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Lately it seems like collective uncertainty about the economy is mainly focused on one thing: eggs. This isn’t surprising. When the price of a kitchen staple like eggs nearly doubles in a year, it’s easy to make it a go-to symbol for the broader basket of financial anxieties many consumers are feeling. I get it, but I also worry all the egg-centric media coverage is overshadowing what is, for most households, a much bigger and more important line item: healthcare. So far this year, egg prices have generated roughly three times more headlines than healthcare costs have (per a quick Google News search)which is pretty much the reverse of the relative impact those issues have had on households over the past 40 years. Food inflation is a serious concern, but for the average consumer, the cost of out-of-pocket healthcare spending has far outpaced that of food (yes, even eggs). Cumulative Change in Prices Paid by Consumers (%) Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted) Why are eggs stealing the limelight? One big reason is that everyday commodities like eggs (or milk, coffee, and gas) are easy for consumers to comprehend. These products have a black-and-white price tag, you generally get what you pay for, and it’s hard not to notice when your paycheck suddenly doesn’t stretch as far. Healthcare is different Healthcare doesn’t work like that. For consumers, out-of-pocket healthcare spending is a mishmash of insurance premiums, deductibles, appointment copays, and prescription costs. For heavier-duty care like surgery and hospital stays, there often isn’t a clear-cut price tag. Not surprisingly, more than half of insured workers are confused by healthcare costs and billing, and as a result, many don’t fully grasp the total healthcare hit to their walletor the value they’re getting (or not) for their healthcare dollar. This consumer blind spot is becoming a financial black hole for employers. For most companies, healthcare is now the second-largest operating expense after payroll. Employers are forecasting that healthcare costs will accelerate even more in 2025, increasing by about 9%three times the current inflation rate. After years of absorbing rising costs, many employers are now facing tough decisions about raising employees share of the premium, eliminating benefits, or passing costs onto customers. Unlike egg prices, though, the healthcare cost trend isn’t primarily a supply-and-demand issue. A big chunk of runaway healthcare spending (as much as 25%, by some estimates) is due to inefficiency and waste, including overtreatment, undertreatment, low-quality providers, and uncoordinated care. The healthcare system is basically dropping three eggs from every carton on the floor, and employers are left to clean up the mess. Reining in this avoidable and unsustainable spending isn’t as simple as cutting benefits or increasing premiums. In fact, limiting healthcare access can backfire if individuals forgo essential care, leading to a sicker workforce in the short term and snowballing costs in the long run. Unscramble the mess The reality is, if we’re going to unscramble the mess of healthcare, we need a collective shift in our expectations and mindset. Employers and consumers alikeall healthcare purchasers, in factneed to demand a new focus on value. We need to move away la carte “egg” purchases whereas though we’re in a supermarket aislefees are associated with volume, and total costs can only be managed with portion control (or as we say in healthcare, utilization management). This model has blinded people to what they’re spending and getting in return, undermining trust in the healthcare system as a whole. Instead, we need a healthcare model where a person’s holistic needs are front and center. A model that incentivizes ongoing engagement, building trust over time, and consistently guiding people toward high-quality careincluding more care, when that’s best for them. The future of higher-value, lower-cost healthcare is one in which people and purchasers have access to a broader range of services and settings (both virtual and in person). It offers personalized advocacy and support (including with clinical guidance, bills, and claims). And it offers an all-in-one experiencea departure from the fragmented maze we’ve all become accustomed to. Innovators and leaders on the front lines of healthcare management and purchasing are starting to recognize this, and are reorienting their solutions, partnerships, and models to ensure that people get the care they deserve, where, and when they need it. While egg prices may have our attention now, we can’t lose sight of creating a healthcare system and experience that’s actually worth the high price we all pay. And in healthcare, unlike with groceries, the key to affordability isn’t buying less or cutting corners on quality. It’s investing in the services and outcomes that deliver real value for our hard-earned money. Owen Tripp is cofounder and CEO of Included Health. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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E-Commerce
Anthropic announced Thursday that it has added web search capability to its Claude chatbot. Its not a new feature to the AI worldbut the companys approach stands as one of the most thoughtful to date. Much like Perplexity, Anthropics Claude works relevant information from the web into a conversational answer, and includes clickable source citations. Web search is available as a feature preview for U.S. users of the Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, with plans to expand to the free tier and to more countries. What sets Anthropics web search feature apart is that it is automatic. Rather than requiring users to manually select a web search on a given query (as with OpenAIs ChatGPT), Claude decides on its own whether fetching web data would improve an answer. After it receives a time-sensitive question, Claude now generates an initial answer from its training data and then states: . . . but let me search for more precise information since this could have changed. That matters since, without web search enabled, the results are subject to a cutoff date in the large language models training data. Claudes training data only goes up to October 2024, while ChatGPTs (using GPT-4o) goes up to June 2024. Thats why ChatGPT (without web search turned on) returns outdated information when asked, for example, to identify which major AI chatbots have web search: It mentions Google Bard, for exampleeven though that product has since been renamed Gemini. With the web search button clicked on, all these errors disappear. (An OpenAI spokesperson points out that ChatGPT will automatically do a web search for questions that imply a need for up-to-date information, such as, What are the best travel destinations for 2025? But as per the example above, the web search doesnt always kick in when the results would benefit. Users can also regenerate an answer with web search turned on.) A web search is almost always helpful for a reality check on whatever information the chatbot surfaces. Thats why Anthropics move was a smart one: It removes the burden from users to determine whether a query would benefit from a specialized search. Adding web search will certainly make Claude a more useful and reliable chatbot, but the move could have more commercial implications, too. People are increasingly using Claude to research products, and referrals from Claude to brand sites could become a key revenue source for Anthropic. Anthropic is creating new entry points that complement how people are already using LLMs, and its working, says Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, an SEO and digital performance platform. BrightEdge data shows that Claudes referrals to websites jumped 82% month-over-month in February, outpacing ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. Claude has historically lagged in this space, but this is a move that could finally put them in the game, Yu says. Within the chatbot context, web search is used to take a quick snapshot of relevant information from the web to inform a response to a specific question. This is different from AI research agents like Googles Deep Research tool within the Gemini assistant and OpenAIs tool, also called Deep Research, both of which consult a broad group of sources using a defined and customizable research strategy. Anthropic doesnt yet offer a deep research tool but thats likely coming. Augmenting chatbot answers with web search information is a logical first step toward that.
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E-Commerce
If you want to instantly reveal your age, just order a hot black coffee — seriously. Gen Z is flipping the script on how coffee is consumed, and spoiler: they like it cold, sweet, and loaded with creamer. For a lot of younger drinkers, that very first cup of coffee was just as likely to be iced as it was hot. And get thisabout 85% of Gen Z coffee fans are adding creamer, compared to just 70% of coffee drinkers overall. That shift in taste is making waves in the industry. Nestle, for example, has been rolling out new products to keep upfrom cold-dissolving instant coffee to liquid espresso concentrates and all kinds of flavored toppings. Weve done a lot of things in cold coffee the last two years to really meet this need of Gen Z and young millennials, Daniel Jhung, president of Nestles USA beverage division, tells Fast Company. Thats a big trend that were pushing into. COMBINING COFFEE AND CREAMER The coffee world is booming and the opportunity to innovate, while still providing value for a broad spectrum of consumers, makes for a fun time to be in this industry, says Jhung, whose role recently expanded to oversee the Swiss companys coffee and broader beverages portfolio. One of the reasons why it made sense for Nestle to unite coffee and creamer under one team is because theres such a natural connection between these products now. Or, as Jhung likes to quip: Whats more Americana than peanut butter and jelly or milk and cereal? Its actually coffee and creamer. Industry data from Circana backs this up: Coffee and creamer are co-purchased together 60% of the time versus 40% of the time for milk and cereal, and 20% of the time for peanut butter and jelly. While its easy to offer coffee-and-creamer bundles to online shoppers, in brick-and-mortar grocery stores, coffee and creamer are often found in far-flung aislesand this is a point of friction Nestle has heard about from shoppers. Thats why Nestle is thinking about how to bring coffee and creamer closer together in stores, Jhung notes. Thats something that we will tackle together with retailers in the future, he says. Theyre open to it; we definitely want to push it because thats where consumers are going naturally. THE FOURTH WAVE OF COFFEE In whats perhaps a sign of the times, this years Super Bowl featured a handful of commercials for coffee-related brands, including Nestle-owned Coffee mate, which advertised its new line of Cold Foams with disembodied tongues dancing to a Shania Twain song. Coffees prominence in the biggest advertising day of the year is fitting: Daily coffee consumption hit a 20-year high last year, according to a report from the National Coffee Association. In addition, Nestle recently opened a 675 million coffee-creamer factory in Glendale, Arizona which is indicative of the company putting our money where our mouth is, Jhung says, adding that its designed to be flexible to respond to fast-moving consumer trends. It’s going to meet the growing demands of this new coffee consumer for the next decade. While such investments are indicative of overall strength in the coffee industry, Nestle is also eager to ride what its calling the fourth wave of coffee thats being driven by the youngest coffee drinkers. This era is defined by the four Cs of coffee: cold, convenient (or instant), craft and customizable. We think customization, experimentation is the crux of this fourth wave, Jhung says. These consumers really like to customize their cup, it’s really their own personalized cup. That trend has continued since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, as creators and connoisseurs converge on social media to swap recipes and at-home barista types try to replicate coffee drinks they ordered elsewhere, Jhung says. Gen Z coffee drinkers are also introducing their older-generation parents to new products for their coffee, he adds. What we hear sometimes is that the Gen Z [consumer] brings it into the house, and then you get the adoption from Gen X and even Boomer, Jhung says. Its kind-of a cool thing to see that with the reverse mentoring. INSTANT IS A HIT But what might surprise some people is the popularity of instant coffee, in particular, with the youngest of coffee drinkers. Instant coffee still trailed drip and single-cup brewers for at-home coffee preparation methods in 2024, but saw a 31% jump from 2023, according to figures from the National Coffee Association. Instant coffee is projected to be one of the fastest-growing coffee segments in the next three years, according to industry estimates, which tracks with trends at Nestle. While its long been popular around the world, instant coffee has blown up among American coffee drinkers in recent years, Jhung says. Nestle-owned Nescafe has experienced double-digit annual sales growth, and the company launched Nescafe Ice Roast and Nescafe Gold in recent years. Despite some misconceptions to the contrary, instant coffee is coffeeits freeze-driedand consumers are increasingly drawn to it because it now marries convenience with craft offerings, Jhung says. That’s a bubble burst [that] over the last three or four years. INNOVATION ABOUNDS All of these coffee trends are indicative of a renaissance of sorts in various segments of food and beverage driven by younger consumers who see food as art, as Jhung notes. And Nestle is putting a lot of money behind keeping up with the tastes of these coffee drinkersincluding launching specialty flavors like Thai iced coffee and a lavender coffeewhich makes for a fun time to be at the helm of Nestles business, he adds. Its not a boring category, he says. You talk with the retailers, you talk with the consumers, it gets peoples energy up when they talk about how they drink their cup of coffee.
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E-Commerce
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