The Best One Yet
👙 “Final Hoot” — Hooters’ Re-hooterization. Facebook’s OG makeover. Canada’s WWII housing solution.
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
The Hooters founders are buying it outta bankruptcy… but did you know Hooters once had an Airline?Facebook is going back to the OG version… Because the Social Network became a Stranger Network.Canada’s using a WWII playbook to fix their housing crisis… and it’s inspired by Long Island and Everything Bagels.$AAPL $META $EATWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… 📱iPhone: The Device Steve Jobs Didn’t Want to Build. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Susper Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What happened to Hooters and why did they file for bankruptcy?
That's all it took. Well, Jack and I put our strategy hats on, and famed fashion designer Virgil Abloh, he was famous for this concept. Give the customer 97% of what they know, but just change up 3% to make it feel novel. Hooters did that, and it worked. But then they went way beyond the 3% change when it came to the airlines and the casinos.
Jack, turning an airplane into a sports bar, that's more than a 3% change. That is a 300% change. Too much. So now Hooters is returning to their original 3% innovation. A regular sports bar, but 3% more unrefined. Because the way we see it, Virgil Abloh's 3% rule of innovation applies to sports bars as much as it does to sneakers.
For our second story, to solve the housing crisis, Canada whipped out a World War II era plan. Canada's Department of Building Homes may actually be the perfect plan for America. Well, Jack, if we're going to talk World War II plans, let's go back to 1945, back when Canada had a real serious housing crisis, man.
Soldiers returning home from war needed to start their new lives, but they needed a roof over their heads first. Well, fast forward to today and Canada's new prime minister says we are facing the same housing crisis now. But not for soldiers. Right. For everyone. Boom. Here is the new goal for Canada's new PM. Double the number of homes that are built annually in the country to 500,000.
500,000 homes a year in Canada. That's enough to fit 21,000 Vancouver Canuck hockey teams. Maybe it's the maple syrup talking here, Jack. But you know what? We could use some of that World War II housing planning down here in America as well. I mean, we've been saying on this pod for years, build, baby, build.
We have.
Because both the United States and Canada have decades of underbuilding that simply hasn't kept up with our growing populations. Check your bank account. Both the US and Canada spend way too much of our paychecks on rent or mortgages. The high price of housing, in our opinion, is the biggest source of anxiety, full stop, in our country. Which is why we saw this story and we had to cover it.
Canada is creating a, and I feel like we need a horn announcement here, Jack. Department of Building Homes. It is a wartime plan to cut time and cost of building a home. Now, the name of the new entity is actually Build Canada Homes, and it's going to act like a housing developer. Now, they're going to do the expected stuff.
They're going to give incentives to builders, and they're going to give tax breaks to developers to build more homes. Okay, but Jack, what's the key really interesting thing that they're also doing over there? They're pumping 17 billion US dollars into specifically factory-built houses. Factory-built houses. Yetis, that's the plan up in Canada. But Jack, Am I wrong?
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