TBOY Newsletter · Tue Jul 21, 2026

On your 1st cup of coffee today? Your 2nd? How about numero cinco? Because the American Heart Association just said 3-5 cups a day isn’t just safe, it’s healthy: Lower rates of heart disease, heart failure, & stroke. But the fine print… that’s five 8oz cups of black coffee, not five Strawberry Coolattas (and too many energy drinks also get flagged for potential harm). Still: 5 cups a day keeps the doctor away.

Costco opened its 1st-ever standalone gas station in Southern California last month: 17K-sq feet, 40 pumps, only 2 products: unleaded or diesel (no $1.50 hot-dog-soda-combo here). Yes, Kirkland Gas is already available at many Costco locations for 5-6% cheaper than the reg stations, but Costco’s $30B in annual fuel sales could blow up with more independent gas stations (a second one is planned for Hawaii).

Meanwhile, over in Beverly Hills, 1st VC-backed gas station is coming. “Maggie’s Refuel” just raised $2M to open in 2027. No Red Bull beef jerky sausage pretzels here. Think lavender lattes & artisanal soft-serve froyo (it’s named after the owner’s French bulldog). Is the gas organic too? The funding comes from Starbucks & 7-Eleven execs chasing Millennial money.

2 totally different bets to glam up the same industry, but neither is really about gas.

The Takeaway — Retail follows the regulars.

Gas stations don’t care about your wellness trends and no sugar added diets. They are built to serve the regulars:

• The avg truck driver visits a gas station 700x/yr (~3x/workday)

• The avg regular American car driver visits 70x/yr (1/10th as much)

• And if you live on the Lower East Side w/ 3 roommates? You visit a gas station once a year for that Labor Day trip to Montauk.

That’s why gas stations serve sausage egg cheese bagels, not açai bowls. They’ve never been disrupted (until now) because retail follows the regulars. And the regulars for gas stations haven’t changed in 100 years.

America super-sized the World Cup with 104 matches — 63% more than any World Cup before it. And still 99% of tickets were sold, even with surge pricing on alllll of them. Oh, and FIFA is projecting $15B in revenue, nearly 3x than the last one in Qatar. Here’s who won, lost, and got lucky:

• Winning Brand = Adidas. With both finals teams wearing the three stripes, Adidas won its 6th World Cup of the last 10.

• Loser = Drake. The rapper bet $1.5M on Argentina to win the final.

• Luckier = Prediction Markets. 3M new gamblers (predictors?) joined Kalshi.

• Luckiest = Beer. For the 1st time in a decade, sales of ales rose 4% during the first 4 weeks of the tournament.

But the World Cup was a triumph overall. And America is now finally a soccer country:

• 50M watched USA vs Belgium, 45M watched England vs Mexico.

• Those aren’t NFL numbers, those are NFL Playoff numbers.

• The only 3 sporting events in 2025 with more viewers? The Super Bowl, AFC Championship Game, & Thanksgiving Football Game.

But the biggest receipt of all is gross… as in Gross Domestic Product. Because Americans spent 6.4% this June (and yeah, that includes the beers sold to the Scots who tapped-out Boston).

The Takeaway — When it comes to live entertainment, more is more.

The fear going into an expanded tournament was dilution: more teams, more matches, a weaker watchable product. But the increased commercialism simply gave us a bigger helping of something amazing.

The lesson travels past soccer: when the audience is hungry enough, bigger doesn’t mean worse. And we think all Big 4 sports leagues in America plus the international events will copy FIFA’s playbook: more is more.

In 1926, Coco Chanel invented the LBD (Little Black Dress). But the only shirt she’d buy her polo-playing lover? Charvet — the oldest shirt company in the world. Their 1 store in Paris has been tailoring cuffs since 1838. Napoleon wore it, so did Churchill and JFK. Now Charvet does $20M a year customizing shirts for $736 apiece out of that single shop.

• But like a good collar, it all comes full circle: Because Chanel just bought its founder’s fave men’s shirt brand for an undisclosed price.

But this isn’t just Chanel’s 1st men’s brand (which it is). Chanel has a curious pattern of acquisitions the last 10 years:

• They bought a Scottish cashmere house, a French glove-maker, a Paris hatmaker, a silversmith, a fabric mill in Italy, a custom shoemaker with one store in Paris too.

The Takeaway — As AI hits an All-Time High, art hits an All-Time-High too.

Chanel’s acquisitions acquire the thing that gets rarer as everything else gets automated: a human who can make something entirely by hand.

In a mass-market, AI world, Chanel’s betting that artistic skill is the diminishing asset. That artisanal scarcity is worth more than techie scale.

Yetis, if you’re on your 5th cup of coffee, congrats on adding another 5 years to your life (now hit us up if you’d drive out of your way for a gas station selling $12 imported ube croissants).