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The Golden State Warriors are known for their electrifying plays and superstar Stephen Curry, but now the team is pioneering a fresh gameplan: blending sports and entertainment in a way no NBA franchise has before. As the first and only NBA team with its own record label, Golden State Entertainment, the Warriors are expanding their reach with For the Soil, a new album released this week. The projectfeaturing more than a dozen Bay Area music artists, including E-40, Too $hort, Saweetie, G-Eazy, Goapele, LaRussell, and Larry Junearrives just in time for the league’s All-Star Game weekend in San Francisco. A basketball team with a record label is unheard of until now, which is a testament to the Warriors and the Bay, said P-Lo, a Filipino American rapper who produced For the Soil, a collaborative release between Golden State Entertainment and Empire, a distribution and publishing company. He will perform live during an NBA All-Star tipoff party on Thursday at Thrive City, a 11-acre community gathering space surrounding the Chase Center. This is about innovation, bringing a new idea to the table, said P-Lo, a lifelong Warriors fan who has worked with artists such as Yo Gotti, Saweetie and Kehlani. He’s no stranger to the franchise, riding his convertible car as part of the Warriors championship parade, celebrating the team’s title in 2022. We’re here to break barriers while I’m trying to process it all,” he added. “I’m grateful for this opportunity. Warriors guard Gary Payton II said he plans on listening to the album. For me, to be the first team to have a music company, or production company, its kinda cool, Payton said. P-Lo is running it, and getting it done. I know theres a lot of talented Bay Area artists behind it, so its something to look forward to and be excited about. P-Lo played a key role in bringing together the Bay Areas top artists, contributing to all nine tracks on the album. He began the process late last summer, collaborating with local talent to craft a well-rounded project. P-Lo can produce, rap and bring all these artists who are like family to him, said David Kelly, an executive with the Warriors. He spearheaded the launch of Golden State Entertainment in 2022 before the team won the championship that year. Several NBA teams have partnered with artists over the years: Drake as the global ambassador for the Raptors, Jay-Z as a former minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets, and the Miami Heat collaborating with DJ Khaled, who performed at games. The Atlanta Hawks have also embraced their citys rap scene, working with T.I., 2 Chainz, and Quavo. But an NBA team with its own record label and entertainment division? Thats where Kelly saw an opportunity for the Warriors to break new ground. He said creating a label, intersecting hip-hop and basketball made sense. Its just kind of authentic and natural to the culture, said Kelly, who joined the organization in 2011 and currently is the chief business officer of Golden State Entertainment. It seems like a lot of times people try to force them apart or mesh them together that dont make sense. But if you grew up a part of both, they naturally intertwine. Kelly first pitched the idea of the Warriors having a record label to then-president Rick Welts before bringing it to the teams owner, Joe Lacob, and co-executive chairman Peter Guber. He said the Warriors’ leadership embraced his vision, and he hopes more pro teams will follow suit. Its seeing the culture being presented in a way thats true and reflective on a grand international scale, said Kelly, a former Chicago-based rapper, whose stage name was Capital D. Hopefully this is the first of many for Golden State and the culture. By Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP entertainment writer AP Sports Writer Schuyler Dixon contributed to this report in Dallas.
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E-Commerce
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Eggs Up Grill has 90 restaurants in nine southern states, up from 26 in 2018. Florida-based Another Broken Egg Café celebrated its 100th restaurant last year. Fast-food chains are also adding more breakfast items. Starbucks, which launched egg bites in 2017, now has a breakfast menu with 12 separate items containing eggs. Wendys reintroduced breakfast in 2020 and offers 10 items with eggs. Reviews website Yelp said 6,421 breakfast and brunch businesses opened in the United States last year, 23% more than in 2019. In normal times, producers could meet the demand for all those eggs. But an ongoing bird flu outbreak, which so far has forced farms to slaughter nearly 159 million chickens, turkeys and other birds including nearly 47 million since the start of December is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. In January, the average price of eggs in the U.S. hit a record $4.95 per dozen. The percentage of eggs that go to U.S. restaurants versus other places, like grocery stores or food manufacturers, is not publicly available. U.S. Foods, a restaurant supplier, and Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. producer of shell eggs, did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment. But demand from restaurants is almost certainly growing. Foot traffic at U.S. restaurants has grown the most since 2019 for morning meals, 2019, according to market research firm Circana. Pre-lunchtime hours accounted for 21% of total restaurant visits in 2024. Breakfast sandwiches are the most popular order during morning visits, Circana said, and 70% of the breakfast sandwiches on U.S. menus include eggs. Eggs Up Grill CEO Ricky Richardson said breakfast restaurants took off after the COVID pandemic because people longed for comfort and connection. As inflation made food more expensive, customers saw breakfast and lunch as more affordable options for eating out, he said. The growth in restaurant demand reverses a pattern that emerged during the pandemic, when consumers tried to stock up on eggs for home use but restaurants needed fewer of them because many of them had to close for a time, according to Brian Earnest, a lead economist for animal proteins at CoBank. Changing preferences since then have caused further market strain. Americans are increasingly looking for protein with few added ingredients, and eggs fit that bill. Consumers think eggs are really fresh, so if youre making something with eggs, you know its fresh, Earnest said. To address animal rights concerns, McDonalds and some other companies have switched to 100% cage-free eggs, which limits the sources they will buy from. Ten states, including California and Colorado, have passed laws restricting egg sales to products from cage-free environments. It makes the market much more complicated than it was 20 years ago, Earnest said. The higher prices are hitting restaurants hard. Wholesale egg prices hit a national average of $7.34 per dozen last week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was 51% higher than at the beginning of the year. Wholesale costs may be higher than retail prices since grocers use eggs as a loss leader to get customers in the door. Some chains, like Waffle House, have added a surcharge to help offset the cost of eggs. Others may turn to egg substitutes like tapioca starch for some recipes or cut egg dishes from the menu, said Phil Kafarakis, the president and CEO of the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association. First Watch President and CEO Chris Tomasso said eggs are critical for the chain’s brand and are found in the majority of its offerings, whether at the center of the plate or as an ingredient in batters. So far, he said, the company has been able to obtain the eggs it needs and isn’t charging extra for them. First Watch is also increasing portion sizes for non-egg items like meat and potatoes, Tomasso said. Richardson, of Eggs Up Grill, said he recently met with franchisees to discuss adding a surcharge but they decided against it. Eggs have always been and will continue to be an important part of American diets, Richardson said. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
Road congestion is a persistent thorn in the side of our car-centric society. Its loud, stressful, dangerous, and worsens air quality. Its been linked to all kinds of adverse health effects, including lower birth weights, memory and attention problems in school kids, higher mortality in elderly adults, and even crime. But traffic might also affect our eating habitsand not in a good way. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, published in the Journal of Urban Economics, examined weekday traffic data from Los Angeles County highways between 2017 and 2019 and compared it with cellphone GPS data tracking customer visits to fast food restaurants in the same county during the same years. They found that when traffic was worse due to unexpected slowdowns, visits to fast food restaurants went up. This effect was especially strong if the traffic delays occurred around evening mealtimes, when drivers were leaving work and probably starting to feel some predinner hunger pangs. The results showed that for every 30-second increase in traffic delay per mile traveled, there was a 1% increase in visits to fast food restaurants. While that may not seem like a lot, the researchers estimate that over a year, it amounts to about 1.2 million more fast food meals in Los Angeles. Weve been saying that our results are modest but meaningful, says Becca Taylor, assistant professor in the universitys Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, and coauthor on the study. Indeed, this relationship has implications for health and wellness. Fast food tends to be high in ultra-processed ingredients, saturated or trans fats, sugar, and sodium, all of which can increase ones risk of developing a number of diseases and ailments, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and even depression. Some researchers go so far as to say processed foods and fast foods are responsible for more premature deaths than cigarettes. Meals prepared at home are by far the healthier option. People who eat home-cooked meals more often have a better mix of fruits and vegetables in their diets, and are exposed to fewer harmful chemicals, including so-called forever chemicals. We also are more likely to overeat at restaurants than we would at home. So its troubling that gridlock may be nudging hungry people toward McDonalds for dinner when they might have otherwise eaten a more balanced meal at home. Los Angeles is a city infamous for its snarled highways, but the authors say these findings can be applied elsewhere. There are other cities in the U.S. that are equally congested and have these big swings in traffic congestion, Taylor says, listing off New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. She hopes the research can help make the case for prioritizing traffic solutions, like better public transportation or congestion charges, such as the one recently introduced in New York. We see this as another thing policymakers could have in their arsenal for why its important for them to spend political capital working on congestion, Taylor says. While this study might seem on the surface to be just about traffic, look a bit deeper and youll realize its really about time, or lack of it. We have a limited number of waking hours during which we can get things done, and most of them are consumed by work. Ideally we can spend what little time we have leftover doing things we find nourishing and fulfilling like, say, sitting down for a meal with our family. But we dont have a lot of wiggle room, and any delay, including an unexpected traffic slowdown, can force us to make an unhealthy trade-off. This is all quite troubling when you consider that the American workday is getting longer, traffic in the U.S. is getting worse, and fast food restaurants keep multiplying. Its a bad combination. While infrastructure improvements are important, maybe it would be easier to just give Americans more free time. Taylor and her colleagues say allowing people to work from home, or reducing the number of days theyre required to be in the office, might be able to help here. Time scarcity is one of the strongest correlates of fast food consumption, the authors write. Policies aimed at loosening time constraints would help battle unhealthy eating habits.
Category:
E-Commerce
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