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Sep 10 6 tweets 5 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The Uncrustables brand is somehow headed for $1B in annual sales and its timeline is wild:

▫️1995: Two dads in North Dakota invent frozen crustless PB&J sandwiches and sell them to the local school district
▫️1998: Acquired by Smuckers for $1m
▫️1999: A US patent is issued for a “sealed crustless sandwhich”
▫️2004: Sales hit ~$30m
▫️2008: US Patent Office rescinds the patent for a “sealed crustless sandwhich”
▫️2021: Smuckers invests $1.1B to build a plant in Alabama
▫️2022: Sales hit $500m+ and the brand launches meat, cheese and taco versions
▫️2023: Smuckers plans to put real marketing push behind brand to get to $1B (previously was word-of-mouth because it didn’t have factories to meet demand)

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This patent filing is absolutely demented:

“A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly. The inventive device includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween. The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter.”





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Alright, I gotta give Smuckers some due.

— You have to create the Uncrustables so it thaws in an exact time frame for the kid’s snack time at school
— Smuckers said it took a decade to get bread just right to prevent leaks
— Smuckers is making 4.5m Uncrustables a day

Link 1:
Link 2:

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Just asked ChatGPT — via my research app — to recommend Uncrustables brand extensions to get that next $1B.

Suggested Banh Mi Uncrustables! You’re welcome Smuckers. Bearly.AI

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The argument Smuckers tried making to keep the patent was on how it sealed the sandwhich edges.

The legal language is gold: unlike pie crust or ravioli, Uncrustables are made without “commingling the two bread slices into an amorphous homogeneous mass.”: wsj.com/articles/SB111…
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More from @TrungTPhan

Aug 30
The making of “Under Pressure” was total serendipity.

In 1981, Queen and David Bowie were recording separate projects at Mountain Studio — which was owned by Queen — in Montreux, Switzerland.

The group’s producer David Richards popped over to Bowie and asked if he wanted to jam. They all got boozed and decided to make a song together.

Queen drummer Roger Taylor had penned some lyrics but Bowie
took the songwriting lead and sprinkled his magic.

The “Under Pressure” collaboration was an instant hit when it came out in October 1981 (author’s note: this song goes hard AF).

However, Bowie never got to perform the song live with legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

They were both present at the Live Aid Concert in 1985, but Bowie wasn’t able to jump onto the Queen set.

In 1992, Bowie did get to perform a live event with Queen for a Freddy Mercury Tribute concert (Annie Lennox sang Mercury’s part).

This video stitches those two performances to show Bowie and Mercury singing on stage “together”.

Legends.
Shoutout to Anna Crecco for the mashup:

And here’s Bowie talking about the mash-up (“totally spontaneous”):

Here’s a roundup of David Bowie’s futuristic calls on:

— The internet
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Aug 24
This is the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan.

The 16-storey office building has a highway running through the middle of it (floors 5-7).

Its wild design is due to a legal battle in the mid-1980s between real estate developers and the local government.

The landowners planned to redevelop the area but Osaka’s government had designated part of the site for a ~150 mile network of highways called the Henshin Expressway.

Neither party budged and a 5-year negotiation ensued. In 1989, Osaka — which is Japan’s 3rd largest city by population (Tokyo, Yokohama) — revised various development laws and building codes to let a highway pass through a tower.

The Gate Tower Building was finished in 1992 with the following compromises:

▫️The Expressway is the official tenant of Floors 5-7
▫️ Office building elevators skip those floors (only go to 1-4 and 8-16)
▫️ The highway is its own structure and held up by separate pillars (doesn’t touch the building)

Gate Tower is surprisingly un-noisy because the floors and windows and are sound proof.

In sum: Japan’s land use game is next level.
Wiki has good background:

And the “Only in Japan” YouTube channel did an on-the-ground tour of the building (and drove some goofy vehicle onto the expressway: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_Towe…

While we’re on the topic of Japan, here is something I wrote about Hello Kitty.

The famous Sanrio brand has generated more lifetime revenue ($89B) than James Bond, Marvel and Spider-Man combined ($75B).

Breakdown of its licensing business here: readtrung.com/p/hello-kittys…
Read 16 tweets
Aug 17
The foundation under Venice is fascinating.

There is the equivalent of 10 million tree trunks under the Italian city.

At first glance, wood is an inferior option to stronger materials.

But it has proven resilient since 5th century AD, when the wood was first gathered from from Northern Italy and the Balkans (leading to mass deforestation in some areas).

How? Wooden piles are submerged and buried deep in the seabed’s clay, which does two things:

1️⃣ No oxygen: Bacteria rots wood but it needs oxygen to survive and there is none where the wooden trunks are buried.

2️⃣ Salt water: Exposure to salt water for hundreds of years has hardened the wood into a stone-like material.

On top of the wooden piles are a platform made of wooden planks. On top of that is a water-resistant layer of marbles that structures are built on.

And that’s how Venice — which is 118 small islands linked by bridges, walkways and canals — was built in a swampy lagoon.
Flooding has been a threat from the beginning and water levels have risen 6ft in part ~1600 years.

So, Venice spent past 40 years and $8B+ to build a flood prevention dam system.

I wrote about that engineering achievement — called MOSE — here: readtrung.com/p/italy-built-…
I went to Venice in September 2019. Ate a ton of squid ink pasta.

My only advice: if you travelling with kids, it’s worth paying up for the water taxi.

Anyways, took these two photos on said water taxi: https://t.co/VXqZcxLGRKreadtrung.com/p/italy-built-…
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Aug 11
Trader Joe’s is an incredible business.

Its sales per square foot ($2000+) blows away other grocers: 2x more than Whole Foods and 4x more than Walmart or Kroger. Image
FYI. Dropping a full deep dive on Trader Joe’s for my newsletter tomorrow including why its Garlic Naan is the greatest invention since the internet.

Sub here: https://t.co/VFSFxlSXSNreadtrung.com
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Obviously, the other grocers do way more total sales volume ($B, 2022)

— Walmart ($611B)
— Costco ($227B)
— Kroger ($148B)
— Whole Foods ($17B)
— Trader Joe’s ($16B)

Anyways, sub here (and enjoy this updated chart with Apple and Tiffany’s for no reason): https://t.co/NE95P2QPC2readtrung.com
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Read 6 tweets
Aug 8
In “Oppenheimer”, General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) doesn’t get a ton of screen time.

From the film, you know he can make anything happen but don’t see many specific examples.

Here is one: Groves’ team negotiated with the US Treasury to borrow 13,000+ tons of silver (~$8B in… https://t.co/c1EFpbSyKKtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Collecting all my notes for “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”…

…and will be dropping highlights in my newsletter: https://t.co/tcF6UMBVc9bit.ly/3NthDrq
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Another excerpt here on Oppenheimer as a lab director: https://t.co/U2yQXkM83hamazon.com/Making-Atomic-…
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Read 6 tweets
Aug 7
McKinsey telling AT&T that cell phones would be a “niche” market probably cost the company over $12B. Image
PS. Here is a collection of bad tech predictions from internet, mobile chips, music streaming, smart phones and more (along with the rationales behind them; some are pretty defensible).

Read here: https://t.co/IY5y0C3oWjbit.ly/42CKCgK
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Here was McKinsey’s rationale on the cell phone prediction. Basically assumed no improvement on hardware or cellular service: https://t.co/EfbRAbSedheconomist.com/special-report…
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