RESTAURANT

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Restaurants across the country are folding, but nowhere is the crisis more pronounced than the Brew’s own stomping ground. 

In July, 83% of NYC bars, restaurants, and nightlife establishments weren’t able to pay full rent, according to an NYC Hospitality Alliance survey of 471 businesses. 37% couldn’t pay at all.

• Some landlords have tried working with battered tenants: Almost 29% waived some rent. But struggling with bills of their own, most did not. 

NYC’s commercial tenant eviction moratorium expires tomorrow. The Hospitality Alliance has asked for an extension, as well as extra support for landlords. 

The city has tried helping

NYC allowed margs-to-go and, with indoor dining banned indefinitely, set up the Open Restaurants program to convert sidewalks, parking spaces, and even streets into outdoor dining spaces. Nearly 10,000 restaurants signed up, helping an estimated 80,000 laid-off employees get back to work.

• But social distancing and reduced capacity means they still aren’t bringing in enough foot traffic to cover expenses. 

Open Restaurants runs through October 31, and NYC is considering options to keep it running through winter for al freezing dining. Yesterday, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised it’ll return again next year by June 1. 

Big picture

It’s not just restaurants. Over 2,800 NYC businesses have closed since March 1, the most of any major U.S. city, according to Yelp. Of those, minority- and female-owned businesses were likely the most vulnerable. 

And the forecast is cloudier than Isaias. Small businesses account for more than 3 million jobs in the city, and so far, they’ve already lost 520,000. When the pandemic eases, a third of NYC’s 240,000 small businesses may be gone, per the Partnership for New York City.

+ While we’re here: 100+ execs from some of the U.S.’ biggest companies sent a letter to Congress requesting more small business aid.

GEOPOLITICS

The TikTok Drama: How It’s Playing in China

Not well. 

By now, you’re aware that the U.S. government has essentially forced Chinese tech company ByteDance to sell its TikTok app to an American firm to keep operating in the U.S. That American firm appears to be Microsoft. 

Yesterday, both Chinese citizens and the government went on the attack. The Communist Party tabloid Global Times called a forced sale the “hunting and looting” of TikTok. And hundreds of social media users took aim at ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming, who they accused of capitulating to the U.S.—China’s top economic and political rival. 

• In a letter to staff yesterday, Zhang conceded, “We understand their decision in the current macro environment.”
• “Their” refers to CFIUS, the U.S. agency that investigates mergers for national security concerns.

Zoom out: On the surface, ByteDance resembles another Chinese tech company, Huawei, which has faced U.S. opposition as it’s tried to expand globally. But Huawei is more strategically important to the Chinese government than ByteDance, the FT reports, so Beijing isn’t likely to retaliate against the U.S. over TikTok.  

+ While we’re here: Yesterday, President Trump said the U.S. government should get a “substantial portion” of TikTok’s sale for “making it possible for this deal to happen.” 

TECH

Google Starts Week With a Double Shot

Google brushed off last week’s antitrust drama with two big announcements yesterday. 

Announcement #1: A 6.6% stake worth $450 million in home security company ADT, which will sell, install, and service Google’s Nest line of home security devices. The goal is for Nest to become the “cornerstone” of ADT’s smart home business.

• By linking up with one of the leading home security providers, Google’s going toe-to-toe with Amazon’s Echo smart devices and Ring home security system.

Announcement #2: A trio of new Pixel smartphones, including the $349 Pixel 4A that’ll start shipping this month. With competition tight in the <$500 smartphone market, Google packed the 4A with the Pixel’s famous camera, a good battery, lots of storage, and priced it lower than Apple’s budget iPhone SE.

• The new phone won’t get much love from carriers, which are focused on 5G compatibility, but Google also announced the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G, coming this fall with next-gen network support.

Looking ahead...Samsung answers Google’s call at its Galaxy Unpacked event tomorrow.

SPONSORED BY ELECTRIC

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That means you can stop worrying about keeping your company secure AND keeping your drinks cool on a piping hot summer day.

But just who is Electric and why is taking some time to speak with them worth it (besides the Yeti)? They’re the IT experts who are reinventing how businesses manage their IT security, support, and devices. 

They’ll streamline all those difficult, time-consuming IT processes that you need, but don’t want to deal with. 

And we cannot overstate this; they’re cool. And they give you cool stuff. Just for having a chill meeting.

Get the coolest IT support around with Electric.

SPORTS

The XFL Is Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

But for once, that’s a great place to be. Yesterday, a group consisting of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, his business partner and ex-wife Dany Garcia, and private equity firm RedBird Capital agreed to purchase the XFL for $15 million, Sportico reports. An auction for the league was set to begin just hours after the announcement.

The backstory: The XFL, a fan-favorite experimental football league, is the brainchild of WWE CEO Vince McMahon. After an inaugural season in 2001 that ended in bankruptcy, the league was resurrected in 2018 before again succumbing to bankruptcy in April after the coronavirus pandemic cut its return season short.

The Rock is literally the perfect buyer

The Miami Hurricanes football player turned wrestling phenomenon turned cod's worst nigthmare turned Kevin Hart sidekick is an expert promoter, and says his decision to buy the league was "rooted deeply in two things—my passion for the game and my desire to always take care of the fans.”

Looking ahead...don’t expect any football right away. The XFL will look to secure media partners before even thinking about launching a new season, Axios says.

SOCIAL MEDIA

SnapTok? TikChat?

Remember when Snapchat released Stories and then seemingly every other social network hopped on the bandwagon? Now Snap is the bandwagon-hopper. Yesterday, it announced it's adding “a robust” music catalog to the app, giving users the ability to incorporate music in their Snaps. 

It’s a subtle-but-not-so-subtle bid to attract a potentially fractured TikTok audience that’s unclear about the future of the app in the U.S.

How it’s different: Unlike TikTok, there won’t be a public feed where you can browse through videos. And when a user clicks on a song featured in a Snap, they’ll be redirected to listen to the full song and get info about the artist and album, rather than seeing other videos using the same song.

Bottom line: With the looming entry of Instagram Reels, the short-form video app market is getting crowded. But Snap says its new feature is meant to capitalize on Snapchat's existing strengths—facilitating connections with friends (and now artists) on a one-to-one basis. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Lordstown Motors, an electric truck maker, will go public through a merger with a “blank check” company. It’s the trend du jour. 
• Warren Buffett’s stake in Apple has tripled in value to more than $100 billion. 
• “Got milk?” ads are back...but they’re very different than before.
• A superintendent calls reopening schools a “fantasy” in a piece for the WaPo.
• Isaias made landfall in the Carolinas as a hurricane last night.

BREW'S BETS

Protect your walls; don’t stare at them. We’ve been staring at walls lately. Then we heard about SimpliSafe, home security that’s customizable with smart locks, video doorbells, and sensors monitored 24/7. Just 30 minutes later, we were back to staring—filled with the safety and comfort of SimpliSafe.*

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YouTube rec: Our friends at OZY launched a new talk show featuring real, deep conversations with guests about the biggest issues facing our country. Up this week: heavy hitters like Rep. Karen Bass, Terry Crews, Bethenny Frankel, and Andrew Yang. You can watch here.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Emerging Tech Brew writer Ryan Duffy listens to his podcasts at 2x speed and says he would watch his TV shows at 1.5x. Well, he now can enjoy all the squirrel-pitched high-speed binging he wants with this Chrome extension.

• Audience participation alert: We know you're tech savvy...why not show it off to 2 million people? Send in your best tech tips here, and we'll select a few responses to feature in next week's Tech Tip Tuesday. 

^{*This is sponsored advertising content. See Masterworks' disclaimer here.} 

FROM THE CREW

Morning Brew’s Casting for Our Next Podcast

Like most of you, we've have been working from home since March. This has been great for social distancing, but not so good for social debating.

We miss going at it IRL; there’s nothing better than that feeling when you know you’ve made the perfect point in a debate. But beyond that, we miss laughing in the office together over Finance Twitter, media memes, and all the other oddities of the biz world.

So we’re gonna do something about it the only way we know how: with a new podcast. It’ll be an audio + video business talk show featuring two hosts that will become a go-to source for engaging, exciting opinions on all things business. They’ll cover everything from earnings reports to business trends to whatever a certain Mars-obsessed CEO did that week.

And with the perfect two hosts at the helm, we’re going to incorporate the best of the best: the banter from Pivot, the smart comedy from The Daily Show, the emotion from Mad Money, and the analysis from Stratechery.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a pod pro? Apply to be a host.

BRAND OBITUARY

An iconic American brand was retired yesterday. Can you name it? A few clues...

• I was retired as part of a merger with a peer
• My name is an acronym for a service once provided to railroads
• In 2011, I launched an ad campaign called "All. Together. Now." 

BRAND OBITUARY ANSWER

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