Johan Moreno

@EmpiresPod_ I feel like fitness recovered well after COVID but went into different areas because of the K-shaped economy. People either downgraded to Planet Fitness or upgraded to Life Time/Equinox, which have both reported record growth and offer more value compared to boutiques

OrangeTheory has never truly recovered from covid - In 2019, the average studio had 793 members and did ~$1.2M in revenue. In 2025, avg membership was 444 with revenue of just $802,145. 74 locations also closed last year. Big fan of the brand, but boutique fitness is tough! OTF was the pioneer of the category, but dozens of brands followed suit in franchising. Between those and the independent studios, customers are inundated with options. Also - memberships are a discretionary expense with a high price point I'm sure studios in select markets still crush, but clearly covid broke the "habit" for many former members.

@alexadoingstuff NYC’s budget is 8x what LA has despite only 2x the population

Can LA please please please get our own mamdani

@trikortreater @escargotpro_ Yeah def better than other U.S. cities! but still sometimes shit closes so early in NYC!!

@escargotpro_ Yeah maybe before covid. Now everything closes early. CVS isnt even 24 hours anymore like it used to be. At least not in midtown. You go out late now and everything is closed besides the bars and delis. Which is okay i guess but def not how it used to be.

@greetinghimeros Omg I recognized it was Flatbush Market (Key Foods) just looking at the photos and the prices. They have loooow prices, I think because not a lot of ppl go in there…

It’s crazy how no place even comes close to my grocery store

@militantangleno @califchicken Still the best damn chinese chicken salad in the world!!!!!

The Militant remembers a time when @califchicken Cafe was California Chicken Cafe, and not a wannabe Everytable.

@militantangleno @latimes Insane when you can get most of the LA Times stories distributed on Apple News for a fraction of the cost or just re-up after canceling on a $1/mo deal

The Militant has had an @latimes digital subscription for years, currently paying $15.96/mo. Now they want to increase it to $27.72/mo - A 74% INCREASE! Sorry, Los Angeles Times, but The Militant is gonna have to drop you like you dropped Times Mirror Square. 😏

@metapreston What value does Cursor really have anymore? You don’t really need an IDE for coding if you use something like Claude code…

Meta nearing a deal to buy Cursor at $10B?

@gbaroth The CEOs of these companies should be visiting stores daily. NYC Chipotle locations are awful. Messy, no good customer service, cold food, drink machine is always down.

Once again I am offering my "common sense consultancy" services to the C suite of Sweetgreen and or Chipotle... These people haven't been inside a store lately and it shows. the employees of these places are miserable. at 11:30am there's no meat. the stores are messy. it's BAD

@HoopsCrave Soul Plane

American Airlines is partnering with Popeyes for in-flight meals.

@amandafortini Because this is a Macy’s backstage which is a competitor to Marshalls! Marshalls sells food so they’re trying to emulate that model. Get it right!!

So many businesses have strayed from their core mission and are hopelessly lost. For instance, why is Macy’s selling snacks now

@HustleBitch_ It's called a barbell strategy. Appeal to both sides of the spectrum. Lots of rich people eat McDonald's too. McD is also probably the last fast food chain where you can get a meal for $5

🚨 MCDONALD’S CEO EATS A $12 BURGER ON CAMERA - AND PRETENDS THIS IS NORMAL This is Chris Kempczinski, the CEO of McDonald's, calmly chewing their new $12 Big Arch and calling it “lunch.” Two quarter pound patties. Special bun. New sauce. 1,057 calories. Corporate tasting with cameras rolling. Meanwhile, working families in America are realizing McDonald’s is no longer “cheap food”. It’s overpriced survival junk calories being sold as innovation. He makes tens of millions a year. You’re standing at the counter wondering how a burger and fries quietly became $17. And his advice? “Try it when you can get it.” Does this feel like a brand that cares - or executives laughing while you pay more and get less?

@jonathanmaze You know it’s a tough market when In-N-Out barely has a line during the lunch rush when compared to the West Coast locations.

Talked with Portillo's executives at ICR this week and asked why they struggled in Texas and they were very honest about it all. But they're hardly the only brand to get excited about the state only to have problems once they get there. restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/why-…

I love word games. But they’re often boring, take too long to finish, and rarely use words you actually say. So I built HOTWORD (hotword.app), a word game that’s actually fast, competitive, and filled with words from headlines and conversations happening right now. Available now!

I really miss Southern California's charbroiled burger scene. Charbroiled burgers from Greek and Mexican style diners especially! Top's, Farmer Boys, Lucky Boy, Fantastic Cafe, etc. Also Carl's Jr.'s Western Bacon Cheeseburger will always be the GOAT burger 😍

@ChefGruel Restaurants aren't really making too much profit on delivery orders because of the high fees. The delivery fees should be higher, the orders fewer and dollar tickets should be higher. Delivery should be a premium, and I say this as someone who orders in quite a bit lol

Mark my words, 3rd party food delivery is done. Generally, I am not in favor of the government getting too involved in private business. In a functioning free market, it is the responsibility of consumers to drive change through demand. Forcing services to provide specific features or outcomes never works. If those features are truly valued, the companies that offer them will outperform those that do not, and the market will self-correct. That said, this "food delivery" industry is already far past the point of being a free market, especially in California. Food delivery platforms are already heavily regulated. Layering new mandates on top of an already overregulated system does not fix problems. It compounds them. With respect to this NEW set of regulations, the practical outcome will be more consumer fraud and higher costs imposed directly on restaurants. Under the current model, when a refund is issued, the restaurant almost always absorbs the loss, even when the claim itself is fraudulent (which it is at least 50% of the time). Common scams include altered photos to make food appear incorrect, false claims that orders never arrived, drivers taking the food, and even allegations of food poisoning. In nearly all cases, the restaurant pays. Expanding refund mandates without addressing this reality will cost restaurants thousands a year. Naturally with constant losses and no meaningful recourse, more restaurants will leave these platforms. As restaurant participation declines, the platforms themselves will struggle to operate profitably in the state and will eventually exit altogether. That isn't consumer protection, it's another example of regulatory overreach that drives business out of the market entirely. For that reason, we stopped using these apps years ago and will never go back.

@travisk @levie @mcuban Hahahaha

Some history.. I first met @levie in 2005 when he was a student at usc… @mcuban sent me in to do diligence (mark was an investor in a company I was doing called red swoosh) Aaron had the biggest fro of all time and was funny as hell… bring funny @levie back!!

You might be doing everything "right" — working full time, skipping the lattes, budgeting — and still have nothing left at the end of the month. Great blog @sergioaved!!! sergioavedian.com/blog/its-not-y…

@BrianSozzi They need to stop blaming macroeconomic trends and start looking inward, since Shake Shack was up 5% Q3. Poor food quality, bad operations (i.e. dirty restaurants, soda machines are never working in NYC), and lack of exciting LTOs are more to blame.

🌯Chipotle CEO on the US consumer: "Earlier this year, as consumer sentiment declined sharply, we saw a broad-based pullback in frequency across all income cohorts. Since then, the gap has widened, with low to middle-income guests further reducing frequency. We believe that this guest, with household income below $100,000, represents about 40% of our total sales, and based on our data, is dining out less often due to concerns about the economy and inflation. A particularly challenged cohort is the 25 to 35-year-old age group. We believe that this trend is not unique to Chipotle and is occurring across all restaurants, as well as many discretionary categories."

@milkkarten @tryramp Sadly, many B2B companies wouldn't attempt this because its high risk with very shaky ROI story 😭 great move if you're VC-backed and have money to blow

I talked to the @tryramp team about last week's big stunt with Kevin from "The Office". The campaign has generated over 112M views across platforms and inspired tweets like "i can feel the b2b marketing playbook being rewritten in real time". Here's what I learned:

@she_llac No legitimate company would greenlight a campaign with zero ROI potential. Also given how corporate marketing works, he probably would have needed 10+ years before spearheading any major marketing initiative on this scale.

it's a tragedy he founded his own company instead of becoming the director of marketing for some actually worthwhile product