We are in the last few days of our subscriber drive before we launch Ravenous on Wednesday, May 6. We are dropping two longform stories that day, one by Jaya Saxena about pay what you can restaurants and one by Amy McCarthy that’s going to be a surprise. The next day, there will be a conversation between myself and a notable Austin pitmaster about the new school of Texas barbecue. There will be a little something on Friday too, but we’re also keeping that as a surprise.
At that point, we’ll be switching (most of) our content to be for paid subscribers only. We plan to make two stories free and accessible to everyone each month, but those who are unpaid subscribers — you are going to start seeing paywalls more often. I understand for many of you (and me too), everything is more expensive and budgets are tight. If you want to hang around and see if the kind of coverage we plan to do is news you want to pay for, that’s valid.
But if you’ve just been thinking about subscribing and haven’t pulled the trigger yet, this is the time. We can even offer a last-minute discount on an annual subscription. Either way, thank you for being a part of our subscriber drive. We’re beyond excited that you’re part of the Ravenous community and cannot wait to show you the stories we’ve been working on.
The Enshittification of Everything (Bagels)
A few weeks back, The New York Times ran a story about how venture capitalists are entering the bagel business. It’s been on my mind this week as PopUp Bagels opened an outpost in Dallas, and the hype has been out of control with long lines queuing up to grip, rip, and dip these bagels. The gimmick is, they don’t halve them for you. Edgy. The chain also made its Chicago debut in April with influencers sent QR codes to identify themselves, thus enabling them to jump long lines of customers so they could make social media posts thanks to a well-orchestrated, if not formulaic, PR blitz.
It’s exactly why we at Ravenous believe that it’s important to know where your food comes from. The company behind PopUp is a VC firm called Stripes, and they’re currently also involved in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which jumped on a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense (after Athropic said the government’s intended use of the technology would “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values”). To be clear, that still makes Anthropic, at best, the lesser of two evils.
Stripes is also a backer in Erewhon, the cultiest of all grocery chains, the ones who turned groceries in Southern California and New York into luxury items with luxury prices while marketing $20 celebrity smoothies. It previously worked with Austin-based Siete to take the grain-free Mexican food brand from a family-owned home kitchen to a $1.2 billion acquisition by PepsiCo that finds it in supermarkets across the country; not an inherently bad thing, just a thing that speaks to the kind of scale that VC money insists on. Grubhub, Just Salad, and Levain are also in Stripes' portfolio. PopUp is collaborating with another private equity darling, Portillo's, on a giardiniera schmear exclusive to the Chicago market.
The NYT offers a solid breakdown of why VC is coming for bagels (TL;DR: Advances in baking technology, consumer trends, and social virality are making it a scalable business).
What I’ve been thinking about this week is the responsibility to report on who makes your… everything. Bagels, tacos, bratwurst, whatever. The intention and money behind it is an important part of the machinery. Dallas happens to have some really great local bagelmakers, surprising though that might be for the rest of the world to hear. Most awarded is Starship Bagel, which began in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville and, just a few years later, won Best Bagel at BagelFest in NYC in 2023 and 2025, and named a James Beard Awards Outstanding Bakery semifinalist in 2025. There are also local favorites Shug’s and Lubbie’s, built and invested in by folks who have long histories in the city’s hospitality industry.
PopUp Bagels already has plans for a second location in Dallas, which is part of a VC-backed 12-store expansion across Texas, touching Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. The chain is also planning 25 openings around Chicago, according to a press release. The point of this is to compete with and ultimately take business away from locally owned bagel shops. Two years down the line, when consumer sentiment wanes and bagels aren’t as popular for whatever reason, which places will be left standing? Will the money you spent on a bagel go toward keeping the doors open at a business owned by someone who lives here and works in your city? Or does it enrich the guy who went viral by doing something kooky with his food on socials, who lives in LA or NYC, who doesn’t know anything about your city or the food scene, and who may or may not give a shit about bagels at all — he’s in it for the growth capital?
Writing about food isn’t just writing about if it tastes good, or if the bagels are served hot and whether or not they cut them. It isn’t a press release letting locals know a thing exists. It matters just as much what the business plan is and makes money from that food. That’s part of the context readers need to know what bagel to stand in line for. That’s true whether you’re in Dallas, Detroit, or Des Moines.
🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
• Thank you for the love, Axios Chicago and Monica Eng, and for the “hungry for more” pun.
• Ashok really brings the big names in, and got THEE Sarah Spain to give us a shout out.
• Author, essayist, and podcaster Ann Friedman loved our tuna tostada story — her weekly newsletter is a fun follow.
• This week we published a profile of, er, well, me (awkward). AMA, I guess?
• We also dropped a round-up of the best things we’ve eaten so far this year, and I want Amy to know the chicken nugz are still on the menu at Rainbowcat after Misti Norris tried to take them off last fall because I threw a hot flash rave there and made them come back. The kitchen told me nugz were literally flying out of the kitchen too fast to count. Brought them back as a permanent menu item after that.
