🍽️  Work from cafe

👋  Good morning. If your last deliverable took longer than expected to complete, don’t feel too bad. In 1985, William Freeman, Ph.D., then an electrical engineer at Polaroid, dreamed up the idea for a three-sided zipper that could transform items from soft to rigid. Freeman’s idea was rejected by the Innovative Design Fund at the time, but is getting its moment in the spotlight 40 years later: MIT researchers used a 3D printer to create a Y-zipper that can “shape-shift” in real-world applications. Timing is everything.

NEWS FLASH 

🛒  Cleanup on aisle AI: Vori, an AI grocery startup, is looking to modernize independent grocery stores to help them compete with Amazon and Walmart. The startup’s software digitizes outdated processes and manages inventory, payments, and ordering to help grocery stores run more efficiently. The startup says it's already processed $500m+ in payments across 55 cities for 1m+ consumers.

📱  Mixed results: A new study examined the effect of cell phone bans in schools. It found that students used their phones much less during the school day, but there was no impact on test scores, attendance, or perceptions of online bullying. During the first year, suspensions did increase by an average of 16%, possibly due to those violating the ban or being unable to turn to their phones when in conflict. One superintendent did notice one interesting benefit not included in the study: students actually talking to each other at lunch. 

🐕  Man’s best… whatever this is: Roomba maker Colin Angle is back with a new company, Familiar Machines & Magic. It makes a robot pet called Familiar that looks kind of like a small, less threatening owlbear (for you D&D nerds) or an odd dog. It’s meant as a companion for families or elderly users that can remember routines, make nonverbal noises, encourage healthy behaviors, and develop a unique personality as it interacts with its owner. The first Familiars won’t be available until at least next year. 

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Bargain beer is back: Molson Coors shelved Keystone Ice in 2021 to focus on premium beers, but now it’s resurrecting its value brew. Ice-brewed beers, such as Keystone Ice, tend to have higher ABVs.
  

• Brain beanie: Startup Sabi is making a beanie lined with 100k sensors that it claims can translate thoughts into digital text at 30 words per minute. They haven’t shown how — or if — it works yet, but… it’s still pretty neat to think about. 
  

• Safety first: Common Sense Media, a nonprofit media watchdog, is launching the Youth AI Safety Institute to conduct “independent crash testing” for AI tools that might pose risks to children and teens.
  

• Out to sea: Startup Panthalassa is building wave-powered computing systems — in the form of massive floating orbs — that float offshore and run AI models on-site. 
  

BEST BUSINESS BOTS

Matt Wolfe’s favorite time-savers

As a tech-focused ‘Tuber with 930k+ subs and running, Matt has tried a swarm of AI tools. 

These are his recommendations across categories, from copy and images and videos to workflow and journaling and strategy. 

Find ways to free up more time. Or frick around and find out if you’d like.

THE BIG IDEA

Reimagining empty restaurants

Ever peered inside a closed restaurant during the day, thinking it looked a bit lonely?

Rather than let those stylish restaurants sit empty all morning, one enterprising coffee-shop-owner-to-be saw an opportunity to put that lonely space to use.  

Founded by Kate Kaneko, Asano is an unconventional coffee shop that operates within New York City restaurants only open in the evening, per Edible Brooklyn. 

The unusual partnership looks to be a win-win and part of a trend of restaurants getting creative amid rising costs.

"The a.m. cafe to your p.m. restaurant"

Asano's first location opened last June in Sandro's, a popular Italian restaurant, operating Monday through Saturday mornings. The evolving menu features espresso and matcha drinks, Asian-inspired pastries, and residencies with other food businesses.

• Instead of paying rent, Kaneko established a revenue-sharing agreement. 
  
• The symbiotic arrangement enables Asano to operate in a neighborhood where rent might be prohibitive, while offering Sandro's additional revenue. 
  
• Asano also saves on overhead and investments like an espresso machine.
  
• Each offers a loyalty card to cross-pollinate customers — coffee in exchange for an espresso martini and vice versa.
  
• Customers get to enjoy an upscale venue to sip matcha and catch up with friends or emails — and might just stick around for dinner.

Kaneko has since opened another Asano at The Noortwyck, and plans to expand to additional restaurants.

Finding restaurants that fit the concept with amenable owners was a lengthy process. Kaneko, who has a hospitality background and a Harvard Business School degree, details the process on her Substack.

Third spaces

As rising costs squeeze restaurants and more Americans find eating out no longer "worth the money," businesses are thinking creatively to stay above water:

• Boston's Shy Bird offers coworking space with a limited menu and office supplies.
  
• A NYC bar rents space to publishers during the day.
  
• A plant-based ice cream parlor takes over a bagel shop in Tacoma, Washington on weekend evenings.
  
• All-day cafes offer alternative daytime concepts to attract different customers. 

The trend of a "multifunctional restaurant space" could offer aspiring business owners valuable space, and restaurants additional revenue.

And it offers consumers more delicious food and drink options — sounds like a win-win to us.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Charmed, I’m sure: The practice of charm pricing has endured for centuries — for good reason. We dove into the history of the 99-cent price tag.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much merchants, like grocery stores and food delivery services, will be fined for violating Maryland’s new Protection From Predatory Pricing Act starting Oct. 1. The state is the first to ban the practice of dynamic pricing, in which two customers could end up paying different prices for the same product based on AI-powered data analytics.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called it necessary “at a time when technology can predict what we need, when we need it, when we’ll pay for it and also when we’ll pay more for it” (like at 2am when you’re hankering desperately for that cheeseburger). 

Fortunately for Americans elsewhere, ~33 states have similar legislation in the works, per The New York Times.

HOW YOU HUSTLE

Our readers are always dreaming up cool ideas. Here’s our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader working on something big.

Who: Alan Hegron
What: Rythmeet Inc.

The elevator pitch: “Rythmeet is building the reputation layer for the independent music industry, helping studios and venues verify musician reliability and attract committed artists through real-world activity data.”

Problem they’re trying to solve: “Independent musicians and the businesses around them lack a reliable way to verify activity and commitment. Studios, venues, and teachers rely on fragmented communication and generic marketplaces, making it difficult to know whether artists will show up, bring an audience, or engage seriously.”

One truly innovative thing they’re doing: “Rythmeet turns real-world music activity into verified reliability profiles combined with a reward system. As musicians rehearse, perform, and collaborate, they build credibility and earn benefits that encourage activity and help studios attract and retain customers.”

What are you working on? Tell us here.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the Works Progress Administration to help alleviate the Great Depression by offering unemployed Americans work building infrastructure. 

🍺  Game: You run a tavern with a dark secret.

🗞️  Newsletter: Quartz AI & Tech unpacks the trends and breakthroughs shaping AI.

📖  That’s cool: A reverse lookup for speculative fiction by concept.

🐦  Aww: Surprise!

SHOWER THOUGHT

If there was an immortal mime, we probably wouldn’t know for a very long time.  SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Danny Jensen, and Singdhi Sokpo.

Editing by: Sara "Cafe connoisseur" Friedman.

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