The office lunch of champions, aka “bowl slop,” seems to be on shaky ground: Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and Cava have all been shedding customers as if an ebola outbreak were camping out in their server stations.

Mediterranean fare purveyor Cava, which went public in 2023, was the latest fast-food chain to release a disappointing Q2 earnings report. Although EPS came in above expectations, revenue fell short at $280.6 million, lower than the anticipated $285.6 million. This miss was chalked up to lackluster same-store sales growth of 2.1% year over year, which fell well below Wall Street’s projections of 6.1%. Cava also cut back its full-year forecast for same-store sales expansion from its prior 6% to 8% down to 4% to 6%.

This unsavory buffet of numbers caused Cava shares to plummet 16.57% today, bringing the stock down 37.49% in 2025. The competition is doing just as poorly: same-store sales at both Chipotle and Sweetgreen suffered back-to-back losses in Q1 and Q2, which has sent their stocks sliding by 27.92% and 70.04% year to date, respectively.

Which begs the question: What’s happening to the former kings of fast casual dining?

Not so bullish on bowls

Although the bowl slop heyday in 2023 and 2024 served up a smorgasbord of strong earnings and bountiful stock gains, Americans have begun inspecting their bowls with much more suspicion.

Chipotle got creamed on social media with accusations that its portions were shrinking, even though the chain denied it. Salad lovers are also less sweet on Sweetgreen due to its rising prices, since, let’s face it, why pay $16 for a pile of lettuce when you can order a $3 Snack Wrap at McDonald’s instead?

Consumers are also tightening their belts amid a weakening job market and hazy economy. “Food away from home prices are still rising faster than groceries, so lunch is a prime discretionary splurge to get axed,” chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors Michael Ashley Schulman told Brew Markets (don’t worry, he is not related to Cava CEO Brett Schulman). “If you’re a $14 to $18 bowl chain that’s also asking for a tip, you’re fighting gravity while value menus run a promo arms race and McDonalds’’s releases adult Happy Meals.”

Time to build a better bowl: To survive, bowl chains are scrambling for ways to cut back by investing in robotic bowl-building assembly lines.

Sweetgreen has incorporated its Infinite Kitchen makeline technology in a handful of restaurants so far, which has lowered labor costs. Meanwhile, Chipotle is road-testing its own robotic makeline by tech firm Hyphen. Cava, not to be left behind, has hopped on the Hyphen bandwagon, and plans to roll out automated makelines in the coming quarters.

Time will tell whether a robot can build a cheaper, more uniformly-sized bowl slop. But do they deserve a tip?—JD

🟢 What’s up

• Webtoon Entertainment exploded 81.20% after the online comic platform reported a surprise profit, strong sales, and a new deal with Disney.
• Small stocks that pivot into crypto treasuries continue to pop—and the latest is 180 Life Sciences Corp., which rose 4.49% on the news that it will rebrand itself as ETHZilla in honor of its $350 million hoard of Ethereum.
• SailPoint popped 5.01% after JPMorgan analysts upgraded the identity management software provider from “neutral” to “overweight” now that its IPO lockup period is over.
• Paramount Skydance skyrocketed 36.74% after the newly merged entertainment company became the latest meme stock.
• Hillenbrand jumped 12.63% on reports from Bloomberg that the plastics producer may sell itself.
• Brinkers International gained 1.61% after strong international revenue buoyed the Chili’s parent company to an earnings beat.

What’s down

• KinderCare Learning plunged 22.38% after the early childhood education provider missed estimates for both sales and profits last quarter.
• Circle paid the price for going public, with one-time charges for its IPO giving the stablecoin company a bigger net loss than expected. Shares tumbled 6.15%.
• CoreWeave lost 20.83% after the AI data center company beat revenue estimates but fell well short of profit forecasts and warned of high expenses ahead.
• H&R Block needs its tax refund ASAP: The tax prep service dropped 3.07% after fiscal guidance for the coming year came in weaker than expected.

Wall Street got itself into a tizzy a few months ago as bankers fretted that an IPO pipeline clogged by tariff fears and private market money would mean lower bonus checks at the end of the year. But those sweater vest-loving sigmas can rest easy: Crypto is carrying the IPO industry on its back.

The latest and greatest crypto stock making its public debut is Bullish, a crypto exchange and the parent company of crypto news site CoinDesk. Bullish has actually tried and failed to go public once already, but now the company is striking while the iron is hot, capitalizing on crypto’s big moment as support from the White House pushes prices to new heights.

Bullish follows in the footsteps of several other crypto companies that went public in the last few months, including eToro, Galaxy Digital, and Circle. Like those debuts, Bullish seems poised for strong gains: Shares rose 89.19% in its first day of trading.

That will only encourage more companies in this space to go public: Crypto startup BitGo and crypto exchange Gemini have both confidentially filed for IPOs. The data shows that success begets success, with great IPOs leading to even greater IPOs. That’s good news for early investors and Wall Street bankers alike.—MR

If you noticed a disturbance in the Force last night, that was the jubilance of thousands of teenage girls (and adults) celebrating the announcement of Taylor Swift’s newest album: The Life of a Showgirl.

The FBI trainees Swifties have long suspected the star was gearing up for a big announcement, and their sleuthing proved correct when Swift announced the album on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast, New Heights. But the Swifties aren’t just an unavoidable presence on the internet—they’re becoming a powerful force in the economy, too.

Just look at “The Eras Tour”, which generated a staggering $2 billion in ticket sales during the course of its year-plus run. The new album is expected to be another lucrative endeavor: Traders on prediction market Kalshi foresee a 53% chance that Swift’s album stays #1 for at least 10 weeks straight.

So, how can investors get in on the action? Turns out, there are a number of stocks that could benefit from Swift-induced mania.

For one, the record company producing Swift’s music, Universal Music Group, will get a share of the revenue from the new songs, Morningstar analysts pointed out. Swift’s music alone brings in between $40 million and $80 million annually for the company, according to Wolfe Research data cited by Barron’s. The stock rose 1.11% today.

Don’t forget that all those Swifties will be streaming music from streaming service Spotify, where Swift is the most-streamed artist ever, with over 106 billion streams. If she tours this album, ticket seller Live Nation Entertainment could get a boost as well as Swifties shell out big money to see their bestie live.

Blank Space Check

But the power of Swifties goes further than just buying albums and pushing stocks higher. Analysts even coined a term for the impact “The Eras Tour” had on the cities it visited: Swiftnomics.

The US Travel Association estimated that the total economic impact of the tour, including travel, hotel stays, and other indirect spending, likely surpassed $10 billion.

The lucrative tour enabled Swift to make a bold business move in May: buying back her entire masters collection from private equity firm Shamrock Capital for roughly $360 million.

Clearly T. Swizzle is interested in investing—maybe it's time for her to subscribe to this newsletter and become a financial whiz herself.—LB

• Amazon debuted same-day delivery of fresh, perishable groceries to 1,000 cities across the country.
• 11 top candidates will be interviewed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
• President Trump warned President Putin of “very severe consequences” if the Russian leader doesn’t agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine later this week.
• Oracle announced job cuts in its cloud infrastructure unit, a key bellwether of AI demand.
• Apple is planning to make a comeback in the AI market, according to Bloomberg.
• The national debt rose above $37 trillion, sooner than economists anticipated.

CPI is in the books, but tomorrow we get its weird cousin PPI, which focuses on inflation at the wholesale level. We’ll also get the latest weekly initial jobless claims report—and you should enjoy any labor market numbers while you can, because President Trump’s nominee for the head of the BLS, E.J. Antoni, has touted the idea of cutting the monthly jobs report entirely.

As for earnings, we’ll hear from JD.com, Applied Materials, Advance Auto Parts, and Deere & Co. But there’s also one other fashion-forward stock worth watching.

• OK, so Birkenstock may not come to mind when you think of high fashion. But the maker of comfy shoes does have some redeeming qualities, such as 19% revenue growth last quarter on the back of a strong international presence. The company is rapidly expanding in China, where sales more than doubled last quarter, while keeping margins healthy thanks to a focus on premium products. That’s a winning combination that can offset even the ugliest shoes.Consensus: $0.67 EPS, revenue of $739.49.