Hydrogen Planes, Viking Gains, and Drive-Thrus are Smarter than Ever.
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No 152 | February 14, 2025
Turning Spite Into Sales: Nothing says “moving on” like watching a falcon rip into a frozen rat named after your ex. 🐀💔 Zoos and shelters are turning heartbreak into cold, hard cash—because why waste a good breakup when you can monetize it? The lesson for business owners? Opportunities to attract new customers don’t always look traditional. Whether it’s a cheeky marketing campaign, a unique product twist, or tapping into an unexpected trend, thinking outside the (chocolate) box can set you apart. Don’t let creative opportunities fly by—capitalize on them.
ON TAP THIS WEEK
😭 Nine Ways Doing Your Own Taxes Will Ruin Your Life (and maybe your wallet)
🍟 Fast Food Chains Are Obsessed With Your Car. Here’s why.
🤑 Long-Term Investing Pays—Just Ask the Nasdaq-100
🐈⬛ Remember When YouTube Was Just Cat Videos? Now it’s eating Netflix’s lunch
💳 How Zelle Became the Go-To Payment System for Small Businesses
😘 Swipe Left on Bad Debt and Hook Up With a Smarter Financial Plan Instead
🌐 And from Around the Web: Federal buyouts, hydrogen-powered flights, and Denmark’s California dream.
THE CLASSROOM
Nine Reasons You Should NOT Do Your Own Business Taxes (Unless You Love Pain)
by Luigi Rosabianca
Think doing your own taxes is a great way to save money? That’s adorable. Until you realize you “accidentally” deducted your dog, missed thousands in write-offs, or—worst case—invited the IRS to an audit party (spoiler: there’s no cake).
From TurboTax-induced overconfidence to math-induced panic attacks, we’ve rounded up 9 ways DIY taxes can go horribly—and expensively—wrong.
And here’s the real kicker: You might be missing out on a $10,000 tax-saving opportunity—and not even know it. 🤯
Curious? Read the full list here and find out what really happens when business owners try to go it alone. (Hint: It’s not pretty.) 👇
HEARD ON THE STREET
🍔 Drive Thru’s Driving Me Crazy
About 43% of US fast-food orders are placed at drive-thrus, totaling ~$140B annually. Now, fast-food chains are chasing those billions by optimizing the humble drive-thru.
McDonald’s beverage-focused spinoff CosMc’s is built around multilane drive-thru service, with some locations offering no indoor dining at all. It is well on its way toward its ambitious goal of 50K restaurants by 2027! Shake Shack, which started as a Madison Square Park hot dog cart and has since expanded to 300+ stores, has opened dozens of new drive-thrus with dedicated kitchens. One in four Chipotle Mexican Grill locations has drive-thrus, aka Chipotlanes, where customers can pick up their prepaid app orders at specific times, maximizing efficiency. Locations with Chipotlanes see 10%-15% higher sales than those without.
A pleasant drive-thru experience is especially important when considering it’s the main event for many: 27% of orders are consumed while still in the vehicle. Chick-fil-A recognizes this fact because 60% of its sales occurred at drive-thru windows in ‘24. Success hasn’t come without some trial and error: In 2012, Chick-fil-A shifted entirely to face-to-face ordering at its drive-thru, with iPad-touting workers taking orders from car windows. In 2020, the chain launched a Film Studies unit that uses drones to capture aerial footage of its drive-thrus to study traffic flow and identify pain points. It’s also innovating in its urban restaurants, experimenting with locations with little to no seating and dedicated areas for bike delivery workers. This approach appears to be working. In 2023, Chick-fil-A made $21.6B in US sales, the highest per-restaurant total of all American fast-food chains — despite being closed on Sundays. Thank God, America’s obsession with the car continues.
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📈 Avoiding a Mid-Life Crisis
Nasdaq prevents a mid-life crisis at 40. Over the past four decades, the technology and innovation-focused index has grown to become the world's preeminent large-cap growth index for trading and investment products. The Nasdaq-100 was born on Jan. 31, 1985. It is designed to represent the top 100 (non-financial) stocks listed on Nasdaq. At the time, the market cap totaled just $58 billion. Today, with most of the largest stocks in the world in the Nasdaq-100 index, including AAPL, AMZN, NVDA, and GOOG, it adds to a staggering $27 Trillion.
Since its inception, the Nasdaq-100 is up approximately 20,000% as of Dec. 31, 2024. That's an impressive 14.25% per annum on a compound return basis compared to 11.57% in the S&P 500 comparably over the same time. It's even more impressive considering the index was the poster child for the tech bubble — where the index fell 83% as the bubble burst. That seems to also say a lot about the benefits of long-term investing. Bottle-popping birthday party!
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📺 Video Killed the TV Star
People watch a collective 1B+ hours of YouTube content on their TVs daily. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed that TVs, not smartphones, are now the primary device US viewers use to watch the platform’s content, including podcasts, livestreams, YouTube Shorts, sports, and TV programming accessible to its 8m+ YouTube TV subscribers. YouTube also dominates as the most-watched streaming platform, surpassing even Netflix. 😲
People began watching YouTube on TV more during the pandemic, and the trend has continued. YouTube’s broad range of content appeals to multiple demographics. People turn to YouTube for big cultural moments, including elections, sports games, and music festivals. It’s improved its TV app, adding features that make content easier to browse and components that leverage its role as both a video and social media platform. While big streamers spend money on original content, YouTube’s creators spend their own money to produce content. Videos that get few views don’t lose the company money, but it takes a 45% cut of those that generate ad revenue.
In addition, content has vastly improved from YouTube’s early days, with modern creators producing talk shows, shorts, episodic content, and even feature-length films. Some even prefer YouTube to traditional entertainment pipelines, as it’s faster and gives them more control. YouTube is adding and/or expanding several creator tools, including auto-dubbing in multiple languages, podcast discovery and monetization aids, and AI that can help with video ideas, titles, and thumbnails. It’s also adding a ‘second screen experience’ where users can interact with the videos they’re watching on TV with their phone (e.g., leaving comments or making purchases) and ad formats for TVs, like pause ads and QR codes.
Rival Netflix is reportedly pursuing deals with podcasters, per Business Insider, including tapping them for talk shows. That may appeal to the 89% of weekly Gen Z podcast listeners who watch or listen to podcasts with video content, but Netflix has competition from YouTube - it’s also the most-used service for podcasts in the US.
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💰 What the Zelle!
Zelle payments topped $1T in 2024, which happens to be the most money ever moved by a P2P payments service in a single year. Zelle attributes its growth to the gradual transition from cash and checks to small businesses adopting the payment system. The payments network said its user base jumped 12% to 151 million accounts in 2024, and that the total dollars sent on the platform jumped 27% from the year earlier.
Initially established in 2017, Zelle responded to the rise of platforms such as Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp. Increased confidence in the platform has also bolstered growth. The company has introduced measures to reduce fraud and asserts that 99.95% of transactions are free of fraud. As usual, the small business marauders are leading the way. Go forth and conquer!
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
Is Your Business in a Toxic Relationship… with Debt?
with Matthew R. Meehan
Red flags everywhere? High interest, messy payments, and cash flow stress keeping you up at night? Yeah… that’s a toxic relationship if we’ve ever seen one.
It’s time for a breakup. 💥If you want better terms, more flexibility, and a financial plan that actually works for you…we’ve got you covered.
Click below to download our free checklist to help you clean up your finances, ditch the bad debt, and set your business up for real, sustainable growth.
Stop settling for bad terms. Get the checklist and start fresh.
AROUND THE WEB
Take the Money and Run: 🏃♀️ The federal buyout program closed with 75,000 takers—far fewer than expected. While some jumped at the chance for an early exit, millions stayed put, bracing for what’s next. With budget cuts and layoffs still on the table, things are just getting started.
Future or Fantasy? A plane flying nonstop for nine days on super-chilled liquid hydrogen—what could possibly go wrong? 🤔 Aviation pioneer Bertrand Piccard is back with another wild experiment, but keeping fuel at -423°F while cruising around the globe sounds more like a Bond villain plot than commercial aviation’s future. Will it revolutionize flight or just be a really expensive science fair project?
Trump Takes Greenland; Danes Take Cali: Denmark just made an unofficial counteroffer to Trump’s Greenland obsession—by petitioning to buy California. With 200,000+ signatures, dreams of Viking Disneyland, and the promise of way better pastries, could Løs Ångeles be the next big thing?