There's no business like dough business

没有比面食生意更妙的生意了。

Planet Money

2026-06-03

27 分钟
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Have you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might one Starbucks or McDonald’s or Wetzel’s Pretzels sometimes be built so close to another? Are they friends or competitors? And how can that possibly be profitable? Today’s show is one such example. Our pals at Hyperfixed got a knotty question we just had to help them untangle: Why are there so many Wetzel’s Pretzels so close to one another at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station? To find out, Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi followed the dough all the way to the top. His journey led him to a jolly pretzel executive, a franchisee with a deep-fried American dream, and a brush with mall security. Support: Planet Money+Read:  Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator round-up newsletterFollow:  InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebookThis episode was hosted by Alex Goldman and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. Hyperfixed is produced and edited by Emma Courtland, Amor Yates, Sari Soffer Sukenik and Tori Dominguez Peak.  The music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and Alex Goldman. It was engineered by Tony Williams. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. The Planet Money version was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and edited by Jess Jiang. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.  See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
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  • This is Planet Money from NPR.

  • A few months back, Planet Money got a little economic bat signal from our friends over at the podcast Hyperfixed.

  • Hyperfixed is hosted by one of my longtime favorite radio heads, Alex Goldman.

  • He was previously one of the hosts of Reply All.

  • And for each episode, Hyperfixed takes on listener problems, big and small, and sets out to solve them.

  • Yeah, we get...

  • Questions as small as a listener said, "Hey, my favorite bakery shut down and now I can no longer

  • get the cake that I love." So we got Claire Saffitz, baker extraordinaire, to help us figure out the recipe.

  • Love that question.

  • And we also get questions like, "Should I have children?"

  • Which, as you might imagine, is a more difficult question to answer.