👋 Good morning. Yes, you missed your project deadline. And yes, your boss is annoyed (she told us). But at least it didn’t take you 144 years? Last week, workers finally secured the ~15-foot upper arm of a cross on the top of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, a church that began construction in 1882. If you’re bummed you saw more scaffolding than basilica during that Barcelona trip in college — join the club. And think of the church’s original architect, Antoni Gaudí, who died in 1926 when less than 25% of the church was done.
STARTING UP
This startup wants to pick up your favorite restaurant’s tab
❌ The problem: Restaurants are notoriously hard to finance through traditional funding and ~17% fail in their first year, while nearly 80% shutter within five.
💡 The pitch: Austin-based inKind built a dual-sided marketplace for consumers and restaurants. Consumers get exclusive dining experiences and rewards while restaurant owners can access debt-free funding. According to the startup, only ~2% of the businesses funded by inKind close down — better news than an open table on a Saturday night.
🚀 The outlook: The platform already has ~4m users and has provided $600m in funding to ~6k restaurants across the country. Next, inKind plans to fund 10k restaurants in 2026.
NEWS FLASH
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Tell your own bedtime story: Giant, an interactive storytelling platform for kids, raised an $8m seed round to fuel expansion. Children can use Giant to design their own worlds and stories, appear as cartoons in other shows, or talk to characters that will remember them. Giant has seen 1m+ minutes of conversation between children and characters since launching in May 2025.
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And no jelly? Forty-four percent of employers are planning to give “peanut butter” raises in 2026 — an even across-the-board raise received by all workers, like spreading peanut butter — as opposed to merit-based increases. The last time employers widely favored this tactic was amid the Great Recession, another period of labor instability, economic uncertainty, and low wage inflation. Yay.
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A real sweet tooth: UK retailer Sainsbury’s has been locking bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk — which retail for ~$3.50 — in anti-theft boxes. The Association of Convenience Stores CEO James Lowman says the candy’s become a hot commodity among thieves, who resell it through “illicit markets that help fund wider criminal activity.” Last year, police arrested a man who’d stuffed his coat full of Cadbury’s Creme eggs.
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Outsmarting smart glasses: Nearby Glasses is a new app that scans for Meta Ray-Bans’ unique Bluetooth signature, then sends users an alert letting them know someone wearing the tech could be nearby — and potentially recording them without their consent. Hobbyist developer Yves Jeanrenaud told 404 Media that he made the app to be “a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM
Will AI replace actors?
Matthew McConaughey thinks the real battle isn’t stopping AI — it’s owning yourself.
As AI-generated performers become more realistic, creatives need to lock down the rights to their voice, image, and likeness.
With AI racing ahead, your face could be the new business model.
THE BIG IDEA
In the land of office perks, lunch is still king
Despite reports that companies are pulling back on the bougie office perks employees once enjoyed, there is apparently one that’s actually getting bigger and better: free lunch.
Whether it’s pre-plated meals or sprawling buffets, many companies are still offering, even improving, the midday meal, per Business Insider.
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In 2023, a Dinova and Technomic report found that corporate catering had surpassed weddings in revenue.
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A 2023 International Caterers Association survey found that ~50% of catering companies listed corporate clients as their primary revenue source.
So there is such a thing as a free lunch
Pretty much everyone loves free food, with research finding it a preferred perk among employees, especially as workers return to the office.
It saves them money, improves productivity, and can reduce burnout by encouraging them to take a much-needed midday break.
People are also just generally interested in food. The TikTok trend WIEIAD (“what I eat in a day”) often focuses on office workers’ lunches, whether they packed their own or enjoyed catered meals.
It’s good for employers, too
Providing lunch is cheaper than many other perks, plus we know that having friends at work increases job satisfaction and mental health.
Employees who sit in a cubicle all day might only interact with members of their team, but cafeterias offer a place to meet others, assuming that a) the food is good enough to keep employees on campus and b) they don’t just grab a plate and go back to their desks.
Grace Koo, KKR’s global head of human capital, told BI that the investment firm’s cafe was designed with collaboration in mind, while Gap’s Bay Area “Gapeteria” invites employees to enjoy hangar steak and grilled burrata at communal tables.
Another boon? It could be a positive sign for people suffering from AI replacement dysfunction (AIRD), a term coined by researchers to define anxiety over potentially losing one's job to AI. If a company is investing in high-quality food, it indicates a commitment to the human workers that eat it.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Less gatekeeping… more decentralizing. A B2B marketing expert shares her learnings from balancing a six-figure business with a full-time social media gig.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Hourly rate for some of the country’s top lawyers nowadays, per Persuit data via The Wall Street Journal. The cost of legal services has skyrocketed in recent years — rates for partners at the top 50 US law firms increased by an average of 16% last year alone — something WSJ attributes to more high-stakes litigation and corporate dealmaking, intense competition for talent driving up law firm expenses, and, well, a heavy dose of ego.
While certain specialists are even charging as much as $6k for their advice, ours comes free: maybe avoid situations that would require a high-profile lawyer?
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1974, Nike received a patent for its waffle trainer running shoes, which co-founder Bill Bowerman had invented in a waffle iron.
👕 That’s cool: Exploring male fashion from 1980 through 2025.
😠 Haha: Need to vent? Here’s a site where you can type out your best rant.
🛗 That’s interesting: Why elevators in North America cost 3x as much as they do elsewhere (and kinda suck).
🦊 Aww: A curious little fox (and other woodland creatures).
SHOWER THOUGHT
A lot of furniture designing is limited by the size of doors. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Thought there was no such thing?" Friedman.
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