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We want grandparents who want to have pizza nights with us, attend baseball and basketball games, have ice cream dates, take bike rides, just genuinely have fun with us and our boys, reads one post on the Facebook group Surrogate Grandparents USA, a place where grandparent-seeking families can connect with surrogate grandparents. One lonely grandma here. I would love to share affection and attention with a nearby family, posted another. Created in 2015 by 68-year-old retired paralegal Donna Skora, Surrogate Grandparents USA now has more than 11,800 members. The page is described as a place where grandparents who are missing having grandchildren in their lives & families whose children are missing having grandparents in their lives, can find and connect with each other for a possible lifetime of love. Here, prospective grandparents across the country offer their services for baking cookies and reading books, while parents can seek out the kind of support and comfort only grandparents can provide. In 2024, 21% of adults in the U.S. reported feeling lonely, with many respondents feeling disconnected from friends, family. While a surrogate family might not be the most conventional set up, at the end of the day, doesnt every family have their unconventionalities? Access to the group is granted by invitation only. Skora reviews each membership request and the groups moderators encourage people to properly vet prospective surrogates before connecting in real life. Short personal ads are then shared on the page, along with locations. If both the surrogate grandparent and the grandparent-seeking party hit it off, messages are exchanged before eventually progressing to meeting up IRL. The reasons people post on the group are as wide-ranging and complex as biological families. Some members of the group have lost loved ones, others have never had families of their own. The site has also expanded to serve foster children who have aged out of the system and are looking for chosen family, as well as helping grandparents who are raising grandchildren full time find respite care. It is also a safe haven for the estranged. Today, around 27% of American adults have cut off contact with a family member, which translates to 68 million people, one of the highest estrangement rates in the world. Skoras experienced this first-hand, becoming estranged from her son and daughter-in-law when her grandson was born. We were totally blacked out of their lives completely, she told reporter Lexi Pandell in a recent interview with Wired. Deciding to launch Surrogate Grandparents USA the same year, Skora connected with a family nearby. As is the case with flesh-and-blood, it is not always happy families. In the end, Skora cut contact when the parents began requesting gifts and trips from her. This is now expressly forbidden in the groups rules. For others, however, the arrangement works well and fills a family-shaped hole. Im not going to live my life being sad, one surrogate grandmother told Wired. There are people out there who want relationships with people like me.
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E-Commerce
PepsiCo said Tuesday that high prices and changing consumer tastes have weakened U.S. demand for its snacks and drinks, but it’s confident it can turn that around in the coming year.The Purchase, New York-based company said its revenue fell slightly to $27.78 billion in the fourth quarter. That was short of Wall Street’s forecast of $27.89 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.U.S. demand flagged last year after two years of outsize, double-digit price increases. The average price of a 16-ounce bag of potato chips peaked at $6.68 in October 2023, according to government data.PepsiCo hit the brakes on prices, which rose 4% globally in 2024. The company focused on making its snacks more affordable, adding product promotions, more chips per bag, and value packs. It also invested more heavily in its Chester’s and Santitas value brands, which saw strong revenue growth last year.In a conference call Tuesday, CEO Ramon Laguarta said those efforts are paying off and consumers have begun buying salty snacks again. Still, North American sales volumes for both Frito-Lay snacks and beverages fell 3% in the October-December period.PepsiCo is also closely watching a longer-term trend toward healthier snacking, Laguarta said. The company isn’t seeing much impact from the growing use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Wegovy, he said. But people are looking for smaller, portion-controlled snacks, healthier ingredients like whole grains and lower sodium and fat.“There’s a higher level of awareness in general of American consumers toward health and wellness,” he said.PepsiCo is well-positioned to meet that need with products like Pepsi Zero Sugar, SunChips and its Simply line of chips, which have no artificial colors or flavors, Laguarta said. And more healthy, “permissible” snacks are coming, he said.“We’re very confident that our North American business will accelerate this year,” Laguarta said.PepsiCo is also trying to amp up its away-from-home offerings, like its Doritos Locos Tacos collaboration with Taco Bell and its Tostitos Cantina food trucks.PepsiCo’s snack food and beverage volumes both climbed 1% globally in the fourth quarter, with strong growth in Africa and Asia.Net income rose 17% to $1.5 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, PepsiCo earned $1.96, or two cents better than analysts had forecast.PepsiCo expects organic revenue growth in the low single digits in 2025. Organic revenue is adjusted for foreign currency exchanges and the impact of product acquisitions or divestments. The company reported organic revenue growth of 2% in 2024.The company, which closed four U.S. bottling plants in October, also plans to continue a multiyear push to enhance productivity, including adding more automation in its plants and warehouses.PepsiCo shares fell 2% Tuesday. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Living in Los Angeles and paying $1,000 a month for rent seems like a fantasy for many cash-strapped tenants, or a rental figure from decades ago. But a new proposal from architecture and design firm Gensler and the Pew Charitable Trusts underscores the idea that more affordable urban living can be found in old, vacant office buildings. The analysis, which was initiated and funded by Pew and nonprofit Arnold Ventures, looks at the potential of a new kind of building conversion in Houston and Los Angeles, two U.S cities where this type of conversion would currently be legal. The aim is to build a better version of single-room occupancy units, or SROs, that have private rooms, shared bathrooms, and partial kitchens. The low-cost, no-frills housing was prevalent during most of the 20th century as a kind of housing-of-last-resort. Once immensely common in cities, their reputation for seediness, deserved or not, led to zoning and policy shifts that made them functionally extinct. An estimated one million such units were closed in the 70s and 80s. Numerous studies have blamed their demise on the modern rise in homelessness. In recent years, as homelessness and affordability have become crises, theres been a push to bring this concept back: since 2023, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii have all passed laws to re-legalize them. Los Angeles floor plan. [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts] The U.S. is only about 50 years removed from having very little homelessness, said Alex Horowitz, project director of the housing policy initiatives at Pew Charitable Trust and coauthor of the report. As recently as the mid-’70s, there was very little homelessness nationally, and most evidence points to SROs as the primary driver. Genslers vision would ring the outer layer of an office floor with small, studio-style rooms with microwaves and fridges, roughly the size of a modest hotel room. The plans call for 190-square-foot units in L.A., and up to 227-square-foot units in Houston, about half the size of a typical studio apartment. The center of each floor would contain shared living rooms, kitchen, and bathrooms. These layouts would be designed with private keycard entry by floor, and what designers call a more concerted focus on safety, privacy, and security. Los Angeles unit sample [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts] It offers a compelling blueprint for expanding the housing stock in a nation where office vacancy is above 20% in most cities29% in LA and 32% in Houstonand homelessness nationwide just reached a record 770,000 people. Such conversions make sense for dozens of buildings, 88 in downtown Houston and 42 in L.A.s central business district, according to the report. These upgrades can also be done with relatively little subsidized public funding, and could create low-cost units renting for roughly half the median rent in both cities: $700 in Houston and $1,000 in Los Angeles. The microunits could be built for $240,000 each in L.A., less than half what it costs to build a typical studio apartment. Theres currently a post-pandemic boom in office-to-residential conversations nationwide; new RentCafe research found 70,700 residential units will be created in 2025 alone by transforming offices left partially vacant and undervalued by remote work. Gensler has helped spearhead this push by developing an algorithm that can quickly figure out which offices made good conversion candidates. Houston floor plan [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts] Thats a huge jump in activity, since developers completed just 23,100 in 2022. But despite the boom, these conversions still represent a fraction of the units needed to bridge the housing shortage, and such conversions still remain expensive, complicated, and financially infeasible for many offices. Genslers new research found that this SRO-style conversion opens up new opportunities. Traditional office-to-residential conversions, which create individual units with their own kitchens and bathrooms, require extensive plumbing and infrastructure work. This new proposal concentrates new plumbing and piping in the middle of each floor. In addition, standard conversions mean long, stretched out apartments with few windows and natural light. The SRO option contains big windows in each of the small studios (although no natural light in the shared spaces). Research conducted by Gensler and Pew last fall found this type f layout cuts conversion construction costs by up to 35%. Locating the right building, which the authors did using CoStar data, was a challenge, since it needed the right-size floor area and infrastructure, but just a single conversion could add 800-plus units; buildings of 20-plus floors can fit up to 60 units on each level. Depending on the estimates you look at, just a few percentage points of the office stock could work for traditional office-to-residential conversions, said Gensler principal and economist Wes LeBlanc. But theres a much larger percentage of highly vacant office stock that works in this case, and makes those unlivable floor plates in play in a way they weren’t before. Horowitz sees this type of housing filling a key gap in the market, giving single, working class renters, such as students, seniors, and immigrants, an option that wont leave them cost-burdened. Approximately 40% of U.S. renter households consist of a single person, and these units could be perfect for people making $40,000 to $50,000 a year. This housing strategy also offers ancillary benefits for cities. In downtown Los Angeles, for example, an area boasting 280,000 jobs, just 1% to 2% of residents who live downtown also work there. Providing more housing opportunities in that neighborhood could help lessen long commutes. No developer has yet signed on to build such a project. Horowitz said hes been getting positive responses from real estate groups, and Gensler and Pew presented these proposals to city officials in L.A. and Houston on January 31. They believe they can build momentum for conversions, and cheaper housing, soon.
Category:
E-Commerce
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