy Alloway]

Business is booming. That's why I'm working on a Saturday.

[Austin Frerick]

Want to be like Jim and Sarah? It's easy. All you have to do is own or manage a business and reach out to iHeart. Get started today at 844-844-IHeart or iHeartadvertising.com.