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Well.
President Trump's staying in Washington this weekend after scrapping a trip to Bedminster, New Jersey. According to The New York Times, he has been reviewing military options for potentially resuming the bombing campaign against Iran.
That's right, but according to the Qataris, the President also just had a phone call with the Amir of that nation where they discuss de escalation of tensions in the region, as well as Maritimes safety in the Strait of Hormuz. Back with us, as Bloomberg's White House correspondent Kate Sullivan. Kate, as we're hearing all these Gulf allies and some European allies as well are trying to dissuade Trump from restarting
this conflict. When it comes to who's talking to him in the White House and who's helping him make these decisions, He's down one key player, and that's d and I. Telsei Gabbard, who resigned yesterday setting health concerns with her husband, talked to us a little bit about her role and then just the national security apparatus around the president and who was advising him as he goes into all these foreign policy issues.
Yeah, that's right. So it was surprising news yesterday. Tulsi Gabbard said that she had presented her letter of resignation to the president that her husband is battling cancer and she wanted to be by his side. I will say that Gabbard has been a really interesting figure in the administration, is particularly amid the war. She's been very vocal about
her anti interventionist stance. She's been you know, when she was on the campaign trail with Trump, he was talking a lot about no new wars and and no new foreign conflict. So she is on the record with with essentially uh saying that she is not for starting new wars abroad, and she has not been a key figure in the room. You know, we have reported this, others
have reported this in recent weeks. When it comes to Venezuela and Iran and some of the discussions about Cuba, she has been of course, she she had a top role in the administration, but the reporting says that she was not really a key figure in these discussions. Trump has a very small national security team around him. It's a it's a very small group of individuals that includes Mark or Rubio. Jade Vance is also part of that,
Pete Haig Seth. There are other top advisors. But but really when it comes to who he's listening to and talking about these things with the smaller group than you'd expect.
Yes, I will note that in our reporting an indication some people refer to D and I as do not invite. That was a nickname or position and earned over the course of this second term.
Kate, you mentioned Cuba, and I'd love to go there as well.
Yes, there's a lot of talk about what might happen next with with Ron, how long this ceasefire might last, will it be continued perhaps in perpetuity. At the same time, we have seen over the course of this last week a lot of pressure ratcheting up on Cuba as well.
Talk a bit about that and what.
The latest thinking is among members of this administration and observers about where all of this might be headed.
You know, it was interesting because we've heard Trump really escalating up until this week. We really heard him escalating his rhetoric on Cuba and saying a lot of things along the lines of, you know, after Ron, we're going to turn to Cuba. You know, I might be the first president to really do something there, really kind of
heavily hinting at potential military action in Cuba. I thought it was interesting when he was speaking to reporters on Wednesday, I believe he seemed to downplay the need for military action to further ratchet up pressure on Cuba. And this is coming, of course, after the indictment of ral Castro, the former president of Cuba, which in of itself was
a huge escalation. You know, the United States has charged him with murder and so he's but it was interesting after that, you know, which a lot of people saw as sort of perhaps a prelude to US military action in Cuba. The President at least publicly is now saying that there is not a need to UH to further ratchet up pressure pressure there. And he was asked about military action in Cuba, and he seemed to really downplay
the need for that. So it's it's unclear what the next steps are on Cuba, but of course we're we're closely watching any and all developments there.
Strategic ambiguity.
Christiana, Yeah, that was surprising to me, given the indictment and then the president's rearrange travel plans. We were bracing for another long night in a busy morning, but so far the center seems to be holding. Before we let you go, I do want to ask you just briefly about Ebola, which is the other big story we've been talking about this morning. I actually just asked our control room because I didn't remember the President talking much about this.
He was asked about it a couple of days ago if he was concerned about a bola and said, I'm concerned about everything, but certainly am I think you know it's been confined right now to Africa, but it's something that had a breakout, and then he turned to other individuals to speak more about it. Has there been a lot of messaging from the White House on this. We've heard from the State Department, We've heard a bit from Health Apparatus's CDC about how they're trying to prevent the
outbreak from coming here. But is this an issue that's even really on the President's radar at this point.
That's a great question. We've not heard a lot of messaging, Bonnie Bola specifically. The President has been asked about it a couple of times, and like you mentioned, he said, you know, sort of he'll make these statements like, well,
you know, of course, I'm concerned about everything. And I think it's also important to note that, you know, health officials and experts are saying that these really these cuts to us and the United States pulling out of the WHO but that has really negatively impacted the response to
the to ebola on the ground. But so far, we've not heard a lot from this White House about what the plan is and how concerned they are, and so it's I think it'll be something that we just continue to watch in the coming weeks, But we've not heard a lot from the President on this so far.
All Right, Kate.
Sulvin, thank you very much.
Appreciate you joining us here on this Saturday, and we're going to keep talking about foreign policy here as pres and Trump considers what's next with the war in Iran. Former US officials like General David Petraeus, who served as the director of the CIA, of course, was the commander of sencom our meeting with world leaders to discuss all of the global conflicts we've been talking about over the
course of the morning. He has been to Kiev himself ten times since Russia invaded Ukraine, and last week he was in the Middle East. On the heels of that trip, I sat down with the General and I asked him how he defines victory in Iran. Thank you very much for taking the time.
Appreciate it. Good to be with you.
D you define victory in Iran now a couple months into this conflict.
Well, I think actually getting an agreement that would restore freedom navigation of the Gulf in the Strait of Remus without Iran laying claim to it and being able to tax people going through it and ships. I think that's
probably the most important goal at this moment. But of course that doesn't address the other core issues that we have with Iran, such as it's nuclear stockpile of almost one thousand pounds of sixty percent rich uranium that's just one level below weapons grade, the right to enrich in the future, their support to proxies in the region that are pretty murderous, that Hamas Hasballah Shia militia and Iraq Huthi's and Yemen, and then the missile programs and the
rest of this, And I think it's a pretty limited amount of these other concerns that may ever get addressed, But clearly there has to be an agreement to get this straight reopened and to restore freedom of navigation without there might be some arrangement where perhaps there's some modest fee charged that might go in part to Iran Oman who knows, and navigation aids or something like this, but that I think is the imperative at this moment in time, and I'm not sure that Iran is going to be
willing to do that right now. They are insistent that they are given control of the golf the Straight and that they are able to charge tolls for it. That's just I think unacceptable, and it may be that we have to go back to war to show them that we're pretty serious about this.
You spent a lot of time in the region. You were in a rock recently. What have you learned traveling through those countries in recent weeks about how they see this conflict unfolding.
Well, it varies.
I mean someone is asking me, what do the Gulf States think, Well, the Golf State, No, it's not aggreate. You can't aggregate. You have to look at each one. Emiratis are particular outraged. Then they've been the biggest target of the drones and so forth by Iran, in part perhaps because they're supportive of the US and have the Abraham Accords with Israel. Others have not been on the receiving as much, but Cutters lost seventeen percent of their
LNG production capacity for three to five years. The Saudis are actually trying to broker a bit. I actually met with the Crown Prince when I was there last week. They're working through the Pakistanis, with whom they have a very close relation.
I think it was eight thousand Pakistani troops.
Just deployed to Saudi rab to help with Kenner drone in a variety of other security tasks. So it really does depend on the country and so forth. They all want though, to see straighter from Moose reopened and to ensure that there's not going to be a toll or a control by Iran exerted on that that's the be
all and end all for all of them. But in the wake of it, to see enormous investment in hardening, resilience, redundancy, alternatives to the use of the strait routes out for crude oil and natural gas other than a ship that goes through the straight or promoves.
And this is very, very profound.
This is a very big, very big implication, especially if you're a partner and investment firm like Akar.
So the investment becomes more inward. I imagine for a lot of these nations in the past they might have used their softigre wealth funds to invest in US companies tech.
I've always done a lot inward, but I think it's going to be there's going to be a period of time, a number of years where the focus really is on what they need to do to reduce their vulnerability in the future, both to attack. So there's going to be a lot of implications for the military organizational changes, what they buy, how they buy it, and all the rest of this, how they train and operate. So there's very very profound changes out there as a result of this, which we.
Haven't really seen.
I don't think it has been much more steady state in a variety of ways for a number of years.
Are these Skulf nations reevaluating their relationship with the US.
In light of this?
Have they felt unprotected or unbacked up?
I'm sure they have.
You know, these states tried to stay out of this, They tried to take a knee. We were denied access to the base at many of the bases we normally occupy. Now the truth is we're not as inclined to occupy these bases now that we have seen what the Iranians can throw at them. This is much more than when I was the commander of Central Command, for example, back from two thousand and eight to twenty ten. Back then, my forward headquarters was at a huge air base outside Doha.
All you did.
We had a beautiful headquarters paid for by the cutteries one hundred million dollars or whatever, but half of it's above ground. And I can assure you the Central Commanded Commander did not do what he what his predecessors have always done, which is being the same time with all of your forces. He stayed at the base at McDill
Air Force Base outside Tampa. That's where the war has been run from, not from the forward hedgewards, a combined near operations center, which functions that that same airbase runs the air war for the region, and in this case even had the Israeli Air Force as part of it. In many respects, they didn't run from out there either, because it's vulnerable. They actually ran it from an airbase in South Carolina.
How should this conflict reframe the way that we look at US military readiness? So we see the use of drones in Iran, We've seen them of course in the Ukraine wars as well. I think there's been some fear that the US has deployed a lot of military might in the Middle East that might leave it vulnerable.
We're China to do so.
There's a number of issues.
Well, I've said publicly for a number of years and written about it as well, and very recently in the Wall Street Journal Foreign Affairs the Hill. I was trying to get at tension of Congress on an issue that we have not remotely learned all the lessons we should have from the war in Ukraine. That is the future of war right now, a war in which you one side alone. Ukraine is using ten thousand drones a day. Ninety percent of the casualties on the Russian side are
caused by drones. Tanks can't maneuver anymore, they can't survive armored vehicles. You can't even drive vehicles in the death zone, which is thirty five kilometers on either side of the front lines, which aren't even lines anymore, because drones can fly into trenches and kill people, so their survival positions.
So this is just a vast change.
And by the way, there's more coming because within a year or two we're going to see not remotely piloted, unmanned systems. And keep in mind that Ukraine is going from three point five million drones manufactured last year to seven million this year, so they can get up to twenty thousand drones per day if they can find the pilots. But in the future, we're going to see autonomous systems, truly autonomous, that do not require a pilot to remotely
operate them. And then you face drone swarms, and that is something for which we really don't have a solution. There's high power microwave coming. It's very short range, it's very effective, but you're going to have to have tons of it. Given the two to three kilometer range that it has. It's spectacular. Everything drops, but you're going to
have to have a lot of them. So that I think hopefully this is going to drive home the absolute imperative of true institutional change in the United States, overhauling the entire concepts of war and operation. The attendant organizational change is sweeping. You know, unmanned systems force equal to the Army and Navy Air Force in Ukraine, for example.
Change how you train and operate, change how you educate your leaders, and change obviously what you buy and even how you buy it, because you want the opportunity to make software change every a week or two, hardware changes every few weeks. This is a very different model from
what we have. Beyond that, we've obviously used a lot of our exquisite munitions, cruise missiles and so forth, and a lot of our exquisite missile interceptors, a very substantial number, and we have really got to get the arsenal democracy going again.
Right now.
The arsenal democracies in Ukraine, not the United States, and we have got to make huge change, and the President's doing that. He called together all the defense major companies and so forth, laid out what we need them to do in terms of tripling or quadruple in production of certain systems and so.
Forth on Ukraine.
Does it feel like we are at a tipping point? We had the approval of this very sizable package from the Europeans, We've seen drone attacks now closer to and on Moscow. Are we in a different place now than we were?
Yeah? We are.
And I've actually said for almost a year now that I could envision a situation in which if there's sufficient support for the Ukrainians, and this nine billion euros from the European Commission is very very helpful, probably takes care of them for another year and a half, and if they can continue to increase the production drones and pilots and units that can use them and all the rest of that, and start going deeper in Russia and inflicting such casualties in Russia that it's maybe the same as
what they're recruiting on a monthly basis. You know, they've now taken almost one point four million killed and wounded. That's more than we sustained in all of World War Two. So and all of a sudden last month, the Ukrainians took back more territory than the Russians actually took from them. These are incremental gains, but more for the Ukrainian side, and Ukrainians causing staggering amounts of Russian casualty. I just don't think that Russia can continue this, certainly next year.
At some point, I think Putin's going to look in the mirror, especially if the lifting of sanctions on their oil sales in the price of oil are reimposed and his National welfare fund runs out of money because it's being diverted to the military industrial complex. All that happens, I think you could see a point where Russia needs a cessation of hostilities as much as it does Ukraine.
Last question is just about the balance of hard power and soft power at this moment. So we've seen the US technicols Maduro bring him to the United States, see the US deploy hard power in Iran as well. How good are we with that balance at this point? How important is it to have that equilibrium between the hard power that we're using and the soft power that we're deploying.
Right, It's a really interesting question, and I'd have to say that, certainly from my time in Uniform or the CIA, that the hard power is much more prominent and the soft power is much reduced. I mean, just the fact that we did away with the Agency for International Development usaid that we aren't funding anywhere near what we did,
although Congress has actually restored a lot of this. You know, we used to say that what solidifies the gains on the battlefield, if you can establish a security foundation, what solidifies it is the soft power. It's providing humanitarian assistance. It's restoring basic services, it's rebuilding damaged home schools, clinics, shops, roads, bridges.
All of this.
So the people say, you know what, I don't want these guys to come back and jeopardize this. Let's get rid of al Qaeda. You know what do they bring on us. Let's get rid of these insurgents. Let's marginalize that she and militia supported by Iran, all this kind of stuff. So that's what soft power does. To be sure, there are many pet rocks in the numbers that you know,
every congressmen are executive branch official. We can probably survive very well with all these well meaning programs and so forth, but you can't survive when you're trying to turn security gains into actual, solidified gains overall without that kind of soft power.
So I'm a bit concerned by that. General.
Thank you very much.
Great to be with you, David.
Thank you.
Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend. Right after this.
In a bola outbreak in Central Africa is suspected to have killed one hundred and seventy six people, and there are about eight hundred and thirty suspected and confirmed cases of the deadly disease, but the head of the World Health Organization says the scale of the epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is much larger. The US officially withdrew from the WHO in January, and experts say the public health response to the outbreak has been adversely impacted by the dismantling of usaid.
Estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation show is spending on a bola related aid research and operational support, including government funding delivered directly or through international aid organizations fell roughly one hundred and eighty six thousand dollars last year. That is down from about twenty three million dollars in twenty twenty one. Jeremy conna Duct managed the US response to the bolder outbreak in West Africa in twenty fourteen.
He had a USAID's response to COVID nineteen. Today he's the president of Refugees International and he joins us now here on this Saturday morning. Jeremy, great to have you with us, and I want to start first with just what you've observed here over the last few weeks. Christina mentioned just a moment ago, there is concern that the facts that we have, the data that we have, aren't painting a complete holistic picture of how wide this outbreak is.
Your sense from your experience of how accurate that count seems.
To be, well, it's certainly an undercount. The case number is when they announced the outbreak just over a week ago, we're just under two hundred and fifty. Now that's pushing eight hundred in the official count. But for cases to go out the quickly, that's not new trends mission, that's just beginning to get a sense of how much is already out there, and I don't think we fully have that sense yet. There's not a full contact tracing and case finding operation underway yet, and so there is still
a lot out there that we're not seeing. I'm sure it's over a thousand cases by now. It could be multiples of that. This is already, on paper, the third largest outbreak in history. It's well on its way probably to becoming the second largest, given the trajectory that it's on, and I think it's going to be exceptionally difficult to contain.
I know, you're when you're trying to fight an outbreak, you're fighting not just a disease, but you're also fighting misinformation and disinformation, and talk to us a little bit about how hard that battle is as well. Because I was reading about this crowd that set fire to one of the few functioning hospitals that treats Bala, specifically in the eastern DRC, and partially that was because there was mishandling. They didn't understand why they couldn't have the body back.
There's an issue with burial customs where they're washing the bodies and then that water is being pased surround and it's easy transmission. How do you fight this on two fronts, especially when you're short staffed.
It's such an important point, and it's easy to get caught in this idea that we just need a health response, we just need clinics. Secretary of Rubio has talked about setting up fifty health clinics, and you know, like the health clinic piece of this is important, it's also really difficult to scale, and of course you need for those clinics to mean anything, people need to have confidence that
they can use them. They have to have confidence and trust that they will get treatment, that the treatment that they need, and that they understand that that's what they need to do. And that all really comes down to trust. And so an outbreak response, the foundation of an effective outbreak response is trust between the communities who are at risk and the health responses. They are the operational and
health response itself. And we saw this the last time there was a major outbreak of Ebola and Eastern Congo that was in twenty eighteen nineteen, that was the second largest in history after the West Africa one that I worked on in twenty fourteen, and we saw these kinds of patterns. It's not surprising to me that people, our community members are behaving this way because they haven't you know, they don't understand the disease, they're not necessarily familiar with it,
they don't necessarily believe everything they're being told. There's a lot of skepticism. This is a part of the country that has been affected by war for decades, that is quite often quite hostile towards the central government, and so when they have the Ministry of Health from the central government telling them something, they won't necessarily take that at face value. So that's going to be a huge healthy climb.
Jeremy, I want to ask you about the role that the US is playing or isn't playing at this point in time. So we've seen the US, as Christina mentioned, withdraw from the who not playing an active role in
that organization any longer. I mentioned the last hour we were talking to our colleague Jason Gale, who covers public health, that we've both been kind of inundated with emails from the State Department over the course of this last week detailing what the US has done here, noting that the CDC is running point here and saying that the overarching objective here is to keep a bullet from coming in
the United States. How different is the response posture from the US this time around than what you lived through in twenty fourteen. Jason Gale mentioning to us that Tom Frieden.
Who ran the CDC, said that the Abola outbreak.
Was a full time job back when he was in that position. And here we're in a position where a lot of these key marquee positions in the public health apparatus in the US are unfilled or filled by in drim appointments.
Yeah, and doctor fried and I worked very closely together on that response. We actually, early in the US response, traveled out there together to Liberia to assess first hand and to meet with the president of the country. There is just dramatically less capacity in the US government to tackle a challenge like this than there was even two years ago. We had learned a lot of lessons from
that twenty fourteen Ey Bowl outbreak. At that t time, of course, USA it existed, there was a very robust CDC, we were a member of the World Health Organization, and all of those things were really important. USAID, CDC and who worked together hand in glove to lead the international response to that outbreak and then reprise that again in the large outbreak in the same area of eastern Congo in twenty eighteen nineteen. And that's mostly gone now that
partnership CDC is a shell of what it was. Particularly their global capabilities have really been degraded. They're still there. I mean, look, the people are excellent, the people are have tremendous knowledge. But will they be listened to by the people running US health institutions right now? That's a
big question. USAID, of course, is completely gone, and the US is no longer a member of WHO, and often CDC staff are barred from even speaking to WHO, So that partnership has been just demolished.
I want to read some statements, as David mentioned, we've been getting from the State Department saying it's false to claim that USAD reform has negatively impacted our ability to respond to ebola. In fact, by bringing a USAAD global health functions under a new bureau at the State Department, our efforts are more aligned and effective. You also mentioned on Tuesday the State Apartment announced they'd be funding these
fifty clinics to aid in the DRC. But the top civil servant and you've gone as a Ministry of Health said in an interview that the government was not aware of the pledge and it wasn't immediately clear where those thirteen million dollars were part of, where that pledge was going, or where those clinics were being set up. Where is the breakdown? There is this something that would usually happen
through who these organizations? What is the line of communication and is this something you can just stand up or does this need logistics and things on the ground that, as we've talked about, don't really exist.
Yeah, I.
Really am disheartened by that whole exchange because you see a few things there. At first, it was my job in twenty fourteen to oversee the planning and development and funding of about thirty eboa treatment units that we stood up across Western Africa West Africa in that outbreak. Those things were wildly expensive. It cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to stand up and operate those things. So thirteen million dollars is barely a start to what it's
going to cost to get this under control. But I think and they're hugely complex. It took us months to stand those up because ebola clinics are highly specialized, highly specialized facilities because they are built to built around very high end infection prevention and control, because you don't want to enable more transmissions the whole point of those facilities. They're very different from a normal health clinic and very
difficult to set up. But really importantly, we did all that in close, close partnership with the ministries of health in the countries we were working with, and the last thing we would have ever wanted to do is catch them off guard with an announcement. We hadn't discussed with
them first and didn't have their buy in on. So to see that sort of an exchange between the US Secretary of State and the and one of the affected governments just I think speaks to the lack of coordination, the lack of engagement between the US and those and those governments. And again that's the sort of function that USAID would have facilitated because there were deep, deep webs of relationships between the USAID health personnel and those countries
and their counterparts and ministries of health. And of course that's all gone now.
Jeremy, let me ask you as we wrap up here, how worried you are just about the circumstances that we're seeing in Africa right now. This is a different strain than we've seen before. There isn't a treatment for it. As you said that, the numbers seem to be under counts of what's likely the case.
They're in the DRC.
How concerned are you about the state of things now and where they're likely to go? And can you say unequivocally that without having usaid, without having the public health apparatus in place that we've had in the past, that's likely to make this outbreak much much worse.
It's going to make the response much harder. And when you have a slower and less effective response, of course the outbreak lasts for longer, and it spreads further, and ultimately, you know, delayed or underpowered response just makes the ultimate job of containment harder and more expensive, more difficult, it will take longer. I fear that's what we're going to see. We're going into this with four strikes against us. This outbreak has the most momentum upon discovery of any Ebola
outbreak in history. It's in eastern Congo, which is a conflict zone with three and a half million displaced people, and we know from the twenty eighteen nineteen outbreak. It's very, very hard to fight ebola under those conditions that one took two years to get under control. There are no countermeasures and no vaccine for this, unlike the normal ebola, not normal, but the other ebola strain that we've seen,
which is the zyre version. And of course we're doing this without USA, without the US being part of WHO, and with a week in CEA, so all of those things are going to make this job much harder.
Jeremy, I hope you'll come back and we can keep in touch throughout all of this.
Jeremy Conandaye who's the president of Refugees International with a host of experience in public health for the US government. Thank you very much for your time on this Saturday.
Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend right after this.
Memorial Day, marking the unofficial start of summer, and for many Americans that means backyard cookouts, road trips, and burgers on the grill.
I guess it means.
Restaurants across the country for one of the busiest stretches of the year. We have Patrick Conlin, president of Wayback Burgers, here with us on set in New York.
He's brought a bevy of burgers, chicken nuggets. What is this light? What is this fluorescent blue drink? We've got that? Hoist that up?
That is blue raspberry lemonade.
I don't think that color is found in nation, but I'm excited to buy I did to have it.
That's to celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
Let me just ask you first a broad questions about how the burger biz is doing. We hear a lot of talk of the k shaped economy. Obviously a lot of people understrained because of rising energy prices. How's the business doing in light of all that? How's the consumer doing? As you see him and her?
Still well?
I mean we took a it was a little slow last year and coming into this year, but our sales at way back have been up since March. And people love burgers just a nostalgic feel. And this weekend starts really the kickoff, like you mentioned earlier, for the burger season.
Where are you guys most located and where are your big markets? Are there specific places we were seeing people are really going all in on fast food again, Well.
We're fast casual, so a little bit, a little bit higher quality, a nicer atmosphere, better experience. We may have a relationship with the guests, but we have We're in thirty five states across the US, big concentration in the northeast, southeast, Southwest, and we just opened up our in our thirty fifth state. We just opened up in Iowa a couple.
Of weeks ago.
I Fast Casual had a bit of a slump too. For a minute, there are you. Are you seeing a rebound or did that impact you? I mean, I know we joke the slot bowl places like Chipotle and Kava and anything that comes in a bowl was having a really hard time. Did you see that slump as well? Or did you feel like you guys were in a good sweet spot where it's it's a product everybody knows, but in as slightly as you say, elevated place to be.
Yeah, we saw it. I mean no question that the consumers were looking for a value. But value is also a better product. So we did some things late last year to enhance a value proposition for the guests that come into our restaurants.
And continue that today.
What did you do?
We did some meal deals and we introduced wraps for a short time, limited time offer, which was a lower priced item, and then just recently we introduced the chicken nuggets. Even though we're a burger chain, and I think you're enjoying those on a more ay weekend.
It's someone who doesn't need beef. I appreciate it your.
Nuggets, breakfast nugget Lisa about this beef, because I mean, this is hardy burger and I know I go to the supermarket. I slat burgers on the grill. They're not cheap. Nowadays they've gone up in price. So how are you guys?
Protein?
But it's they're not cheap and the prices have gone up, So how do you deal with that? Do you have to pass the price onto the consumer?
How are you working?
You have to pass some of the price onto the consumer, but sometimes sometimes you may have to eat a little bit of it. We've been very lucky with our beef supplier that this year there was a minimal increase so it didn't hurt our franchisees and we didn't really pass a large price increase onto the consumer.
In twenty twenty six, I've.
Got a question just about Please Lisa, take your time keeps the camera camera trained on Lisa for that one. My goodness, we have seen maybe not one of your direct competitors, a fast food chane that has a king as a mascot, do a very public campaigns and they're reinventing themselves, reinventing what the burger is and how it's cooked and what people think they're getting there in the
industry broadly, how much does that happen? I mean, you're holding on to a lot of nostalgia the way things happen. People go to you for a certain reason when you introduce something like wraps or chicken nuggets. How much thought do you put into branching out into something that people might not know you for. And is there a chance that that as you move away from your core business that that could backfire.
Sure, we have to be very careful about what we introduce that is not one of our core items, and we do a lot of research throughout the year of what's trending. We don't look to be the trendiest restaurant company out there, but we want to look at what's on trend, So we'll look at things like chicken nuggets, We'll look at the wraps as a value proposition. Do you where are we ever going to bring in, you know, some crazy, really out of the box item.
I don't think so. Keen wa bulls, Yeah, probably Okay, No, te, We're still okay.
Even though we have chicken on our menu, We're still eighty five percent of our entrees or burgrasy.
Margins in the restaurant business are legendarily thin. As you look at the year, you know, obviously we're bloomberg, and we talk about money and economics and what's going on in the least impacts everything. The downstream effect is going to happen. I don't know if you've seen that yet, but you know we're going into planting seasons where farmers are going to have to pay more for fertilizer. I know you have transportation costs, that's fuel. What are you
worried about? What are you looking? Where are you kind of already seeing those prices spike?
So far, we haven't seen anything spike. We lock into the majority of our our core items that we sell in the restaurants or locked in on yearly contracts, ok, so that we do before the beginning of the year, So we're good for this year. Unless there's a fuel surch charge could could happen on the on the the food distributor to the restaurant, which would one or two.
Dollars a delivery. So not a huge impact. Yet.
The more concern is the impact on the consumer coming into the restaurant and if you're paying X amount more for gas today, are you going to cut back.
On what you're going to eat?
So so far, Lockwood, it hasn't affected us. I think it more affects people in coffee business. And you can cut out going out and getting a coffee a couple of days a week, or an ice cream coling, you still have to eat lunch, you still have to eat dinner.
And I go back to something you said the top, which is the start of burger season. So we have this conceit here Memorial Day, people are out grilling. A season starts. Is that born out in your business? Is there a seasonality to the fast casual business or do you see kind of a constant trend of customers throughout the year.
The constant trend really, our business starts picking up right after Valentine's Day and goes through October and then the holidays dip down a little bit and then we wait for Valentine's Day again.
I asked about the chicken.
I was just meeking for that to happen. I'm glad. Tell us how the burger, how's the burger?
The burgers phenomenal, But you mentioned chicken?
So is that more of more pressure because we hear about the chicken wars, you know everything between Chick fil a and the Popeyes.
That's the big thing. Was that the.
Pressure you about to kind of bring you know what? Or did it come from your your customers and said, you.
Know or is it annoying people like me who can't eat beef?
And good point.
We we didn't want to be even though we're way back burgers, we didn't want to be solely that narrowly focused on burgers. Because if there's a people in an office of four people and three people want to go for burgers, and one person says, I don't I had a burger yesterday or I don't eat burgers, they could sway the other three people.
So we wanted to have that.
We didn't want to get that veto vote, So we wanted to have We've always had chicken on the menu. We used to have chicken. We have a chicken sandwich, and we have we had chicken tenders. But then one of our longtime vendors came to us with a whole meat chicken nugget, and that's a whole white breast meat. So I couldn't stop eating them. When we tested them in.
The front, we had about thirty seconds. What's your favorite menu item? Was the thing you'd like to eat?
My favorite menu item is either the classic that that you're eating today, way back classic, or usually any one of our lt O burgers, a limited time offer burgers that were that we come out with. We just came off of Sweet and Spicy Melt, which was a double double patty burger with pepper jack cheese and a pineapple jam.
All right, thank you very much for coming and thanks for bringing all this.
If Lisa drinks this this blue drink, that'll really be something.
To be bold.
Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend. Right after this, all.
Right, welcome back now for this weekend.
Have you had that drink yet, either of you?
No?
No?
For this weekend's point of news, Quarz, it's tasty, it's very sweet. I also have my own support French Fries. Lisa is going to go through our point of news quiz and I'm going to try to retain my streak of beating David Garratt.
I think that streak has been broken in recent weeks. It's not been good.
It's not been a good ride. So Lisa Regain, I'm gonna I'm gonna hook you up.
So women on the show, I need to I need to like tellpaf me some power.
Okay, here we go, three categories. Are you ready? If you're playing at home? We asked them three categories.
They have thirty chips in front of them and they place their bets depending on how confident they feel about each category.
All right, so the first category is.
Retail retail, okay, second is crypto, and the third.
Is obituary obituaries.
Yeah.
Ending on a high note, Lisa.
Now you've had this like streak where you go ten across the board.
Yeah, and it's with that I think it isn't working. And now there.
And I'm going to emulate it thus because it actually has boosted my confidence greatly and I have woncal support.
French Frise.
You can't hurt me today.
What we got?
Okay, let's start with retail tail Chinese e commerce giant. She is acquiring which San Francisco based retailer for one hundred million dollars.
Like David knows this one to you were just talking about this and I was, it's a segment on this.
This is like the fight in my house, I say, she and my daughter says, no, it's cheane, No, it's s Yeah.
I think that's right.
Correct.
Mama's always here's mama maeo over here.
Let's flip it and see if you guys ever, very every I have it. They're buying you for about one hundred million dollars because I confess I don't know.
What it was really a couple of years ago, and it's it's big thing with sustainable fashion, and it's gotten less and less sustainable on the quality in my opinion as someone who used to buy it has gone down a lot, and now they are selling to one of the most legendarily unsustainable is.
Yeah, I know the buzzwords.
You're doing so well. It's a very it's a very convers.
You're sad about that you're a couple of years ago.
Brief have surpassed as to most of my friends, so good luck to them.
We've got packages.
Coming far flung cities in China.
All right, it is all.
Right, you running go to crypto you're feel you're feeling good, okay, okay, oh, here we go. Before Bitcoin Depot had filed for bankruptcy, it was once North America's largest operator of which crypto transaction tool?
What's the name of that tool? I thought that wing.
Yes, crypto transaction tool.
Yes, the largest operator of which crypto transaction?
All right, whatever, fine, all right, you want to try it again?
Blockchain, blockchain, no Christina ATMs.
Yes, it is it that people just don't need it to be cash anymore.
They were the largest operator crypto ATMs.
You know, I've always enjoyed seeing those and wonder who actually uses them.
They're just saying the business model is not sustainable anymore.
So well I.
Could have told them that. Nobody asked me. I use an ATM all the time. I don't use like a bitcoin.
ATM though exactly us carry cash like regularly.
Yeah, we got a tip, A couple bucks for tip. My kid goes to lunch. I have to pay for his out to lunch.
Yes, oh wow, oh, just uses the Apple.
Pitch, slippery slippery slope. We got to learn how to tell time. We talked about that earlier with an analog watch. And you got to learn how to count your change or you can be taken advantage of in a retail setting.
This is a good point.
All right, we're easy.
Sorry I lost that one. Take those towns.
Oh no, you lost, you lost?
Okay, that's right, that's right to be all right, Okay, Okay, here you go.
Obituary that one.
Not feeling good about.
This, okay, obituaries.
Here we go.
Democratic Representative Barney Frank died on May twentieth. What year was he first elected to Congress?
That's ridiculous.
Okay, it was an easier question, but they changed to make it harder for you guys.
Control room.
What year?
Okay, I can accept two answers.
Did you answer?
Absolutely?
If you get close to it, maybe I'll throw you a trip or two.
Okay, great, I'm ready.
Nineteen seventy eight, nineteen eighty seven.
Oh it's nineteen eighty very close.
This is like if we're a competing game show. I got the lower number, you know, it's like the one dollar.
Just give me your chips.
So the election it was actually nineteen eighty began the term in January third, nineteen eighty one, so either one I would have taken.
Well, who do we got here? Closing?
Okay, Christina's up up, up up, all right, we got aut.
We've got the bonus, and it's beauty girl.
Yes, Sar David, I can't wait for we'll get a landa papina back. We'll do like an investigation of the dramatic collusion that's been happening in this game, like.
We'll get the equities.
We're happy. We got burgers and fries.
Beauty okay, South Korean beauty giant, What Young is coming to the US. Its name contains a food that comes in men's andanila variety.
Hey, that comes and what.
It comes in a man's vanilla variety.
I have absolutely no beauty giant.
Blank Young Okay, Okay, No, they didn't I know it's I didn't know.
I feel I'm gonna I'm gonna write coming to the face face beauty.
No, no, no, no, oh, she's a racing she's a racing. Wait wait, you can't erase you show yours already.
I'm done.
No Illive Young, olive and olives no, no, no, nothing but happy. Happy to have some more beauty, man, I know, more k beauty.
All right, well, we're gonna forget this happened.
But I'm gonna put.
My Neon orange chips for our radio listeners next to my Neon blue soda and I'm going to take a victory sip.
There we go.
We're gonna check your Thank you very much, all right, you enjoy.
You can test your knowledge on all ten questions. If these three were enough, there are seven more. Take the point of News quiz at bloomberg dot com. Slash pointed.
Thanks for joining us on today's Bloomberg This Weekend podcast. Don't forget to tune in live for the show every Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at seven am Eastern.
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