#business

A Planet Money episode, hosted by Jeff Guo, that visits the Louisville beverage-development lab Flavorman. It gives three reasons the drink aisle keeps growing: advances in flavor science, new functional ingredients, and much lower barriers to manufacturing.

The manufacturing story is the core of the episode. Canning lines used to require a full-truckload minimum of about 12,000 cases. Then the craft-beer boom left thousands of small breweries with spare canning capacity, and falling alcohol consumption has added even more, so upstart brands can now do small test runs. A smaller detail: a stinky-cheese aroma compound turns up in ripe strawberries, and without it a berry flavor tastes flat.

Business History podcast episode on Jay Gould, a 19th-century 'Robber Baron' who built his fortune through stock manipulation and bribery rather than producing goods or services, prompting reforms aimed at preventing similar figures from gaining power.

Michael Girdley traces Taco Bell's rise from a single 1962 stand to a $15.6 billion franchise empire, showing how an eight-ingredient menu and a cook-nothing-in-store assembly model (K-Minus) produced margins that beat McDonald's and a late-night "fourth meal" window no competitor has cracked.