A wild week for billionaires just got wilder: Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to a cage fight with Elon Musk. This is not a business metaphor; the social media titans actually want to fight in a cage. It started with Elon challenging Zuck in a Twitter reply, which Zuck then reposted with the caption: “Send a location.”

Both sides have since doubled down. Loser acquires Yahoo?

On an unrelated note: If you are a bartender, bar owner, or bar manager, can you please respond to this email and let us know where? We are planning a series of nationwide happy hours, and want to host them with the Roca community. Let's ride!

In today's edition:

• Lab-grown meat for sale

• Aaron Rodgers’ psychedelics conference

• Crazy Rich Feta

 🔑 Key Stories

Mormon Cricket Infestation

Millions of crickets have descended on parts of Nevada, covering the area with a pungent smell

• Mormon crickets are native to the American West. They are actually a type of wingless insect called katydids, but look and sound similar to crickets

• Mormon crickets usually emerge during spring, lay eggs, and die. But some eggs lay dormant for years, and this year an unusually large number emerged

• Millions have since descended on Nevada towns, coating streets and leaving a smell that some have compared to rotting flesh. Residents have used plows, pressure washers, and more to clear them

Dig Deeper

• This year’s swarm is part of a years-long outbreak that some entomologists – scientists who study insects – have blamed on a severe drought. Outbreaks can last 5-21 years but typically only become an issue in early spring and summer

Lab-Grown Chicken for Sale

US regulators approved the sale of lab-grown chicken on Wednesday

• Lab-grown meat involves growing animal cells into animal tissue that resembles meat. On Wednesday, for the first time, the US Department of Agriculture allowed 2 companies to sell lab-grown chicken in the US

• Those companies – Upside Foods and Good Meat – can now sell their products in the US under the label “cell-cultivated chicken.” Restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, DC have already ordered the meat

• It may be several years before the companies begin selling lab-grown chicken in grocery stores

Dig Deeper

• Upside can currently produce 50,000 pounds of meat annually but says it will scale up to 400,000; Good Meat hasn’t specified its capabilities. For comparison, the US produces about 50B pounds of chicken each year

• While lab-grown chicken's price has been falling, it still costs several times as much as normal chicken

Kids Can’t Math

New data show the largest drop in 50+ years for math scores among US 13-year-old students

• The “Nation’s Report Card” is a government test that tracks 8th-graders’ performance in various subjects. On Wednesday, it released data on math and reading scores for the first time since 2020

• Between 2020 and 2022, 13-year-olds’ math scores – which have declined since 2012 – fell by the largest margin in 50+ years. Lower achievers saw the steepest drop

• Reading scores also fell significantly, although less than math scores. 13-year-olds’ math scores are now at 1990 levels; reading scores are at 2004 levels

Dig Deeper

• The US’ education secretary said the results confirm “that the pandemic [had] a devastating impact on students’ learning.” He said it will take “years of effort and investment to reverse the damage.” Previous releases have shown similar testing declines among other age groups

Fake Priest Bust

A California taco restaurant will pay $145k in fines after federal investigators found they hired a fake priest to elicit “confessions” from their employees

• In 2021, the Department of Labor began investigating Taqueria Garibaldi – a chain of 3 restaurants – over allegations it wasn’t paying its workers overtime

• While looking into that, investigators learned that owners had used a fake priest to get “get the sins out” from workers and asked them “if they had stolen from their employer, been late for work, [or] had done anything to harm their employer.” Investigators also alleged that the owners lied about overtime wages and stole tips

• The owners agreed to pay $145k in fines to settle

Dig Deeper

• “As soon as the confession started, I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions, where I would tell a priest about the sins I wanted to confess,” one employee said. “The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange”

• Investigators haven’t identified the “priest,” but he was reportedly friends with an owner

🍿 Popcorn

ICYMI

• 20,000 dBs under the sea: The US Coast Guard detected noises in the underwater region where the Titanic submersible likely went missing. They are searching an area ~2x the size of Connecticut

• Down, set, hallucinate: New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers spoke at a national psychedelics conference to share his “radically life-changing” experience doing ayahuasca

• Roaring 2020s: A Beverly Hills estate from the 1930s is on the market for $250M, which would make it the most expensive home sale ever. A NYC penthouse holds the current record of $240M

Wildcard

• Parking lot justice: Little Liberty, the mini Statue of Liberty formerly belonging to NYC’s Upper West Side, has relocated to a museum parking lot in an Illinois suburb of St. Louis

• Worldwide leader in Slam: ESPN has finalized a deal with Slamball for its 2023 and 2024 media rights. SlamBall is a trampoline version of basketball that last aired in the early 2000s

• Billy Madison, don’t get ideas: Taiwanese parents have accused a preschool of drugging their kids with addictive cough syrups. 8 students have reportedly tested positive for psychoactive drugs

👇 What do you think?

Today's Question:

What is the most useful skill a person can have?

Reply to this email with your answers!

See yesterday's results below the Wrap! 

🌯 Roca Wrap

Ike Grigoropoulos, Ted Xenohristos, and Dimitri Moshovitis met when they were 6.

The children of Greek immigrants, they grew up in a tight-knit Greek community in a Maryland suburb, just outside Washington, DC.

The trio went their separate ways as they grew up. One studied accounting, another dropped out of the University of Maryland, and a third dropped out of high school to go to culinary school.

Food was a key part of each of their lives.

“There’s not anything we do in our lives that food isn’t somehow incorporated into it,” one of them said in 2018. “I feel like my whole life revolved around food,” said another.

By their mid-20s, the trio were all working in the restaurant business in Maryland. The culinary-trained one was a cook; the other 2 were working as waiters. The trio took out a $30,000 loan, and in 2006, they opened a Mediterranean restaurant – Cava Mezze – in the DC suburb of Rockville, Maryland.

The restaurant was furnished with chairs from Target, a fake brick wall, and used kitchen equipment. Instead of computer software, they relayed orders with Post-it notes. To keep it going in the early days, the founders stopped paying rent, maxed out their credit cards, and borrowed from family.

“My mom cried for 2 weeks when I told her I was going to open a restaurant with these guys and quit my job,” one of the founders said in a 2018 interview. “I don’t think any immigrant parents come over and think, I can’t wait to work my butt off so my kids can wash dishes,” said another.

But the trio wasn’t washing dishes for long.

The restaurant – which served “meze,” Mediterranean small plates – was a hit. By 2008 it had expanded to 4 more locations.

Customers couldn’t get enough, though, and they were soon buying Cava’s hummus and other dips by the pound. When the restaurant closed at night, its staff would form a makeshift assembly line and pack dips into containers, sealing them with a blow dryer so it was ready for the next day. In 2008, they began selling those dips to local Whole Foods stores.

Around that time the trio brought on a fourth partner – a former investment banker who sought to turn Cava into a fast-casual Mediterranean chain. To do so, the company raised $2.65M from investors in 2011 and opened a “Cava Mezze Grill” – later just Cava – in Bethesda, Maryland.

Again, it was a hit: They expanded to 5 fast-casual Cava restaurants in 2012; to 22 in 2016; and to 75 by 2018. That year, with the money flowing in, Cava bought Zoës Kitchen – a Mediterranean food chain with 250 stores – for $300M.

Cava replaced Zoës outlets with its own and expanded aggressively. By 2021, it had 133 locations and a $1.3B valuation. Today, Cava has 263 restaurants; Zoës Kitchen no longer even has a website.

Last Thursday, Cava went public in the US’ 6th-biggest IPO of 2023. The company sold more than 14M shares for $22 each – netting $318M. The stock immediately doubled, giving it one of the best opening days for a US IPO since 2021. Cava says it will use the money to expand further and plans to have 1,000+ restaurants within a decade.

Can Maryland’s Greek trio pull it off?

If you have thoughts, let us know at [email protected]!

 🌊 Roca Clubhouse

Yesterday's Poll:

First reaction to a canceled flight?
Oh well, stuff happens: 12%
Despair: 14%
Frustration: 64%
Rage: 10%

Yesterday's Question:

How do you define free speech? Are there any exceptions?

Beth: "Social media has made free speech murky at best. RFK’s interview being removed is an example. Vaccines especially the Covid vaccine have become a battlefield with only one side being able to speak. Give people a chance to decide for themselves what to do. People who are against vaccines are not permitted to post on Instagram or Facebook. Try it and see what happens."

Ron from Grapevine, Texas: "Free Speech exceptions - do not allow false comments on any platform that collects advertising money. Post all the false stuff you want in your advertising free site.”

Bob from Jacksonville, Florida: "Free speech is unfettered speech! There are no exceptions”

William from Wausau, Wisconsin: “If it doesn't call for physical harm to a real person, no matter how false it is, it's free speech”

Joan from San Francisco, California: “This topic has a tendency to be complex and politically charged, however I feel it comes down to (like most things) common sense. I believe free speech is having the opportunity to say what you believe or feel without fear of punishment/retribution. However one must also take responsibility for those words if you don’t THINK before you speak. This is what my kids were taught when they were little: T (is it True?) – H (Is it Helpful?) – I (Is it Inspiring?) – N (is it Necessary?) – K (is it Kind?). Answer No to these questions, keep it to yourself. Pretty simple really.”

🧠 Final Thoughts

Have any Roca Riders done van life, or suped up a car or van for an extended trip? We are hitting the road soon. If you have done so, let us know your advice!

See you all soon,

—Max and Max