Good morning, everyone.
Christian Lee Hutson on the speakers. The tree outside my bedroom window has turned this color. I practiced restraint and closed the tab for these Phoebe Philo boots. And it only took me 36 hours to unpack my suitcase and drop off laundry. Hope your week has been off to a good start.
Today’s newsletter includes: Lots of Substack news — The Ringer expands their newsletter strategy, Liana Satenstein adds clothing designer to her résumé, and a four-year-old newsletter is acquired by Axel Springer; a new members’ club in midtown; Tribeca street simulators in stroller stores; Matthieu Blazy’s SS27 Chanel show was made possible by a machine he dreamed up (very Wallace and Gromit of him); and an anonymous restaurant blog.
Posting and browsing on the Feed Me Job Board is free.
Guys are dropping into NYC sewers, looking for gold. Sounds a little too close to S1E17 of Hey Arnold!, “The Sewer King.”
Express Checkout — a newsletter about consumer brands and founders, with over 12k readers on Substack — has been acquired by Axel Springer-owned Morning Brew. Love to see some post-summer deal heat. Express Checkout covers topics like how brands get on the shelves of Target, why Swedish candy is everywhere, and the explosion of new protein drink brands. In a “Need to know what marketing girly pitched this” media landscape, breakdowns of packaging design and CPG founder stories are candy to viewers and readers. Express Checkout co-founder Nate Rosen started writing the newsletter on beehiiv almost four years ago — before moving it to Substack, citing the benefits of Substack’s chat and feed features. I have to applaud Rosen’s TikTok strategy — he has done a great job at explaining food and packaging trends, and has probably made people who don’t work anywhere close to the CPG world interested in the business of why we buy and eat what we buy and eat. Rosen was joined by co-founder Jenna Movsowitz two years ago. Adweek reported that the deal was all cash, and Movsowitz and Rosen will become employees at Morning Brew. “We are choosing people to bring into our family in a way that makes sense, that is methodical, and that is disciplined,” Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell told Adweek. Axel Springer is on a B2B newsletter roll — earlier this year, it acquired real estate media and events company Bisnow.
One of the fastest ways that media companies like Morning Brew can grow (both their audiences and advertising businesses) is through acquisitions. We’ve seen this happen with podcasts for years, but over the next 12 months I think we’ll see an uptick in newsletter acquisitions. Recent examples include Puck acquiring Marion Maneker’s Substack newsletter Artelligence, Paramount buying Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, and financial technology company Plaid acquiring This Week in Fintech.
I reached out to Rosen and Movsowitz last night to learn more about the news:
“We’re SO excited this opportunity came our way. We weren’t looking to be acquired, but after months of conversations with Morning Brew, we knew it was the right fit, both as creator-led media and in the topics we cover. As a two-person team running this media biz for the past two years, this is the wildest, most exciting moment of our careers. To us, Morning Brew is the true pioneer of creative, engaging business media, and Express Checkout has always aspired to that same lens. We want to speak to professionals while being approachable to regular consumers at the same time. In building an audience of CPG professionals, we organically reached the ‘curious consumers’ too. These are the people who nerd out about the coolest new snacks, have a LOT to say about wellness trends, and are really annoying to grocery shop with. We can’t wait to become part of something much larger than ourselves, and to see what this means for the future of our content.”
In other Morning Brew news, Devin Emery, who had been at the company for four years, announced he is leaving the company. He had been president of Morning Brew since last year.
Why did this rice pudding map of New York City make me sad?
Liana Satenstein is designing clothes. The first thing I felt when I received the announcement email from the writer-slash-stylist-slash-great-fashion-host-of-our-time was great gratitude for her way with words. The subject line was: “I’m launching a label.” The email read: “Why am I doing this? I have spent years writing about other people and working with other labels. I finally reached the point where I Kabbalah-style exploded and decided I wanted to do my own thing. I want to sell my own product… I also want to make something saucy but still elegant enough to not get me kicked out of my local Key Foods, where I run into a certain NYT critic twice a month.” The photos were shot by Mayan Toledano, who has also recently worked with EMILY DAWN LONG and Vogue.
I texted Liana Satenstein this morning to find out about Female Founder life:
ES: As a Founder, what other businesspeople do you look up to? Either mentor-like people you’ve texted during this process or people you’ve admired from afar.
LS: I look up to my former boss who was the creative director of Vogue, Sally Singer. She always has the most sound advice and will put me in check if I ever need to be. As for people I admire from afar: Tory Burch, Norma Kamali, Eckhaus Latta…C & C California in their heyday…!
ES: If your new shirt could talk, what would she say?
LS: Do it for yourself.
The Ringer is expanding its presence on Substack. Projections by Sean Fennessey (co-host of The Big Picture podcast) launched earlier this year. Today, Bryan Curtis (who co-hosts The Press Box podcast) launched a free newsletter about media called Now They Tell Us. One would think this would be about monetizing loyal fans of The Ringer’s podcasts, but the benefit of Substack seems to be more about the platform being “a friendly place to hang out,” as Sean Fennessey puts it. The About pages on both newsletters emphasize the community benefits of Substack like chats, comment sections, and back-and-forth conversations between readers.
I want to know more about James Murdoch’s lightbulb tattoo. 💡
Anonymous restaurant reviewing has become a lost art. This morning, while reading my beloved Robb Report, I became aware of The Sushi Legend, a sushi blog by an anonymous writer. When asked about the surge of new lavish omakase spots in midtown, The Sushi Legend’s author told Robb Report, “Sure, some of the 2026 openings are exciting, but if I could wave the Elder Wand, it’d be less chalkboard omakase, more mom-and-pop okonomi.” The Sushi Legend has house rules (no albacore, no cheese). Their tagline is, “Getting mercury poisoning so you don’t have to.” Not all heroes wear capes. (Another great anonymous — albeit dormant — sushi review account if you need a lunch break scroll.)
🫐 From the Feed Me Tip Line: Imaginary Ventures-backed soft serve spot Sworl is offering Josh Pond blueberries as a topping option. As a reminder for those who don’t keep up with fruit venture side hustles, Josh Pond is Lorne Michaels’s 150-acre organic wild blueberry and goat farm in Whiting, Maine.
New York City is getting a new hotel and members’ club in a Stanford White-designed landmark building (formerly The Lambs Club). Little did I know when I went to a breakfast meeting at The Lambs Club last spring that it would be my first and last bowl of oatmeal there. The building’s second life will be in the form of The Wolseley Hotel (and The Wolseley members’ club), opening in 2027. A statement from The Wolseley’s comms team stated, “The club will bring together dining rooms, lounges, private salons, and terraces, with literary salons, hosted dinners, and performances centered around the restored Stanford White Room.” I’m pretty bored of members’ clubs, but I’m cautiously optimistic about a new hotel in midtown.
Vanessa Friedman coined a new term, athelegance, to describe Matthieu Blazy’s stretchy new material used in Chanel’s Paris Fashion Week show. The achieved look and feel was through technology – “Blazy had dreamed up a new machine that smocked organza or silk so it looked like tweed but was actually crunched together, giving the fabric so much tensile strength it acted like Lycra, stretching and moving with the body, bouncing back into the shape of a jacket, a polo shirt, a little black dress, the quintessential black skirt suit.” The result is clothes that shimmer in the corner of an Oscars after-party, but can easily fold and stretch to pack in your suitcase for the flight home. Friedman uses the word “springy” twice to describe the feeling of the clothes.
You know what must suck? Bringing a jacuzzi to your new beach house via the Shelter Island ferry. There’s a great estate sale going on this weekend for those of you who married someone who grew up going to Shelter Island and had no choice but to “buy a little place there” this year.
The Babylist showroom in Soho built a cobblestone street simulator so that parents who live in Brooklyn Heights and Tribeca can test-drive $1,500 strollers before buying. Imagineer-level store design.
We really need more Hey Arnold! references everywhere
I am dead serious when I say this that Nate and EC are one of the unshakeable pillars of the Pantheon that is the consumer startup and venture ecosystem.
There about a half dozen people/orgs who comprise the other pillars.