🍽️  All you can eat… for now

👋  Good morning. Any chance you’ve seen a couple hundred tiny gold Mozarts? No? Well, the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg is missing 210 of them. German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl unveiled 320 gold statuettes of Mozart and his dog to celebrate the composer’s 270th birthday in his hometown, but visitors had other plans (and, apparently, big backpacks). At ~$114 a pop, it’s no Louvre heist, but the thieves secured some shiny paperweights.

NEWS FLASH 

📱  Let freedom not ring: Portuguese startup Guardian Labs is offering a call-intercepting service that can analyze incoming calls and messages for scam markers and reject them before any notifications chime through. Founder Rita Barbosa was spurred to action when her grandma was scammed out of $4k+, leading her to develop a prototype that quickly advanced from winning a hackathon to backing from Portugal’s president.

😳  A startup enters the spotlight…but not in the good way: Investors — who poured nearly $1.2m into Selena Gomez’s mental health startup Wondermind — are suing the company and its founders for alleged fraud. The federal lawsuit says the company falsely represented infrastructure, leadership, and partnerships to investors for more than three years.

📺  More AI news — literally: AI startup Mirage spent ~$50k on a 24-hour newscast featuring four AI-generated anchors covering real Reuters stories alongside AI-generated graphics, guests, and commercials. The broadcast reached 50k viewers on X but made quite a few slipups, like identifying a woman in a Reuters clip as President Donald Trump. Mirage, which built the anchors in part using its own Avatar X model, is betting there’s a market for AI news, though nearly 40% of Americans polled by Gallup say a news organization’s use of AI would reduce their trust.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• RIP, Mico, we hardly knew ye: Microsoft introduced the discomfiting yellow blob as a Copilot mascot less than a year ago and he’s already being relegated to a lower AI product. 

• Mattel execs’ new toy: Mattel launched an in-house gaming studio to bring its IP to life, starting with titles based on UNO and Hot Wheels. Its employees would be wise to skip this next item…

   

• What happens when a big company gets a little overzealous in a difficult gaming business?: Restart, the video game news outlet that Walmart helped to start less than 20 months ago, is no more — its full editorial team regrettably laid off.

• Rust to riches: Form Energy raised $750m to scale batteries that discharge energy by turning iron into rust, then reverse the reaction to recharge. The batteries can provide up to 100 hours of energy storage to help power grids withstand emergencies.

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4. Validate your idea with intel
5. Raise Seed/Series A funding
6. Find your first 100 customers
7. Act on feedback (fast)

Steal these workflows

THE BIG IDEA

The last hurrah of the cheap Vegas buffet?

Vegas prides itself on excessive indulgences, especially when it comes to miles of all-you-can-eat buffets. Prime rib! Crab legs! Waffles! All on the same plate for cheap.

The Strip once boasted ~35 buffets, but that's dwindled to just seven following the closure of the MGM Grand Buffet.

While most casinos abandoned buffet bacchanalia for trendy foodie destinations, old-school stalwarts keep the AYCE train rolling — even if they lose money, per The Wall Street Journal.

Line up for the loss leader

El Rancho Vegas, the first resort built on The Strip in 1941, is often credited with opening Sin City's first buffet in 1946 (or at least popularizing the concept).

The Chuck Wagon — fabulously renamed the Buckaroo Buffet — operated from 1am to 4am, providing late-night gamblers with cold cuts and leafless salads for a mere $1 (~$16 today).

More than a generous smorgasbord, the buffet was a clever marketing ploy. Patrons could eat quickly and gamble longer without leaving the casino confines.

As other casinos saw the benefit of the promotional tool, buffets proliferated and grew in size, becoming a Vegas institution.

End of the (buffet) line?

The beginning of the end may have been when Wolfgang Puck opened Spago at Caesars Palace in 1992, ushering in an era of celebrity-chef restaurants (~50 operate today).

While the following decades witnessed a rise in buffets with extravagant gourmet spreads, that all came to a screeching halt with the pandemic.

Many casinos shuttered buffets permanently, determining they weren't worth the high cost of labor and food, instead pivoting to food halls and chef-driven destinations. Others point to the rise of GLP-1 drugs and health consciousness as contributing to the dwindling appeal.

Viva Las Vegas

Today, some buffets survive as high-end spectacles like Caesars’ Bacchanal:

• $87+/person
• 250 unique dishes/day
• 20k guests/week
• 2k pounds of crab/day

Others attract ever-growing crowds with cheap buffets, like the one at South Point Hotel and Casino:

• Breakfast starts at $16.95 for club members
• Seafood night with prime rib and two drinks starts at $52.95
• 3k guests/day

Despite the hotel's 11 restaurants losing a collective $1.5m-$2m/month, the owner is happy to use food as a loss leader for the casino, attracting local customers and thrift tourists with flat-rate pricing bias.

The buffet still seems a smart bet for some.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Starbucks, McDonald's, Dunkin', Dutch Bros, and Blank Street — oh my: A coffee consultant breaks down the playbooks behind America’s biggest coffee brands.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

The “most compelling price in retail,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Marketing experts say the “snackable” sub-$10 price point is a psychologically important threshold that can drive consumers’ purchasing decisions, whether that means switching brands or trying a new product. But high inflation has made it harder for brands to maintain. To avoid raising their prices, companies from smaller skincare brands to giants like Hasbro are opting instead to redesign their packaging, cut their marketing budgets, and accept lower margins.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1990, the largest-ever T-rex skeleton was discovered in South Dakota.

🖼️ That’s interesting: Mapping the world’s artwork.

🎞️  Game: Name the film from one screenshot.

👁 That’s random: How long can you go without blinking?

🐱  Aww: A kitten drinking from a bottle. You’re welcome.

SHOWER THOUGHT

It is surprising how many people need glasses to see clearly given how important eyesight is to our species' survival. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Singdhi Sokpo, Ben Berkley, and Danny Jensen.

Editing by: Sara "Grab me a crab leg" Friedman.

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