Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - November 28th, 2025 - Bloomberg Businessweek

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance
and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week
Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hi everyone, Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Week Weekend Podcast. We are normally so focused on bringing
you everything from Wall Street and politics and anything from
the world of business, that we're always grateful when we
can take a step back and focus on other important issues,
especially on this Thanksgiving weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
In this hour, we bring you to Boston and to
the work that's being done at the Boston Children's Hospital.
It's really a healthcare hub for all of New England.
It's at the forefront of medical research and treatment and
that includes cutting edge tech for orthopedic surgery and also
using AI in medicine.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
That's all coming up in the first hour. It's some
really great conversations. We were Tim and I were both
blown away by our visit there. Then coming up in
our second hour, Well, it's a little bit of a
holiday special. We've got some travel, hosting and drinks. We
also get an update on the domestic travel market with
the CEO of Travel and Leisure.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Plus a CEO who you can count on to be
candid when she stops by, Christina Stembel, the founder and
CEO of farm Girl Flowers. She joined us on getting
ready for the holiday season and the health of the consumer.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Also, we have a drink with the CEO of the
spirit's company, Kraftco. At a time when the industry's facing
a lot of headwinds.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's coming up a drinker too. I saw the way
you poured that.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
All right, All that's coming up in the second hour.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Two all that to come. First though, we head to
Boston Children's Hospital. It's the leading recipient of pediatric research
funding from the National Institutes of Health. It's also the
primary pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
We're so grateful to them for hosting us. And first up,
we've got a conversation around medical advancements using artificial intelligence
and the importance of providing a comforting environment for patients
and staff alike.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
That's what doctor Joan La Rovere is trying to achieve.
She's senior vice president. She's also interim Chief Medical Officer
of Boston Children's She's also the co founder and president
of the NGO, the Virtue Foundation. It's delivering healthcare to
over twenty five countries. We began our conversation with the
description of the room where we broadcasted from earlier this month.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
We're in the hail Roof garden on the tenth floor
of the Hale Building. The Cardiac I See You that
I work in is two and three floors below us,
because we cover two floors our Cardiac I See You,
And we need spaces like this for families to be
able to step away and really, you know, think and decompress,

(02:53):
and for staff. You know, these very challenging complex patients
that we're taken care of in this building. Are the
anatal Intensive care unit is here or Cardiac I See
You is here. We have operating rooms in this building.
You know, there's a lot of the cath labs are here.
So it's wonderful that we can have these magical spaces

(03:15):
where you can just feel that you're in a PEDIAFTERC
hospital and there's a place to relax and think.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Can I just say, it's like you're sitting on a tree,
like a tree bench. There's like, I don't know, is
this a rainbow. It feels like above us. It's pretty
it's pretty cool, you know.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Carol mentioned the energy that we feel when we walk
into a space such as Boston Children's and we're reminded
that it's it's not just a teaching hospital, a research hospital,
it's also a place that treats kids from really all
over the world. I'm wondering how you prioritize where resources go,
whether it goes to treating patients right now versus thinking

(03:53):
about research, thinking about development, thinking about ways to actually
help patients in the future, versus working with them right now.
How do you allocate those resources?

Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, that has always been part of the DNA of
Boston Children's Hospital. It's been our mission. We deliver the highest,
best quality clinical care. Really that is the foundation of
it all. And you see that, you know the motto
of where the world comes for answers. There's a lot
of complex patients from the Boston area of Massachusetts, New England. Obviously,

(04:28):
we provide primary services for all levels of care for
children in this community, However, there are many from across
the United States and across the world who really seek
that type of care and come to us, usually the
most complex cases, and I think that's really where we thrive.
And the other piece of our DNA is the science

(04:52):
we as you talked in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
That makes a difference, right when there's science involved. I
feel like it's practition. Yes, you're dealing with patients, but
it's people who are like, I want to understand how
this works.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
That's everybody here. Yeah, that's the doctors, that's the nurses,
that's the social workers, that's the physical therapists, that's the
respiratory therapist, it's the pharmacist. I just could keep going.
So I think that's what draws people to work here
and to stay here, because that purpose that we're gonna

(05:24):
actually change things and we're going to be able to
find newer ways of doing things. We're going to help
more children survive but also thrive, and that takes a
real concerted effort, and you need the science here with
the clinical.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
One of the things I think when you joined Tim
and I back in New York and listen, everybody's talking
about AI and I know that but I think we
all are thinking about what it could do for medicine
and R and D and innovation. And I guess what
we're trying to understand too is what's the reality of
what AI is used within the medical community or R

(05:58):
and D specifically? Where is it today? And you, as
someone who understands this space so well, and I'm curious
the conversations you guys have, where do you think you
could go? Well?

Speaker 4 (06:10):
AI has been a very important part of Boston Children's
Hospital for a long time. This isn't something new. We
have incredible research groups and an incredible innovation team here
who've been really standing up AI initiatives for a very
long time. We talked about some of the work I
personally have done in terms of you know, Virtue Foundation

(06:31):
and the Global Health AI mapping and being able to
match resource and need.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
You work with Yeah, firms that are like specifically in AI.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
Yes, with data breaks and data robak. I you're building
those real platforms that people can use. But I think about,
for example, when chat GPT first came out, we had
Boston GPT immediately we were looking to get that behind
our firewalls. How can we integrate that, How can we
use that for real purpose and improving both the care
that we get to pay since but how can we

(07:00):
use AI to also discover new things? I think the
levels of data that we have, and I think you
talked upon in the beginning in terms of rare diseases,
genetic diseases, we are the epicenter of that, and we've
already been extremely successful in bringing new therapies to market

(07:21):
for children. But when I look at the infrastructure that
we're building, and I think you've had doctor Wendy Chung
come and speak, and she's heating up.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
A lot of that work.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
I think her best days are ahead of us, and
AI is unlocking that type of potential.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
I like hearing that the optimism about our best days
being ahead of us. And I think about, just even
during your career, how much treatments have changed in a
pretty short time. I'm curious about the connection between kids
and adults and treating children. And of course, if kids
are healthy, then they turn into healthy adults. But this
is a children's hospital that does a lot of research,

(07:57):
it does a lot of teaching. Also, are there learnings
that can be taken from what works with kids and
even applied to a larger population as not just those
kids grow up, but as adults also need treatment.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
I think there's two points that strike me there. One
is that the decisions they were making early in life
have long term impact. It's something I've thought about my
entire career in the cardiac space and cardiac intensive care.
The decisions to have surgery on day two or day four,
the decisions to use this drug or that drug, all

(08:32):
of those things are shaping your long term self. But
it was very hard to be able to look at
and analyze that type of data until you've opened up
big data AI. So I think again along the lines
of our best days are ahead of us, that we're
going to be able to see so much more through that.
And then you said the innovations. Now many patients that

(08:52):
I took care of are adults. Right, we have this
huge growing adult population that we provide care for. Science
is that's discovered here, it's in a pediatric hospital, but
it's bringing forth therapies that are actually treating adults. So
I think it's it's incredible to see how this innovation

(09:13):
engine drives so much.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
If you could change one thing just got about thirty seconds.
If you could change one thing in terms of the
work that you guys are doing and the R and
D that would maybe make it easier.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
What would it be, make it easier?

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Okay backward. If you could change one thing though that
would help you guys and what you're working on. It
sounds like you don't need it. Sounds like you've got
a great team, and we have.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
A great team, but we're always needing, you know, support
and engagement and we're just trying to drive the next
level and partnerships to move in that direction. We are
the leading children's hospital, so we're doing well, but we're
always trying to push the envelope of what we can do.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, it's fast. You could feel it. I felt, you know,
like walking in.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
You can write the purpose.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
It was busy, it was lots of families, lots of kids,
and yeah, everybody on a mission.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
It's a privilege to be part of that mission.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Well, thank you so much, thank you, thank you for
inviting us, and good to get some more time with you.
Doctor Joan la Rovere. She is an interim Chief Medical
Officer at Boston Children's Hospital, Director of Innovation and Outcomes.
So delighted to talk with you.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
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Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now, we know AI has been the talk of here.
Actually it's been the talk of is it almost three
years already here? Yeah? Yeah, it's really nuts. It's nunds
up a lot of AI when it comes to moving markets,
analyzing data and automating simple tasks, but it may also
impact neurosurgery in kids.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
On that, we were joined by doctor Lisa Baird, director
of Neurosurgical Oncology and co director of the Brain Tumor
Center at Boston Children's Hospital.

Speaker 5 (11:08):
I take care of kids that have branch tumors and
it's all ages. All ages, yeah, from infants to really
young adults, but all through childhood and work with a
phenomenal team here. Requires a huge team to take care
of these kids. They're very complex diseases and we work

(11:30):
on all aspects of them, so active treatment. We do
a lot of scientific research, we run clinical trials. We
really support these kids not only through their therapeutic journal journey,
but through survivorship and surveillance afterwards. So it's a long
journey for them and we really try to support them
at every stage.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
How are clinical trials involving children different than clinical trials
involving other age populations.

Speaker 5 (11:55):
Well, cancer in children is very very different. The diseases
are different, the implications are different, especially with brain tumors.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Why is that? Is it development because of where the
brain is or what?

Speaker 5 (12:06):
Partially? I mean we're dealing with patients that have developing brains.
I mean there are very different implications for that. But
also the diagnoses vary quite a bit. You know, the
common diseases we see in childhood brain cancer are very
very different than that in adult cancer, and they require
different treatments and the support and you know, network needs

(12:27):
to be different. We have to support these kids through
developmental stages, through hormonal development, through cognitive development, emotional development.
You know, the family needs are different, and you know,
the diseases require very specific therapies. One thing historically that
has happened is because pediatric cancer has not been as

(12:48):
well supported. Historically, we have had to extrapolate data and
treatments from the adult world and it just doesn't work,
you know.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
I have a good friend in the same her son
went through it and unfortunately it didn't work out well.
But when she started doing research, she realized there's just
no money, no funding. And they actually started a foundation
to kind of but selling kids, selling cookies and like,
just to try and drum up money and interest and attention.

(13:19):
And we talk about it with women that R and
D like you just don't see it as much and
it's getting slowly better. But with kids, why is it
that it's lagged in terms of time and money and effort,
Not here obviously, but elsewhere.

Speaker 5 (13:33):
Yeah, I mean, we definitely rely on philanthropy hugely to
make advancements in the field. But I think you know,
historically the numbers are lower. The financial support from government
has been different. It follows volume, as does industry. You know,
there's a complex, you know, complex reasons for that. But yeah,

(13:57):
there needs to be a shift and focus and and
more attention on specific pediatric treatments.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
We are talking a lot about treatments, and it makes
me wonder about if we understand what causes this stuff
in the first place. And certainly treatments in recent years
have gotten so much better. In gene therapy, has gotten better,
but I'm wondering if we have an understanding in the
medical community about why some kids get sick and why

(14:25):
some don't.

Speaker 5 (14:26):
Yeah, there have been huge advancements in pediatric brain tumors.
It's really one of the most exciting fields right now
because of how many things have really moved forward in
the field. And so we know so much more about
the biology of these tumors and the genetic underpinnings to them,
and can really drill down with each individual tumor to
find out what the molecular change has been in the

(14:48):
cells that is driving tumor growth. And that's really helped
us understand them and opened up a whole new field
of individual treatments. And so, you know, every tumor is different.
In some tumors, we've discovered that there may be a
cell of origin that the child is born with a
lot of tumors. We don't understand why some kids are
getting them and some don't. Some may have familial implications

(15:11):
and some may have environmental We don't understand everything, but
we're learning more and more every day, and we know
so much more about the individual genetics of the tumor.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Could we get to a point within our lifetimes where
there is some sort of screening for kids when they're
born or in their early days that helps identify what
they could be susceptible too, and then we could allow
for different different treatments ahead of that to prevent it
actually from happening.

Speaker 5 (15:36):
Definitely, I think so. And it may not be for
every tumor, but I think we're already getting close to
that for certain diagnoses where we know specific things that
you know, we can potentially screen for, and we're finding
certain you know, germline mutations that are you know, familial hereditary.
So yeah, I think we may get to that point

(15:57):
where we're screening is better for all tumors, but we're
very close for certain types of tumors.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Is there differences in boys and girls when it comes
to either tumors or what impacts.

Speaker 5 (16:08):
For some Yeah, for some diagnoses and some have you know,
greater percentages with boys and some with girls. It really
just depends on the diagnosis and many many its equivalent.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
I am also curious about, like you guys seem to
certainly take a family approach, and you have to when
it's kids, Like what's involved when you've got specific therapies,
and it's not it's leading up to the surgery or
whatever the treatment is.

Speaker 5 (16:29):
In now, the treatment of these kids takes a village.
We have a huge multi disciplinary team. I mean we
have neurosurgeons, neurooncologists, neurologists, the neuropathologists, geneticists, neurorediologists, and we
also have you know, the rehabilitation experts with physical occupational therapy,
the neuropsychologists and endochronologists. I mean, there are so many

(16:49):
different expertise, you know, fields that are required to take
care of these kids because brain tumors really affect every
single aspect of their life and have the potential to
affect every aspect of their physical and neurodevelopment. And so
you know, we are really fortunate here to have so
much expertise that we're able to really individualize the team

(17:09):
needed for each specific child.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Thank you so much. This is heavy stuff. Thank you
so much. Really appreciate it. Doctor Lisabert, Director of Neurosurgical
on collegen co Director of the Brain Tumor Center at
Boston Children's Hospital. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
each weekday starting at two PM Eastern on Applecarplay and
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Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Neurological development and research is so key, especially in children,
because healthy brain development can influence outcomes for the rest
of our lives.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Doctor Ellen Grant is Director of Fetal Neonatal Neuroimaging and
Developmental Science at Boston Children's Hospital. There, she leads to
seventy person Neuroimaging and Computation no science center that's working
to develop tools to better detect and understand brain physiology
and development. The goal improve cognitive behavior and neurological outcomes
and fetuses, infants and toddlers, brain imaging, and children. If

(18:12):
we have a better understanding of the brain and fetal
development and for babies and toddlers, what will that allow
us to understand what does it prevent, what does it treat?

Speaker 6 (18:21):
Well, everything begins in uterul pretty much, so your life
is an arc from infancy or one you're conceived through
to adulthoods So the more we can understand the early development,
the more we can start to understand how we make
sure children are on the right trajectory. So the goal
is to characterize brain development very early on, so we
tell the very earliest point when to start to deviate
from a normal trajectory so we can get things back

(18:43):
on tracked early as possible. And ideally we want in
future to be able to prevent diseases from happening, not
just try to deal with them and try to correct
them later on when the damage is partly done.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
So how early can we do it today and detect
that there's something wrong? How early realistically do you think
we can get it too?

Speaker 6 (18:59):
Yeah, we start looking at fetuses at about eleven fifteen
weeks something around there, at the earliest, right closer to
around eighteen weeks, we start to characterize brain development, you know,
eighteen nineteen weeks or so, So it begins quite early
when we start to see and look at early brain development.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, you and your team did a study a few
years ago that gave your results to argue for earlier
MRI during pregnancy. Yeah, is that study enough to actually
change the standard of care?

Speaker 6 (19:26):
Well, we do use it early here at Boston Children,
So when there's an indication we do it as early
as we can to better characterize the entire fetus, because
it's not just the brain, it's the body it's attached to too,
So we won't understand not just the brain develop but
how that brain is developing the context of the other
organ systems.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
So we can do because it doesn't necessarily run hand
in hand, like it can be very different, right or
like in terms of what's going on with brain development
versus the rest of the system. They can disconnect.

Speaker 6 (19:52):
No, they're intimately connected life.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
So there's one. Yeah, So that's why we won't understand it.

Speaker 6 (19:58):
So say, for example, we with a lot of congenital
heart disease here that has effects from brain development. We
deal with congenital dive fromatic hernias that have effects on
brain development. So everything that's happening in the fetus, whether
there's a brain or not, is it has the potential
to have subtle effects on brain development.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Why do kids, I mean kids do need specialized tools
her brain imaging to ask us about that one.

Speaker 6 (20:20):
Yeah, that's the whole reason that it came to Boston
Children's is industries not interested in fetuses in prints and
young children. So it's really hard to get devices that
are built specifically for these age range. So that's why
I brought a team of technical people. So they're engineers, physicists,
computer scientists, data scientists that help to either develop the

(20:41):
devices or come up with better ways to analyze the
data that we get with an ion trying to understand
pediactors actric disorders. So for example, we want to monitor
and we're developing optical devices for the NICKU to monitors
freequal bloodflow. But the heart of a heart rate of
a neonate is one hundred, so we have to sample

(21:01):
at a much higher rate than you would in an
adult to get the same information. So we have to
build specifically devices to the physiology. And then if can
think of ahead of a premature baby, it's very very small,
so I can't take a probe that we use in
adults and just put it on a pre term, so
we have to develop the devices to fit the size
of the infants.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
I want to just go and I feel like we
touched on this earlier. I mean, we are Bloomberg Business Week.
We are Bloomberg and very entrenched in financial markets, and
I feel like the more I've been doing this, money
just follows everything money is why people do things or
don't do things. Is that really it is just the
market I hate to even make it that way, the
market size, and so you don't have medical equipment companies

(21:42):
building the things because they just don't think the market
size is big enough.

Speaker 6 (21:45):
That is a big problem, and I think it's that's
where we're trying to get into more of a business perspective.
Like if we start to do a small startup that
starts to answer those questions and a bigger company might
buy it. But if we stay in the research realm,
then it's sometimes really hard to go that last mile
and get something into clinical practice.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
So how do you do that? How do you cross that?
So what do you do?

Speaker 6 (22:05):
Yeah, this is what we're strategy strategizing on right now
is trying to figure out how we do those small
startups get industry interested I and a lot of things
we're doing right now. Actually, one of the projects we're
working on is you know AI strategies, right, and if
we can get enough data on infants or thetses and
so on, we can start to build models that predict

(22:27):
not just group outcomes, but we want to get to
individual outcomes because that's what parents care about, right, so
if we can figure out get those models together. So
that's what we're working on now, is trying to create
these AI models that are specialized for pediatrics and hoping
to do startups around that particular concept.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I have to ask a more questiondent our venture capitalist
is interested.

Speaker 6 (22:44):
I don't know because we haven't really talked about that.
I've heard about, but I think they always want something
that's almost ready. So we're hoping to go further along. Yeah,
a little bit further along.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Okay. Interesting?

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Can what we learn and what you understand through imaging
about the brain's development be applied to how adult brains
are treated.

Speaker 6 (23:03):
Everything in adult life has its genesis in infants, right.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
So we were all there once.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
And some of the ways of adult brain response is
more prominent in a pediatric brain. So in some disorders
you go to pediatric models to see a physiologist. More
prominent in neonates or infants, but also occurs in adults.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
You know, there was in doing the research. In the
prep for our interview with you, there is a picture
of a physician or a therapist doing some what's I
think is called therapeutic hypothermia too a brand new baby's head.
And my understanding is that oxygen deprivation around birth is

(23:46):
one of the leading reasons that you actually see babies
come into the Nike.

Speaker 6 (23:51):
You, yes, that was one of the main reasons.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
And the therapy for this is as simple as.

Speaker 6 (23:57):
Yeah, you cool them down or can be down there normal, Yeah,
at least some normal thermic because when they have injuries,
a response to that sort of the whole physiological response
to an injury is to have a fever, and that
is detrimental. So we want to keep them cool so
that they don't set off these cascades of brain injury.
And that's partly why we build this one device, because
we want to be able to monitor through the NICK

(24:19):
you stay and optimize management. But it's interesting, we don't
even know what the great blood pressure for a newborn is.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
So this is.

Speaker 6 (24:25):
Why we wanted to have a probe that could measures
reable blood flow to the brain because there is no
way to monitor whether there's enough brain or oxygen getting
to the brain with the tools that we have right now.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I feel like we don't even talk about blood pressure
when it comes to like infants, right, Yeah, we just don't.
But you need to know. You did your residency and
fellowship in the nineteen nineties. Curious how imaging has changed
since then, and then where do you think, how will
it improve in the next I don't know, ten years.
You know what's a smart benchmark? Yeah, yeah, I know.

Speaker 6 (24:53):
When I was in training, netmark was just starting and
it was very slow. So where we come now is
the acceleration position is just incredible. What used to take
us an hour to do we can do in ten
minutes now, So there was creed. The speed of acquisition
is huge. Were also developing a lot of analysis that
we can do after the images are acquired to give

(25:15):
us more quantitative metrics, because the whole thing in medicine
to get past the qualitative read of a radiologist, which
is helpful, but we want to put more numbers on
it so we can have a more dynamic range on
how we describe each child and this therefore we can
get into better precision medicine and help prediction. So we're
getting more to that quantitative aspect of imaging now, and

(25:37):
not just bringing but all body parts of course, and
you know down to fetel age.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Is it for kids too? Every case is very personal
and individual? Or are there trends and things that you
can help in so that one case can help another.
Is there a body of knowledge that gets built off
of this?

Speaker 6 (25:54):
Yes, there's body that of knowledge gets built off of this.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
But this is where we come back to AI.

Speaker 6 (25:58):
I only can remember some, you know, even though I've
been in practice for a long time.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Things follow out crap.

Speaker 6 (26:05):
So this is where I'm really excited about AI because
I can, you know, mine oor databases to find where's
an individual child just like that one I'm treated. Now,
what did they respond to, what worked for them, and
how are these two similar? So I can mind the
databases to start to come up with individual outcome prediction,
which is what we're doing right now.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
With databases.

Speaker 6 (26:24):
We've got some from some of the major trials for hypothermia,
and so we can use this large database to start
try to take individual outcomes. You can say, well, I
have a newborn with this pH that had these you know,
and I'm a mother of this age and put in
features and they could give you from that database an
outcome prediction. So working on that and also working on
making data more available to parents because I think a

(26:48):
lot of parents are very frustrated with trying to read
the literature, even if you're using chat, GPT or really hard.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
It's really hard.

Speaker 6 (26:55):
And then you get group statistics and then where does
my kid fit in between the twenty five to seven
five percent, you know, good outcome or something like that.
To get chatbots that can work with some of our databases,
so people anybody can talk to, you know, a physician,
so to speak, to give the answers that they want.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
That's that's pretty remarkable because you know, I just think
about the tone of these chatbots and if there's a
way that they can be you know, we talked about
we talked earlier this week about what a challenge it
can be for people to actually interact with them in

(27:33):
an you quote unquote normal way. But is there a
way for them to actually be empathetic and work with patients,
work with parents and with families.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
If you give us we've got about forty second.

Speaker 6 (27:43):
Yeah, yeah, no, we're working on that. But I can't
tell you all the secrets because we're.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Hang know, you go over the that. Can I ask you,
when you guys do use AI in chat? Do you
have hallucinations? Like do the AI hallucinations. Do you or
how do you? Especially when you're dealing with medical y prevention.

Speaker 6 (28:00):
There was a lot of safeguards who put around that,
so it's we have again. This is sort of more
the secret sauce that I can't talk about yet, but
there are ways to constrain chatbots to give you reasonable
answers that are statistically found.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
All right, so when you can, when you come back,
yes it will Okay, good stuff. So appreciate Doctor Ellen Grant,
Director of Fetal Neonatal, Neuroimaging and Developmental Sciences here at
Boston Children's Hospital. Thank you again. Thank you. You guys
are all amazing, They're all behind us.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
We continue with more of our conversations from Boston Children's Hospital.
It was a broadcast we did earlier this month of
Remote where we spoke with some of the nations leading
doctors on matters related to health, health policy and innovation
when it comes to medical care, especially for kids.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
Well a fixture at my high school in college was
torn acls volleyball, across soccer, field hockey. That's torn ACL,
the surgery to reconstruct it, weeks on crutches, and then
months of recovery. This is doctor Martha Murray's world. She's
orthopedic surgeon in chief of Boston Children's Hospital. She joined
us from the hospital. Why do ACL tears affect women
more than men?

Speaker 7 (29:22):
Well, it's a really interesting question, and it's been one
of much debate for the last few decades, and there
have been things like, well it must be a hormone cycle,
or it's the shape of women's hips and their valgus
angles to their knees. But a really interesting study came
out very recently from the Harvard School of Public Health
as well as Harvard University with doctor Danielson and doctor Richardson,
where they actually showed that the studies that say that

(29:43):
women tear their ACL more frequently than men were often
based when the women's teams were smaller than the men's teams,
and the way they calculated exposures was the number of
practices or games you played in, not necessarily your playing time.
So if you're a man, who's on a hockey team
versus as a woman who's on a hockey team. The
women's teams were smaller, so those women were playing more

(30:04):
so they were planting and hockey that's a bad example.
Soccer would be better, but if the team is smaller,
the women are going to be planting and pivoting and
playing much more time per game or practice.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Some more stress, more use more stress, more use more TEK.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
So maybe it's not Maybe women in all things equal,
Maybe women and men don't have a different rate of
torn ACL correct.

Speaker 7 (30:24):
When when they corrected for unit of exposure, so kind
of game time playing rather than just a game, the
injury rates look very similar.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Wow, that's totally different than what's I mean, do you
is that? Do you is this the standard now? I
mean do you think this is?

Speaker 7 (30:39):
It's relatively new work that's coming out, but it resonates
with most of us who take care of women and
men on their on their athletic teams.

Speaker 5 (30:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
I want to ask about your background material science and engineering.
I know Tim said it not typical for a surgeon,
but I think it's it's a really smart combination. Well,
I have a doctor, a foot doctor, same thing. Engineering
and like he is and just deal with my foot.
He thinks about, Okay, what are you doing? What else
is going on in your body? Tell me about that
mix and why it's kind of unique and smart and

(31:08):
ties things together.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
Well.

Speaker 7 (31:09):
For me, it was actually a necessity.

Speaker 5 (31:12):
Right.

Speaker 7 (31:12):
So I was an engineering graduate student and a friend
of mine came into a party one night and then
on crutches as Tim was saying and who had torn
his ACL? And I said, oh, are they going to
go sew it back together? And he was a med student.
He was like, you, stupid engineer, We can't sew it
back together. You have to take it out and replace
it with the graft of tenant that they're going to
take from the back of my leg. And then it's
all this rehab. And I thought that seems kind of excessive, right,

(31:34):
Like that's a lot to have to go through. And
so I spent the next six months or so in
the medical school library just reading everything I could about
why didn't the ACL heal? And I realized nobody really
had figured out why it didn't. He know, they tried
it sewing back together didn't work. So then went to
grafts and we've been doing graphs for fifty years and
nobody really asked why doesn't it heal? And so for
me then there was no biomedical engineering at that time,

(31:55):
and so my choices were to continue on with my project,
which was developing airplane wings were invisible to you know,
to radar, and I thought, well, that's a really cool project,
but I really want to figure out this ACL thing.
And my advisor was like, well, I guess you could
go to medical school.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
This is a Netflix series.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Okay, Well, the advisor obviously had an impact in your
friend obviously had an impact. But fast forward, you know,
thirty years plus and you have actually invented a new
way to treat ACL tears. The bear mackod you did
figure out that there's a reason why acls don't heal
like an MCL would actually heal. Why is that, Well,
it's really interesting.

Speaker 7 (32:32):
So both the medial collateral ligament and the anti a
cruciate ligament are ligaments. When you look at them under
the microscope, they look very similar. But interestingly, when the
MCL tears, you can go on to brace in it
about six weeks that ligament will heal fine in your
back playing soccer. In contrast, the ACL. When it tears,
even if we try to sew it back together, it
doesn't heal, and so we wondered why, and so we

(32:52):
did a series of studies where we looked and we
compared the two tissues in their response to injury. And
what we found was that actually the response to injury
is very similar in the two ligaments. So the tissue
and the cells and the tissue were doing exactly what
they were supposed to do in both tissues. But the
difference was in the MCL. When it tears, the ends bleed,
and that blood clots informs what we call a hematoma
between the two torn ends of the ligament. And then,

(33:13):
in contrast, in the ACL, because it lives in this
fluid environment of the joint, the ends bleed, but instead
of making a clot or hematoma between the torn ends
of the ligament, the blood disperses through the fluid of
the joint, and so the two ends never have that scaffolding,
that biologic scaffolding to hold them back together. So once
we discovered that, then it was a fairly logical step
to say, is there some way we could immobilize the

(33:35):
blood in between those two torn ligament ends and get
that biologic signal where it needs to be to encourage
healing of the ACL, and that's really what Bridge Enhanced
ACL repair or BEAR is. So the magic is kind
of the sponge that we've developed that can absorb the
patient's blood. You can place that blood laden sponge in
between the torn ends of the ACL, so the acal
back together.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
But now you have the.

Speaker 7 (33:55):
Biology plus the sutures and the repair and the ligament
will heal.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
So what is done in terms of numbers or percentage
with the method that you pioneered, what you invented, versus
actual reconstruction and using other ligaments.

Speaker 7 (34:12):
That's a great question. So this is still fairly new.
So we got FDA approval for this product in twenty
twenty and so it's only been in practice for a
few years now. There's studies coming out of Children's here,
which is where we did the first studies, of course,
but now other centers are coming along and doing follow
on studies and those results are starting to come out
and it's very exciting to watch it grow.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I'm also curious you mentioned but like FDA approval, like
the approval process, is it a smart one? Is it
the right one? In terms of making sure that what's
being done and studied, the R and D, that it's
safe for when it's finally done on patients, or is
it preventing things from maybe putting put into you sooner?
Like I'm just curious where you guys weigh in. You're

(34:53):
in it, You're in it every day. Yeah, I think
it's a delicate balance. But I would say in our
personal experience, the Fday was an amazing partner. Okay, So
we were able to get into an early adoption program
where they actually met with us and helped us and
put together a panel of experts that would help us
figure out how to make this the safest possible product
and the most effective product before we went to patients,

(35:13):
and we found their advice incredibly valuable. There was a
lot of conversation and back and forth and just having
them it felt like it was a team effort because
we were in alignment. I mean, as a physician, I
was going to be shaking the hands of these patients
that my partners were, and we wanted to make sure
things were as safe as possible.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
So they helped us with that.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Do we have data yet on long term impact or
long term outcomes. Yet when it comes to the bare procedure.

Speaker 7 (35:37):
Yeah, our longest data that we have is at about
six years, and it's only in the small number of
patients in those first studies that we did. But the
reason that we want to study at longer term is because,
as you may know, many of these patients will develop
arthritis early in life, and as a pediatric orthopedic surgeon,
I want to make sure we have a procedure that's
going to last my patients for sixty or seventy years,

(35:57):
not have the knee breakdown in ten or twenty years.
And so we're very interested in this arthritis question with
bear and in our preclinical studies we were able to
see that arthritis was actually much less in the subjects
that we treated with an acl repair with the sponge
versus a reconstruction. So we're interested in seeing if that
same thing plays out in patients, and the early data

(36:18):
suggest that it will it is true, but again that's
very early data on small numbers of patients, so we're
excited to see how that pans out.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
We're talking with doctor Martha Murray. She's orthopedic surgeon and
CHI for Boston Children's Hospital that's where we are Tim
and me on this Friday. Preventive care. Like, so much
of what we talk about often when we're doing interviews
is preventive care. And I feel like the whole health
community has been thinking about this for a long time.
So what's the preventive care so that as much as

(36:45):
we don't want you unemployed, like, how do we think
about taking better care if we're living longer? Like, how
do we think about this?

Speaker 7 (36:52):
So there's a couple questions on that. So one is
how do we help our teenagers reduce their risk of injury?
And I think the main thing for that for our
athletes when they're in it.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
If we push kids when they're younger. I think a
lot of parents really push kids.

Speaker 7 (37:04):
So some things we can do to help them is
help them work on strengthening in addition to just play time.
And another thing is cross training, So not playing the
same sport all year round or playing the same sport
every day, giving their body a chance to rest and
heal between exposures to sport.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Does it's as simple as that?

Speaker 4 (37:18):
I think?

Speaker 3 (37:19):
So, Wow, does ACL tear happen more in kids than adults?
Or and if yes, is it because kids are the
ones who are playing sports, and you know we're just
sitting at computers.

Speaker 7 (37:28):
I think that's probably part of it. Again, it gets
to this exposure question. How many times do you plant
and change direction? And so the peak of a c.
Andrews is really the high school athlete because there's so
many everybody's playing a sport and so we see a
lot of them there.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
I want to ask you at social media and all
of us sitting on phones, are sitting in front of screens,
like I just I keep thinking that we're going to
one day. I don't know whether it's fifty years from
now we're going to have a neck that basically goes
over there or maybe not because we're going to have
glasses on. And that's like, how do you think about
this digital world? You're laughing?

Speaker 3 (37:56):
But can we surgically remove my phone from my hand?
That's what That's what.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
But I do think about what it's doing to us.

Speaker 7 (38:03):
Well, I look at it not just one fixed for you.
I don't know if I can fix the social media.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
But physically, like I'm just thinking like how you know
kids are in their phones constantly and stuff, and like
the shape like like do we need to be thinking
about what this is doing kind of to our spine
and different things. I think so.

Speaker 7 (38:20):
But I also think things come in cycles, right, And
we see now if you walk down the street, you
see everybody's on their phone. I think we're gonna five
years from now, we're going to look at back at
that and say why are we doing that? You know,
maybe we'll start looking up at the sky more, I hope. So, yeah,
that's what I hope too.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
I mean, gosh, that's like your open air.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
I know. I just I look around on the subway
and just everybody and I'm just thinking the curvature and
I don't know, whatever, what's the next thing you're working
on or that you're excited about.

Speaker 7 (38:44):
I'm really excited about a product that we' working on
for rotator cuff injuries. And it's a product that's injectable,
so that potentially.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
It is great.

Speaker 7 (38:52):
Yeah, you can have ultras on your shoulder, see where
the tear is, and then inject the product into the tear,
maybe in an office visit. So that's what we're going on,
but very early day on that.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Again, a challenge with pediatric patients as well.

Speaker 7 (39:02):
No, this is more adults but we were just we
thought we could make this work for a ligament. Maybe
we could try it for the rotator cuff ten And and
the nice thing about the rotator cuff is it is
accessible by ultrasound and injection and it's a pretty easy
model for us to study if we can make that
injectable work there, and there's lots of other places we
could apply a meniscus other things.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Did you ever figure out the invisible airplane wings?

Speaker 4 (39:22):
No?

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Not too late?

Speaker 7 (39:24):
Well, social media Visible Airplane Wings ACL wrote that you guys.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Are killing me.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Well, we are glad you ended up going into pediatric
orthopedic surgery app.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Is there another career like to add on after this?
You could do it. You could do it. This was
so much fun. It was fun. Thank you guys very much,
Doctor Martha Murray, she's orthopedic surgeon chief for Boston Children's Hospital.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
You can also listen live on Amazon alone from our
flagship New York station, just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven
thirty blendy ahead.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
In our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg
Business Week, a special holiday edition, as we dig into travel,
spirits and more. We're going to catch up with the
founder and CEO farm Girl Flowers on running her multimillion
dollar business. We'll hear about the consumer from her, and yes,
we're going to talk even a little AI.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Plus we talk bourbon jen Rye ready to drink cocktails
and changing consumer habits with the CEO of the US
spirits brand Craft Co.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
First up this hour, Thanksgiving weekend. No surprise, it is
one of the busiest holiday weekends for travel. Triple A
projects nearly eighty two million people will travel at least
fifty miles from home over the Thanksgiving holiday period, which
goes from Tuesday November twenty fifth to Monday, December first.
This year's domestic travel forecast includes an additional one point

(40:51):
six million travelers compared to last Thanksgiving, and if so,
that would set a new overall record.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Travel is less subject to in flation pressures, but if
consumers are feeling the squeeze, they still may cut back
their travel spending. Somebody who's got a pulse on travel spending,
as Mike Brown, who's president's CEO of travel and Leisure.
It's got close to twenty resort, travel, club and lifestyle brands,
including Margaritaville, Vacation Club, Club, Windom and more.

Speaker 8 (41:18):
Well, ultimately we're one hundred percent leisure travel company and
our demographic is around one hundred and ten thousand dollars
of average income, average FIICO over seven hundred and thirty
average FICO score, age group upper forties, low fifties. And
really what when you start to think about who likes

(41:38):
to travel with us, no matter the brand, They want
bigger accommodations, they want consistency of brands, and they want
good value for their money. And that's really the space
that we operate in. And if you think about these
last five years, where inflation is running high and you've
already locked in your vacation dollars, the value component has

(41:59):
been really strong.

Speaker 9 (42:00):
This propelled our growth here in the last five years.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
How much of your business is sales of new memberships
versus people actually just using what they bought maybe years ago.

Speaker 8 (42:11):
Right, It's actually one of the best endorsements of people's
love of the product is that every year about sixty
five percent of our incremental purchases are from people who
already own with us and want either more space or
more vacation time. The rest are from our new owner
base who are dipping their toe in the water and

(42:31):
seeing what this type of vacation travel is all about.
So not only are we getting two thirds of our
sale roughly from people who already own with us, what
we also see is the people who've paid for their
ownership already.

Speaker 9 (42:44):
There's a ninety eight percent retention rate.

Speaker 8 (42:47):
So two massive validations that once people own, they really
love the product and keep buying more.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
So, you know, timeshares, they get a bad rap, and
they have a bad rap. I mean, if you like,
just Google, get out of time share, there are legal
companies that specialize in getting you out of time shares
is yeah, I mean you know this. You know the industry.
Is your product different than what people know as time shares?

(43:15):
And why that?

Speaker 9 (43:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (43:16):
Wrap, Look, it's interesting because I can even feel the
a little bit uncomfortableness of asking the question because it
has a history that predates the Great Financial Crisis. But
I think the untold story here and why I love
coming on shows like yours, beyond it being a great show,
is that the industry has dramatically changed. Eighty five percent

(43:38):
of the sales today are by companies that you might
book your business day, whether it's Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Margaritaville,
Holiday and Disney. All of these are the brands that
have come to the forefront in the last ten years.
And the value proposition, the way of vacationing with a

(43:59):
brand you trust, is not the reputation that it gained
great financial crisis, where it was independent real estate developers.
And I would just encourage everyone to do your own
research about these type of advertisements. There's a lot of
press out there that's shown some really negative stories about them.
That's for your people to do their own research. But

(44:21):
what I will tell you is that our retention rate,
as I mentioned, ninety eight percent, two thirds buy more.
And this is now a massively branded industry that it
wasn't when it gained that reputation you're referring to.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
So what's like the trickiest component of your business? Is
it properties? Management, labor? I'm just curious.

Speaker 9 (44:45):
Yeah, it's a complicated business.

Speaker 8 (44:47):
We run a sales and marketing business, we run a
management business.

Speaker 9 (44:54):
We operate the club.

Speaker 8 (44:56):
So that we can get people from one of our
two hundred and eighty resis orts to another, and we
access the ABS market three times a year to sell
our notes and gain cash flow. I think it's the
management of all of that together when you look at
our company's performance, the satisfaction of our customer base, and

(45:20):
the growth of our brands. We've been highly successful and
shown growth and showed a way to grow, and it's
shown through in our equity. But it's the experienced leadership
to combine several very complicated businesses together to make sure
that it's seamless for the consumer and that we're also
ultimately fulfilling our mission, which is getting people on great vacations.

(45:43):
So I would say it's the complexity of the management
as opposed to an individual component that's.

Speaker 9 (45:49):
Really hard to operate.

Speaker 8 (45:50):
I would just add that one component that has become
more complex is the development of real estate has become
a lot more expensive ground ups, so we've moved to
a conversion strategy and a lot of our new resorts.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
So I want to talk a little bit more about
the demographics here of your clientele, and certainly you know
with twenty different brands, it depends on what actual brand
we're talking about. You did give us some age demographics
and where people are generationally, but in terms of spend,
what are they spending? What do you know about where
you know in terms of their other demographics like household

(46:27):
net worth and what part of the economy you're able
to get.

Speaker 8 (46:31):
Right Well, what we find in our product is the
vast majority, irrespective of the brands, are going to want
to be in a situation where they want to know
what they can expect from their vacation and a Margaritaville
guest is going to want a sand, a drink in
your hand, that type of lifestyle, Whereas our newest brand,

(46:52):
Eddie Bauer, these are people that want to hike in
Zion National Park or get to the great outdoors and
enjoy a family reunion. Either way are financial demographics or
what I explained earlier, But what we see as the
travel trend is people want experiences that match their personal
lifestyle as opposed to four walls, and then they have

(47:14):
to go find their experience outside of the resort. So
that's why we're launching sports illustrated brand Eddie Bauer. We
have Margaritaville Club Windham you mentioned, we see an opportunity
to customize your experience inside the resort and outside as
opposed to over separating the financial demographics. I will say

(47:37):
one of our big focus is to pull the average
age down as we launch new brands over the upcoming years.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
You know, it's interesting, like I do, think about how
consumers relate to a specific brand. I mean that really
moves the needle, doesn't it, whether it's Sports Illustrated. I'm
just curious, And how do you guys think about what
brands you want to affiliate yourselves with?

Speaker 8 (48:01):
Right if if you know, I've I've I have two
children that are children young men that are at a university.

Speaker 9 (48:12):
Kids.

Speaker 8 (48:12):
Yeah, they really are, they really are. But I'll tell
you if I were to go go up to ann
Arbor and I have the option to stay in an
unbranded hotel with four walls or something that affiliates itself
closer to the university, there's a natural pull to it.
And you know, I can apply that. If you're going
to go to a beach destination, you have a chance.

(48:32):
And if you're a parent head and you want to
be in that Margaritaville environment versus a resort that's a
brand that has thousands of resorts everywhere from the highways
to the resort destinations. You're going to go to the
Margaritaville location, and our club Windom has a similar type
of affiliation. So we just find that people are moving

(48:54):
more and more to the lifestyle that attracts them, and
we are therefore developing brands that allow them to just
do that naturally, to enjoy their lifestyle inside of the
resort and outside. And it's it's already been received with
a lot of great reception and we're excited about what
we can do going forward.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
What's the brand? You have so many different brands. You
mentioned Marguerite, we talked about wind Eddie Bowers. What what
are you missing?

Speaker 8 (49:19):
Yes, I think there's a few things that that we
have to consider. We don't have any anything in the
luxury space today, what I would say pure luxury. There's
a lot of opportunities to tie our type of product
to the crew to.

Speaker 9 (49:37):
Cruise type of companies.

Speaker 8 (49:39):
And then, as is always the case, someone you know,
uh five years ago would have said, well, Eddie Bauer
is not a hospitality name, but you immediately put that
to an outdoor.

Speaker 9 (49:53):
Outdoor living lifestyle.

Speaker 8 (49:55):
And I think our challenge is there's the typical hospitality verticals,
which would include luxury, but there's also just niche, niche
lifestyle opportunities that we will look for. But you know,
if I could just step back a second, the key
to our success is whatever we do, we execute against
it and we deliver on what we promised the street,

(50:17):
and that success allows us more and more access to
more and more brands. So I would expect that to
allow us to move into these spaces that we currently
aren't in.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Well, I'd love to be sitting at Margaritaville Vacation, a
Margarita vacation club with the Margarita in my hand. But
having said that, before we go, Mike, any signs of stress,
any signs of you know, economic you know, concerns as
you look at your business, or maybe what it tells

(50:46):
you about the outlook here.

Speaker 8 (50:49):
Well, I would say my personal sentiment and what I'm
seeing in our business is very similar to it was
thirty days ago, which was there's still uncertainty out there,
which causes us to be looking intently every day with
any metric internally that would signal the economies.

Speaker 9 (51:07):
Going one way, or the other.

Speaker 8 (51:09):
Thirty days on from our earnings call, I would say
that our performance and our outlook on the economy looks
very similar than it did at the end of October
when we reported our leisure travel demand is looking good
for Q four. With the sound that the shutdown is
coming to an end, I was starting to worry that

(51:30):
we might start to see changes in behavior between air
and drive to traffic.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Are you seeing that at all? Just very briefly, we.

Speaker 8 (51:37):
Have not, And in fact, it looks like our twenty
five bookings here in Q four are at or slightly
above where they were last year, and we haven't seen
a dramatic change. We've seen ever so slightly that changed
from fly to drive to but I'm really confident that
it hadn't gone on another week or two into the
Thanksgiving season, we would have saw a noticeable shift of

(52:00):
people in New York saying, look, let me just get
to a drive to destination as opposed to flying to Orlando.
I don't want to deal with the hassle with my
free time. Fortunately, it looks as if we will avoid that.
But at this point we have not seen an indication
that that has caused changing leisure Travel.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Mike Brown, President CEO of Travel and Leisure Company, joining
us from Orlando.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch US
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
or watch US Live on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
US consumer confidence led in November by the most in
seven months, on growing anxiety about the labor market and
the US economy.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Now.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Survey by the Conference Board, released this past Tuesday also
found that confidence fell across nearly all income levels after
several months of increasing.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
For most groups, A gauge of expectations for the next
six months declined to the lowest level since April, while
measures of present conditions slumped to ing more than one
year low. The ongoing slide in consumer sentiment reflects lingering
concerns about the impact of persistently high prices and a
cooling labor market on Americans finances as well as the
broader economy.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
The health of the US consumer is something we always
focus on. With Christina Stembel, she's the founder and CEO
of farm Girl Flowers. We've been talking to her for
several years now that firm by the way she bootstrapped
starting back in twenty ten making bouquets from her San
Francisco apartment. I got to say, it's come a long way.

Speaker 10 (53:36):
It's the first year that we're actually seeing any growth
since twenty twenty, but very small a couple of points,
and that's very intentional. We're really focused on the bottom line,
you know, we want to make sure all these companies
are doing layoffs. I want to make sure we're not that.
You know, we're actually we have I don't know, ten
or twelve open positions right now, which for a company
our size.

Speaker 11 (53:54):
Is a lot.

Speaker 10 (53:54):
So we're just growing at a clip that we can
do while maintaining our profit margins. Is the opening We're
about thirty five million, you know, plus a little bit.

Speaker 11 (54:04):
But yeah, and how many people right under thirty.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
So you have like a third of your positions are
open right now. Basically, are you having trouble finding those.

Speaker 11 (54:12):
Employees or just going slow?

Speaker 10 (54:14):
We're looking for the right people. So we have a
lot of applicants, but we're just making sure we're bringing
the right people. Yeah, I think I've learned that having
the wrong people is actually worse than just not having anyone.

Speaker 11 (54:23):
So that's a lesson, it's.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
It is a good lesson. So in terms of fifteen years,
tell us about like how you look back at the
beginning and where you were in some of the stages
you've gone through, and then where you are today. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (54:34):
I just sat down and wrote, like, you know, fifteen
lessons in fifteen years. You know, I might share them
at the end of the year. I was just trying
to think about, like, you know, where I'm at now
versus you know, I feel much healthier right now personally
and professionally.

Speaker 11 (54:47):
And like why do I feel that way?

Speaker 10 (54:48):
And I think the biggest lesson that I had written
down was that nothing is as it seems like when
I started, I wanted that founder story in Silicon Valley,
I started in San Francisco. I wanted to be the
cover of Ink or ch one of the big magazines,
and you know where everybody was like she did it?
Look at that, you know, and it was like all
my ego. I finally realized it was my ego. And
we grew really really fast, and that like played into

(55:10):
my ego and I felt like that was my entire identity,
was that you know, all the press we were getting
in with our you know, fast growth, and yet twenty nineteen,
we did thirty four million in revenue and I did
thirty six thousand in profit and I paid myself sixty
thousand dollars.

Speaker 11 (55:23):
Like this is not a success story.

Speaker 10 (55:24):
But the outward you know, outward rule thought I was
like so successful, and I'm like, I'm barely scraping by
eating ramen. You know, so I think, you know, really
figuring out that you know, I needed to be smaller,
like we talked about before, you know, and focusing on
profit margin being a smaller company doesn't feed your ego anymore.
But I finally figured out that, like everything I thought
the business world was isn't like all these sales, all

(55:47):
these like glossy pictures of people that made it. I'm like, yeah,
it was like a fire sale most of the time.
And it was like all these people I wanted to
be that are the girl bosses that made it. I'm like,
they don't own their companies anymore, and they're you know.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Well yeah, And it's you know, it's interesting because we've
talked a lot, and I'm sure like through your head
you went through some journeys about like where do I
want to go. Do I want to keep doing this?
Do I want to bring in partners? Do I want
to do whatever? You know what I mean? And I'm
just curious, you know, Tim, Like I think about all
the folks that kind of think about that kind of thing.
Did you go through some of that?

Speaker 11 (56:20):
Absolutely?

Speaker 10 (56:20):
I mean I built this to sell, Like I wanted
to sell it in ten years. I mean, how many
years can you work one hundred hours a week.

Speaker 11 (56:26):
And not die?

Speaker 10 (56:26):
You know?

Speaker 11 (56:27):
So I wanted to sell it so bad.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
That's hard and the reality.

Speaker 10 (56:31):
Right really, and then we got an offer from one
of our big competitors, like this big company, and I thought, yes,
we're going to make it, and it was a horrible offer.
And so now I'm building to keep in building to sell,
and it's a completely different thing. Like we're making, we're
investing in, you know, things for five years from now.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
You're able to build to keep rather than build to
sell because you built this company yourself and you didn't
take on any financing, any funding, which is so strange
for a startup that was built in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 10 (56:54):
Absolutely. Absolutely, you know, I'm very fortunate. I'm in a
CEO group with lots of CEOs that you know, are
constantly telling me how lucky I am, even though I
have never felt lucky in this because I don't go
into every board meeting being where I'm going to be
fired right now because there's the boss.

Speaker 11 (57:09):
Yeah, I'm the boss.

Speaker 10 (57:09):
I'm like, you know, we just you know, we bought
a farm. You know, nobody, no investors would ever let
you buy a farm. We you know, are farming. Now
that's a lot term.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Well, I was gonna say, last time you're on with us.
We're going to get to the consumer in a second,
but last time you we're on with us, we talked
about two things that that really stuck out. One was
the effect of tariffs. Did you buy a farm to
offset the effective terraffs?

Speaker 1 (57:26):
No?

Speaker 10 (57:26):
Absolutely not, but it's going to help us, it is.
I mean, we bought the farm because we're like, let's
let's do this because it's hard to get this type
of flower at this time of year where we think
we can get it where where we're at. We also
built it because we're like, we're farm real flowers, Like
let's actually we have ahouldn't we have a farm and
do that?

Speaker 1 (57:44):
You know?

Speaker 10 (57:44):
But I mean that we're we're investing in you know,
we do think long term, this spertical integration will allow
us to keep a couple of million dollars more in
our pockets every year.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Wow. Yeah, it's like you gave us such an education.
I think about where flowers come from, and I think
there's just as a subtion we go buy flowers. I
don't know whether we thought they were all in the
and there wasn't right, so much of the flowers.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Where's the farm south?

Speaker 10 (58:04):
Well, the oregan We bought the farm in Washington, so
we have a small farm in Washington. We also put
in about forty thousand plants in Oregon last year as well.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
And will you be able to cultivate those flowers yearly
like throughout the year.

Speaker 10 (58:17):
It takes three years for your first harvest. So again
that's why investors would never let you put the money
into it.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Now and the flowers that you produce at those farms
on that land only go to you or do you
sell them to others?

Speaker 10 (58:28):
Yeah, we'll keep it, you know right now, the amount
that we're growing, we can we can use that every year.
If we decide to keep going, then we can wholesale it.
It's another revenue chain for us.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
What percentage of the flowers that are grown there? Like,
does that satisfy of the flowers that you use in it?

Speaker 11 (58:42):
A couple percent?

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Okay, so still it's still yeah really, but you would
never get you would never be able to get to
the point because of the global supply chain where you
could actually grow all the flowers you would want.

Speaker 10 (58:53):
Never and we don't want to. It's too much of
a risk, you know. I learned through COVID that I
definitely need to diversify more than I have. I mean,
having our facility that made ninety two percent of our
bouquets closed down in one day in twenty Twentymber. You yeah,
taught me that that wasn't very smart. Definitely making sure
we're diverse by now talk.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
To us about tariffs in the environment, Like, I just think,
what again?

Speaker 9 (59:14):
Why?

Speaker 1 (59:14):
We love many reasons we love talking to you, but
you really give us an idea of what it's like
to run a small business, although you've made it a
bigger business over the years. But stuff coming out of
Washington tariffs, how has that changed? Has it gotten any
easier yet? No?

Speaker 10 (59:30):
We change, you know, and it actually hurts the consumers more.
I mean, you know, because you raise prices, we raise prices,
or we have to buy off the shelf instead of
making custom things that are nicer for them.

Speaker 11 (59:40):
We have to do things like that.

Speaker 10 (59:41):
We have to make concessions because we don't want to
price ourselves out of the market. Yeah, you know, we
have to use different flowers even though they're not the
ones that consumers want. You know, there are things like that.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Way, hey, when floorers do that.

Speaker 11 (59:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like it's not what we want to do.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
Right.

Speaker 10 (59:55):
Also, I think we're the poster child for having tried
to do this, like May in America grown in America.
Like when we started, I only bought American grown flowers, right,
and we ran out of flowers in twenty seventeen, just
ran out. Now there's fewer farms than there were in
twenty seventeen because labor's so high now with immigration issues,
I mean there is. I mean I just came a

(01:00:16):
couple of weeks ago. I was just down in our
fields and we were just getting it ready for winter.
I couldn't walk for three days after doing one week
of work in the fields. Like, there are not people
here that are wanting.

Speaker 11 (01:00:29):
To be farm workers. Let me just say, so, what
would you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Say to folks who are like, no, pushing back an
immigration it makes sense, like we have to be doing this.
What would you say to folks who are listening or
watching right now?

Speaker 10 (01:00:41):
I think that ship has sailed generations ago. There is
no way, Like you know, we tried to buy American
grown it wasn't possible. We're not going to bring farming
back to this country unless we do something about immigration.
There are too many ripple effects going on with why
it won't work. Also, having production facilities of making bouquet
in the United States, we do. We make about fifty

(01:01:02):
percent in the United States and fifty percent outside of
the United States. Can I ask you we're outside South
America South and most of them are in the United States,
but the flowers are coming from South America. You have
a few in South Amarket that are making bookuts as well.
And you know, it's it doesn't work like you know
I think. You know, Ford Motor Company is a good
example of this when they're talking about open jobs or

(01:01:23):
you know, I talked to a guy that has an
engine rebuilding plant in the Midwest that had forty percent
open positions.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
We just don't have those people.

Speaker 10 (01:01:30):
Yeah, you know, we're telling people go to college so
you don't have to work a factory job. Nobody wants
to work a factory job.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
You also have an aging.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Population, right, So we talked about terrorists, we talked about farming.
We talked quite a bit about your story to the
consumer and the American consumer. How's the consumer in your view?

Speaker 10 (01:01:48):
The consumer is definitely shifted. I think just like what
you were talking about, you know, people right now, it's
a little concerning with the economy where you know, people
are still spending a lot of money, but people that
can't spend a lot of money can't buy. Yeah, so
you know, it's not the company I want to be
where I'm only appealing to one type of consumer. So
we're really trying to make sure that we're not doing that.

(01:02:11):
But with tariffs and rising prices and everything that, you know,
put kind of backsh you in a corner.

Speaker 12 (01:02:16):
What do you do?

Speaker 10 (01:02:17):
You know, I don't want every boquet to cost one
hundred and fifty dollars because the only people can afford
one hundred fifty dollar bocke to send to the restaurant
for their birthday you know. So we're looking at it and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
It's a consumer like I know, I definitely cut back.
It's like you can't do as much as you would
like to.

Speaker 10 (01:02:29):
Absolutely, we're in the gifting space, so you just cut
gifts out and we don't want that. So we're looking
at trying to find ways to get closer to the
end consumer so we can cut it and shipping instead
of the flower cost and things like that, that we
can be a little bit creative with wreaths.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
How big, Like do you do a lot of wreaths?

Speaker 10 (01:02:44):
We wish we could do more. We sell out of
them all the time. We're working with a lot of
new producers. They're high labor, really high labor. Yeah, so
we are constantly looking at We work with small farms
on our wreath making program, so very proud of that
and trying to get more for us.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
I love I would everything.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
It smells really good.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
It does not really get you booked into the studio.
If you had to do a word to describe the outlook,
how do you see it right now?

Speaker 11 (01:03:08):
Bleak but hopeful?

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Wow wow yeah yeah I think And this is with
somebody who's got business going job openings.

Speaker 11 (01:03:18):
Yeah wow.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
In terms of the context of last fifteen years apart
from COVID, whereas it like what year are we in
ten seconds?

Speaker 11 (01:03:24):
Fifteen bleak?

Speaker 10 (01:03:25):
I would just say because of personally how I feel
about what's going okay, but like we're doing okay, so
I'm hopeful that we're going to make some change.

Speaker 11 (01:03:33):
And you bought a farm, Yeah, got a farm.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I love that. I want to be able to say
we bought a farm. Christina Stanbel, founder and CEO farm
Girl Flowers always makes us feel good. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You
can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleventh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
All right, we've got something fun to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Well, Bloomberg Intelligence team is out with a really interesting
note that could add to the woes facing the spirits industry.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Oh so not so fun.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Well, use, yeah, maybe not. Use of weight loss drugs
stand a deep in alcohol's demand slump in the US
and Europe as moderation and wellness gains trends gained grounds.
So by twenty thirty five, consumption of beer and spirits
is expected to drop twenty point three percent and nineteen
point two percent, respectively among GLP one users. That's here

(01:04:30):
in the US. This according to an analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah, total losses could reach twenty eight point five billion,
translates to about a three to four percent sales drag
in the US and two to three percent in Europe.
There's that going on. The whole alcohol industry globally has
had to deal with tariffs coming out of the United States.
So that's going on, and so we'll see as the
President and the administration has been looking at the cost

(01:04:55):
of things, some rollbacks. I'm not quite sure how that
will ultimately maybe impact the liquor industry, but we'll be
keep ending in that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Well, it's the economic backdrop that informs our conversation with
Ali Anderson. She's CEO at Kraftco. It's got a portfolio
that includes more than two dozen spirits and liqueurs think Bourbon,
jen Rye, Ready to Drink, Cocktails and more. The company
also does co packing for other brands. She joins US
from a distillery in Holland, Michigan. Last time you were
on with us, we spent the whole time talking about

(01:05:23):
tariffs and the effect of tariffs on your business. And
that's just one element that's a headwind. Other headwinds include
changing consumer tastes and how people think about GLP ones
and increasingly people taking GLP ones and that leading people
to drink less. What is the environment for you out
there right now?

Speaker 12 (01:05:39):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you for having
me back.

Speaker 11 (01:05:41):
Good to see you guys.

Speaker 12 (01:05:43):
All of the headlines, they seem pretty bleak, right, but
I think that's what business is today, especially in the
spirits industry. So what's the name of the game. You
have to pivot. You know, we certainly want to promote
as much health as we can across all industries, but
what we're looking at here is lifestyle shifts, and so
the industry has to has to shift with it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
You know.

Speaker 12 (01:06:05):
Anecdotally, I was out to dinner with a friend a
couple of weeks ago who was who was on a
you know, I said, healing great, and he said, I'm cheating.

Speaker 11 (01:06:12):
It's it's a shot.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
But we enjoyed two.

Speaker 12 (01:06:14):
Cocktails and I'll love reop so I think you see
people making healthy choices when and where they can and
what they're actually choosing. What my friend shows that night
was quality over quantity, and so those are the pivots.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
And the shifts that we have to make industry as well.
I'm super like that with chocolate, Like I just need
a little piece of super good chocolate. I don't need
a lot, and then I'm happy. And so yeah, same
thing with alcohol. No, no, but let's go. Let's go there,
because I do think price point is something increasingly. Yes,
health diet that's certainly an aspect, but price point is

(01:06:50):
certainly increasingly something that we know all consumers are looking at.
We saw that play out in the recent elections in
some of the states. Like the economy does matter, the
money that is in or not in your pocketbook, it matters,
It absolutely does.

Speaker 12 (01:07:04):
And you know, I've got premium brands, I have brands
that cross the spectrum. And so what we're seeing is, yeah,
our consumers down shifting just a little bit, sure, but
we're also seeing tremendous growth with products that are, you know,
over two hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
So I think you are seeing.

Speaker 12 (01:07:21):
A disparity across all of the price tiers. But at
the same time, like I said, you're seeing people redefine
what premium really means. I think it's coming maybe less
about price point and more about what the purpose driven
value is, what the occasion in their life they're using.
They're using alcohol to celebrate with. So I think, you know,

(01:07:43):
at the end of the day, people want transparency. They
want transparency in price, they want transparency and how we source,
how we produce, how we give back, all.

Speaker 5 (01:07:50):
Of those things.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
In terms of the lineup that you have right now,
you said people are choosing quality over quantity. Is there
a certain you have a large range of what you do.
I mean, dozens of different spirits and alcohols, liqueurs, ready
to drink cocktails. Where's the strength.

Speaker 12 (01:08:10):
It's inconvenience, variety, innovation? I think people don't. What we're
seeing is people don't mind spending a little bit more
for something that they haven't seen before, right, And that
could be with an RTD. So maybe it's maybe it's
a little more expensive RTD, but it's a flavor combination
they haven't quite had before. Or maybe it's a really

(01:08:31):
luxury whiskey with a finish or a blending technique in
our case that they haven't seen before. So again, I
think people we vote with our dollars, right, and they'll
consume what they think is new, interesting and what they
can get information about what they connect with.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
So RTD obviously ready to drink. I've had certainly some
of those. Hey, you sent over to our team so
that we could share with the audience some of the
stuff that you guys I actually have. Next to be
copper Craft distillery made in the US, say Holland, Michigan.
It's straight bourbon whiskey. Tell me about this one. I'm
actually gonna be It's been quite a day, it's been
quite a week, it's been quite a year. I'm gonna

(01:09:09):
I join you. Yes, I join you. We're so sick.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
Yes, she's at You're you're here in the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
I'm here, I'm here in our distillery. I don't want
to wait wait maybe.

Speaker 9 (01:09:22):
Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Okay. I didn't want to see a la I didn't
want to spill it. Okay, so tell me, but tell
me about this because it isn't certainly a brand that
I think I'm familiar with. But you're right, people are looking.
I know when I go to buy a winder. I
like to try different things.

Speaker 12 (01:09:36):
Right, right, So you know we're based out of Holland, Michigan,
and you think I get this question all the time.
Isn't whiskey just in Kentucky? And the great thing about
an American spirit is that it can be in all
fifty states. And so for us, we're in Holland, Michigan,
on the west side of Michigan here on the Lake shore,
and we create We've had this brand for for many,
many years. And I think what you've got is it's

(01:09:58):
a it's a straight bourbon.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
W I could smell the whiskey sour that could also
be made out of this bay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
This is finished in this is finished in rum casks.
What does that mean?

Speaker 12 (01:10:07):
Well, it means we took an already amazing whiskey. I
think the one you've got is eight years old and
we put it in, Oh, I don't have any casts
in this room. We put it in a rum cask
that it used to hold rum, and we just let.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
It rest for about a year so it flavor. Then
something that would be finished in a different type of cask.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
But I see what you say, like you don't mean what.
It reminds me of my dad who used to make
whiskey sours for all of us as kids, and most
of the times it was a lot more oranges and
cherries in it than whiskey. But you could also just
the variety. I feel like the craft industry even in
the car, like you just alone, it's just something really nice,

(01:10:49):
right Like what did Kraft used to be?

Speaker 12 (01:10:50):
If we look back at beer, we think craft was
small batch, craft, whiskey, small batch, and Kraft. Much like
the way we'd redefined premium, craft has evolved too. So
like you just said, up, you know, I've not heard
of this before.

Speaker 5 (01:11:02):
What is this?

Speaker 12 (01:11:02):
And so craft is now evolving to be what is
that experience? I can get? Who are the people that
make it? How transparent are they about what they're doing?
Can I go visit them?

Speaker 11 (01:11:11):
Who are you know?

Speaker 12 (01:11:13):
That's what craft is now. It's the process, the technique,
the people, the story that you're telling about the whiskey
right now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
The distribution of this is a question that I have
because at least here in New York City, I don't
know how it works in other parts of the world,
but in other parts of the country, but you walk
into a liquor store and I've talked to some of
these folks in there, and again it's changes depending on
where you live. But it's a challenge to get smaller

(01:11:42):
brands on the shelves, especially with the big brands, the
large brands that own a good portion. They come in
and say, okay, well, if you want to carry this,
you have to carry this, and there's not much power
that these small companies have. How do you make sure
you get shelf space? And shelf space that's like premium.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
What a great question.

Speaker 12 (01:12:00):
Relationships, Like any business, any industry, it really does come
down to relationships. And for a small you know craft right,
We've got five brands, we cover forty two states and
we're still crafts. What does that mean? We have to
show up in market. You've got to show up at
that retailer, You've got to show up with the distributors.
Those distributors are still my customers. So it's built on

(01:12:21):
relationships and making sure they know just like we connect
with our consumers online and tell those stories, make sure
they know who we are and that we are a
small business that every single sale matters to us and
much like them, you know, we're just trying to connect
with consumers. So I think it's finding that common ground
through relationships.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
Yeah, it always comes down to that. I feel like
relationships for so many different industries. Hey, before you go,
we've talked about copper craft and I actually sampled some,
but you also shared with our team, just to kind
of look at kind of the variety and different places
you go. Elderflower. I'm a little obsessed with Elderflower right now.
And you've got Thatcher's Organic, our tea Artisal Artisenal, Yeah,

(01:13:07):
Artesian Artesian, Yeah, yeah, that's right. Sorry, Sorry, I couldn't
read it. I'm looking off my because we took a picture.
You've got fox and is it Odenny Odin Odin?

Speaker 12 (01:13:19):
Ok?

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Sorry, I'm ashually get a small picture, but tell us
a little bit about some of the other ones. And
then Thatcher's vodka. It's not as I've been drinking. I
just couldn't read the picture because I took a picture,
so I can read on air, I'll join you.

Speaker 12 (01:13:34):
No, it's a Thatcher's Organic, right, it's you know we
think about spirits.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Does it really matter?

Speaker 12 (01:13:39):
Yeah, sure it does. Something like Thattress is very culinary forward.
So you mentioned Elderflower. I bet we're drinking the heck
out of Hugo Sprits is right now with that elder
flower totally amazing, right, yes, yeah, and again that's a
that's a way to enjoy maybe a little bit of
lower proof but still still feel great and be festive
in all of those things. So you know, then we've

(01:13:59):
got like sox and Odin is luxury whiskey, and that's
we've got a beautiful double oaked that was just up
for We had two of the top five finalists for
the best special barrel finished Whiskeys in the world a
couple sundays ago in San Francisco. So you know, we're
super We're craft We're competing against all these big guys,

(01:14:20):
but because of what we're able to do with our size,
with our expertise, you know, we can deliver some really
luxury things to the market as well, and we do.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
That was Ali Anderson, CEO of Craft Co.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
All right, so all of you who are maybe still
leading some leftovers from Thanksgiving, it's kind of my favorite
thing to have, like pecan pie, pecan pie for breakfast.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
It's okay, call it what you will, but just just
eat it, you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
But what you might have noticed over the holiday over
Thanksgiving is that alcohol consumption. People are drinking less. Consumption
here in the US when it comes to alcohol, has
fallen to its lowest level in decades, driven by health
fears GLP one, weight loss, drugs that can actually dull
alcohol cravings, and of course rising cannabis use. About fifty
one percent of respondents in a September Bloomberg Intelligence survey,

(01:15:04):
so they now substitute cannabis for alcohol at least weekly,
So up about five percentage points from last year. And
that includes in the Thanksgiving feasts.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Yeah, this is pretty wild. So the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Yeah,
some have started dubbing that Wednesday Green Wednesday. This is
according to the BDSA, that's the cannabis Market tracker. Yeah,
it's the second biggest day of the year for legal
cannabis sales in the US.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
Maybe everybody just wants to kind of mellow out, you know,
before they see all their family. Well, or why aren't
you married, Why don't you have kids, Why don't you
like why don't you finish that degree? Like anyway, all
I'm gonna say is whether you had a happy Thanksgiving
or happy Thanksgiving? You know, I just hope you had
a good and safe holiday.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
I like that Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Check out this story. It's on the Bloomberg.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
There's a reason it was one of the most read.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
Charles Grevin of Bloomberg News wrote it, Americans ditching wine
to get HI on gummies this Thanksgiving, So maybe that
was your Thanksgiving as well. All right, that wraps up
this Thanksgiving weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
I'm tim Stennebeck.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Haven't you ever done the cousin Walk?

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
No, I don't even know what that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Is the story? You know, I guess you are our producer.
It's okay, yeah, and I'm Carol Masser. Have a good
and save holiday weekend. Enjoy the leftovers.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday
afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App.
You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube

(01:16:48):
and always on the Bloomberg terminal

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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - November 28th, 2025

Episode Transcript

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Tim Stenovec

Carol Massar

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