Hello!

Today we’re covering…

• The Cheesecake Factory's year

• A pizza robot army, 1,000 strong

• Two million unicorns in one weekend

Read on…

3 Numbers

1,000

Number of automated pizza machines that California Pizza Kitchen plans to deploy and operate nationwide over the next three years. Restaurant vending machines are increasingly commonplace, but CPK is doing something here that’s a bit unique: its machines are actually cooking pizzas in 90 seconds via a TurboChef-powered unit. (The machines are already live at Hartsfield-Jackson, Boston Logan, and a handful of other airports.)

$240 million

Amount raised by the restaurant tech company Owner, bringing its total valuation to $2.3 billion. Owner, which primarily works with independent restaurants, plans to use the funds to help its customers execute marketing campaigns via custom-built AI agents. It also recently launched a POS system.

2 million

Unicorn Frappuccinos sold across Starbucks' North American company-operated stores over a single two-day window (Aug. 15 and 16). Starbucks last sold the drink in 2017 (a moment of popular, albeit divisive virality that Anthony Bourdain called “the perfect nexus of awfulness”), and this month’s campaign was also a mega-hit for the chain: Saturday, Aug. 15 became the biggest company-operated sales day in Starbucks’ North American history, with Placer.ai clocking traffic that day at 28.5% above a typical Saturday and 44.3% above the 2026 daily average.

The Big Story

A friend sent me this tweet last week. I judged him a bit because I thought he was sending me fake crap.

Turns out, yeah, it’s dead-on. Nvidia, in the middle of the largest capital buildout in the history of computing, is up somewhere between 12% and 18% depending on the day. CAKE closed Friday near $112 after setting an all-time high of $118.46 on Aug. 13. Its 52-week low was $43.07.

The comparison is unfair, obviously — Nvidia's stock is having a merely normal year after years of skyrocketing growth; Cheesecake Factory is lapping a badly beaten-down base. Still, the comparison shows how much of a 180 investors have pulled on Cheesecake Factory and casual dining in general. Here are a few reasons why:

• Cheesecake’s numbers are good: Q2, reported July 28, put quarterly revenue over $1 billion for the first time in company history at $1.03 billion, up 7.7%. Adjusted EBITDA rose 18% to $118 million. Comparable sales at the namesake brand grew 5.8%, and here is the part that really matters: traffic was up 2.7%. Plus, Flower Child, the fast-casual concept under its Fox Restaurant Concepts arm, grew sales 21%. (Despite my DoorDash account’s best efforts, North Italia remains the soft spot.)

• It’s distinctive. No restaurant “consultant” would ever, EVER create a concept like the Cheesecake Factory. It began as a bakery and later bolted on the largest, most unwieldy menu in the entire industry — 250 items that cackle at the concept of the veto vote. Everything about the brand is distinctive: Close your eyes and you can immediately picture its dining room, down to the warm, 90s-esque color scheme and the wicker chairs. (One unusual way their interior design came in handy: COVID was not a barrel of laughs for the restaurant industry, but a funny thing I remember from March 2020 was Cheesecake Factory pretty much immediately saying it wasn’t paying April rent and daring its landlords to find someone else to fill a 10,000 square foot faux-Egyptian palace/Vegas casino. The ploy worked.)

• Its value proposition is strong. Restaurant sales have been odd this year and many standbys are reporting mixed results, but overall spending is actually up around 3.3%, and the dollars are increasingly finding their way to concepts like the Cheesecake Factory. Like Chili's, which smartly reframed the value conversation from being just about price, Cheesecake never confused value with being cheap. Its entrees are typically two meals in one; it sells value by the (literal) pound.

So I owe my friend an apology: he was educating me on how markets really work in 2026. Investors want protection against expensive tech stocks, and they've decided it's trading GPUs for Mac and Cheese Balls.

Elsewhere In the Headlines

• Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management take-private deal for Wendy’s is now off the table, according to a recent report from Reuters. (He has done this before.)

• I covered Dutch Bros and 7 Brew circling Salad and Go's closed stores two weeks ago. Since then, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alfredo Pérez approved a targeted auction between the two, and the pool grew from the 65 sites in the original $105 million Dutch Bros deal to roughly 130 unexpired leases, with the auction set to wrap this week.

• The last Little Blue Menu, in College Park, Maryland, converts to a traditional Chick-fil-A in early 2027, closing a five-year test-and-learn run. The concept launched in Nashville in 2021 with pizzas topped with Chick-fil-A nuggets, plus burgers, wings, onion rings, and sweet potato tots. (The Nashville store closed in 2023.)

• Taco Bell brought in Olivia Rodrigo to co-create a pink (sweet, not sour) Baja Blast.

• Chili's is opening a pop-up location on a golf course, and I want the shirt.

• McDonald's brought back Spicy Chicken McNuggets, which — if you’re feeling masochistic — can be dipped into an extra-spicy hot sauce.

• Steak ‘n Shake, covered by the WSJ: “The Midwestern Burger Chain That’s Going Full MAGA.”

Name That Chain!

You’ve got three clues to name this issue’s chain:

• It began in 1968 as a taco stand operating out of a converted travel trailer in Cheyenne, Wyoming, called The Taco House.

• Its signature side: seasoned, deep-fried potato discs with a trademarked name, served across nearly 400 locations in about 22 states.

• For 34 years, this chain owned the federal trademark on "Taco Tuesday" in every state except New Jersey. It finally surrendered the phrase in 2023, after Taco Bell and LeBron James launched a public campaign against it.

Find the answer at the bottom of the email…

Power Moves

Here are some notable recent C-suite moves:

• Tariq Hassan takes the newly created role of Wendy’s chief marketing and customer growth officer. Hassan was McDonald's U.S. chief marketing and customer experience officer.

• Jack in the Box named a new president: Taylor Montgomery arrives from Yum Brands with a Taco Bell marketing pedigree.

• Buffalo Wild Wings hired former coffee executive Ahmed Awadallah as its COO.

• Former Wendy’s US market president Pete Suerken is going back to his old gig: running the chain’s supply chain co-op.

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you again next week.

NAME THAT CHAIN ANSWER: Taco John’s