Butter from Air, Eggs from Necks, and Gold from Costco. Sure.
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No 164 | May 16, 2025
On This Day in 1770: Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette in what would become one of history’s most iconic business partnerships…IF your business model is “spend recklessly, ignore your people, and lose your head over bad PR.”
Moral of the story? Choose your partners wisely, manage your finances better than 18th-century French royalty, and don’t wait for a revolution to rethink your strategy.
ON TAP THIS WEEK
💳 Business Credit Card vs. Line of Credit: What’s Actually Smarter?
🤖 If a robot packs your pills, does it still count as personalized care?
🧈 Butter Made from Air? (Honestly, we’ve spread worse.)
🏭 From Zero to Robo-Hero: Waymo is doubling down in the desert.
🥜 Is it still Nutella if it’s part peanut?
📢 Breaking News: GM discovers Manganese isn’t just a Scrabble word.
💸 The Economy Giveth… and Tariffs Taketh Real Quick
🌐 And from Around the Web: Karen’s still employed, Reddit buys gold, and snails get freaky.
THE CLASSROOM
Business Credit Cards vs. Lines of Credit
by Luigi Rosabianca
Think your business credit card is the key to growth? Think again.
In this article, we’re breaking down the real difference between business credit cards and lines of credit (and why relying on plastic might be costing you more than you think). From sky-high interest rates to tight limits, credit cards are great for travel points… not so great for scaling your business. Lines of credit, on the other hand? Flexible, affordable, and built for big moves like hiring, inventory, and expansion.
👉 Click here to read the full article and learn which option actually helps you grow…without wrecking your finances.
📞 Interested in a Line of Credit (or other funding options for your biz)? Click here to book a call with the Credit Banc team today.
HEARD ON THE STREET
💊 More Drugs, Less Drag
Walgreens’ micro-fulfillment centers are equipped with robots, conveyor belts, scanners, and other tools that can fill, sort, and package thousands of prescriptions to be delivered to retail pharmacies. Walgreens’ 11 centers filled an average of 40% prescription volume at the pharmacies they supported, freeing up pharmacists for tasks like vaccinations and testing, and racking up $500M in savings since debuting in 2021. Walgreens plans to use its centers across 5K+ stores by the end of 2025 to fulfill an estimated 16 million monthly prescriptions.
Relying on those centers frees up time for pharmacy staff, reducing their routine tasks, eliminating inventory waste, and allowing them to interact directly with patients and perform more clinical services such as vaccinations and testing. Now, if they can just figure out how to get these robots to quickly open those cases that contain our razor refills!
😲 I Can’t Believe It’s Not …
…hot air! Savor, the start-up turning greenhouse gases into butter, has already raised $33M in investments - including cash from Bill Gates - to create more allegedly sustainable fats. The start-up combines carbon dioxide with hydrogen under high heat and pressure to make fatty acids. The fatty acids form triglycerides, which can be used to create products like butter, lard, and tallow. The company claims its 25K-square-foot facility in Illinois has the capacity to produce metric tons of fat.
The FDA has already greenlighted Savor to sell its alternative fats in the US, with a ‘Generally Recognized as Safe’ (that’s assuring!) designation. Turning air into butter is a cool trick, but Savor is after more than shock value. Cutting cows and crops out of the supply chain would reduce the amount of land and water needed for agriculture, as well as the volume of greenhouse gas emissions. The start-up’s founders estimate that creating dietary fats in a lab could emit just half as much CO2 as traditional production, and could one day reach near-zero emissions by using captured CO2 and renewable energy in the process.
Savor isn’t the only start-up churning food products from natural gases. Novozymes and Air Protein both use fermentation to turn CO2 into protein. Air Company combines carbon captured from the air and industrial sites with hydrogen to make vodka. Solar Foods makes Solein, a nutrient-packed protein powder, from captured CO2 and hydrogen. While bringing the production of fats off the farm and into the lab could lighten environmental loads and be more sustainable, disrupting supply chains always comes with risks.
These companies will also have to convince consumers to reach for synthetic butter et al, and scale production to compete with normal food products. Savor is eyeing even bigger deals: Working with consumer packaged goods companies, including those within industries like skin care, could bake Savor’s synthetic fats into products on a massive scale. Didn’t someone recently state margarine as a bad thing?!
🚗 Way Mo’ Cars on the Road
Waymo unveiled an autonomous vehicle factory in the Phoenix metro area and disclosed that its fleet has increased from ~700 to ~1,500 vehicles since last June. Waymo is teaming up with contract manufacturer Magna to launch a new autonomous vehicle factory in Mesa, Arizona. The facility will integrate the 6th generation Waymo Driver, beginning with the Zeekr RT this year, and build ~2K fully autonomous Jaguar I-PACEs through 2026. With automation and other efficiencies, the company expects to produce tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year at full capacity.
For perspective, Tesla’s current production capacity is ~45K vehicles per week, excluding Cybercab vehicles, which should begin volume production next year. On a scale, without LiDAR and other unnecessary hardware, Tesla’s cost per mile could be 30-40% lower than Waymo’s, thanks to its vertically integrated manufacturing. Tesla’s data and cost advantages should enable it to scale more quickly and efficiently than competitors. We’ll be watching Waymo’s progress and Tesla’s robotaxi launch next month. Clearly, ‘25 is shaping up to be the year of the robotaxi.
🔄️ Out with the Old. In with the Nutella
Nutella hasn’t dropped a new variety in 61 years (why mess with perfection?)...until now. Ferrero just announced Nutella Peanut, which adds roasted peanuts to the iconic chocolate-hazelnut spread to court North American consumers, who apparently love peanuts. The product will be made at an Illinois facility where Ferrero makes other peanut offerings - including Butterfinger, which is getting a limited-time marshmallow and white chocolate flavor this year.
The new spread took five years to create and shows the company's focus on this industry. Or the developers ate all the work product! While competitors Hershey and Mondelēz International have seen sales slow as consumers pull back on spending, Ferrero has managed to withstand the sweet-tooth downturn.
🔋 Gee Whiz at GM
The automaker says it’s working on “groundbreaking” EV battery technology - a lithium manganese-rich (LMR) prismatic battery cell - to debut in its full-size EVs starting in 2028. The new batteries and packs utilize more prevalent, less-expensive minerals and are lighter and more cost-effective. Produced via a joint venture with partner LG Energy Solution, large amounts of cobalt and nickel were swapped for manganese. Theoretically, it will cut hundreds of pounds from GM’s large EVs and contain 50% fewer parts than previous battery packs.
LMR batteries have been around for decades, but they’ve historically offered a far shorter lifespan. GM asserts it has solved this problem with its LMR batteries. Ultium Cells, a joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution, plans to start commercial production of LMR prismatic cells in the U.S. by ‘28, with preproduction expected to begin at an LG Energy Solution facility by late ‘27. GM expects LMR prismatic battery cells to have 33% higher energy density, providing additional miles of range, compared with the best-performing LFP cells, but at a comparable cost. The real question is, what will we do with all these gas stations?!
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
Inflation Just Hit a 4-Year Low. (But don’t get too crazy.)
with Matthew R. Meehan
April’s inflation rate dropped to 2.3% …the lowest in four years. Great news, right? Not so fast. Economists say the calm is temporary. New tariffs are still working their way through the system and are expected to push prices back up starting in May or June. The Fed’s holding off on rate cuts until the dust settles, meaning interest rates stay high for now. And since most businesses pass tariff costs down the chain, small business owners could get squeezed on both ends - rising supplier costs and hesitant consumers.
Why it matters:
If you’ve been thinking about raising prices, renegotiating vendor terms, or locking in financing, now might be your window. Don’t wait for the next round of “surprise” inflation to blow up your margins.
👉 Read the full article here or click here to talk financing strategy with the Credit Banc team. We’ll help you prep before the next spike hits.
AROUND THE WEB
The Robots Are Not Ready, Karen: Some business owners fired employees thinking AI would take over…and now they're stuck doing the work themselves because, surprise, AI isn’t (quite) ready yet. Turns out, replacing Karen in accounting with a chatbot that invents fake Tim Cook quotes was not a genius move.
Gilded Age, Costco Edition: Costco’s gold rush got so out of hand, they had to limit shoppers to one $3,300 gold bar per trip. (Apparently, hoarding bullion is the new bulk buying of toilet paper.) Reddit bros, finance influencers, and suburban doomsday preppers alike flooded the site faster than you can say “economic collapse starter pack.” If you thought rotisserie chickens were their biggest draw… think again.
Science Catches Snail in the Act: A giant New Zealand snail just laid an egg... out of its neck. Scientists caught it on camera for the first time, which either means we’re living in the future or it's a really slow news week. Either way, if you’re feeling unproductive today, remember: This thing takes eight years to reach maturity and lays five eggs a year. Slackers, unite.
