Lifestyle – Page 3 – MBA in the City

July 18, 2018

Moving in and taking out – the demise of Seamless

It’s July, I’ve tossed my graduation cap up in the air, and into a crate. I’ll miss the NYU housing, just a stone’s throw away from Washington Square Park. Mamoun’s will no longer be my go-to dinner spot, and I finished my last Smith’s brunch for a while yesterday morning.

The two movers from Queens that I found on Craig’s List arrived with their van, and we begin the elevator dance, squeezing what we can into the freight in our 3 hour reserved slot. I’d managed to find a new three bedroom in a hot new neighborhood. Well, just outside of a hot new neighborhood – Bushwick; it’s more affordable. It’s a walk-up, but I’m only on the second floor, and there’s three of us — we can handle.

Six hours later, with 30 minutes of coach maneuvering, we’ve arrived as a sweaty mess of cardboard boxes in the living room. I don’t know were my new work wardrobe ends and my pots and pans begin. I think to myself, If I can make it here, I can also get it delivered. Already salivating, I pull out my phone and open up Seamless, visions of chicken pad thai dancing through my mind. I scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Polish food. All Polish food. No thai food even touches the map of possibilities. Even if I pretend to be a few blocks closer to Manhattan, I seem to be just one block further east than any Thai restaurant is willing to go. And it fully dawns on me, I’ve made a horrible mistake — I have moved into a delivery desert.

I lived in a land with sushi as far as the eye can see only 6 hours ago. In the depths of my despair, I realize I need to pay the movers. As they open Venmo to make the request, I notice a *whole screen* of food apps. “Hey, which of those apps do delivery around here?” I ask, trying not to sound as desperate as I am. “All of them,” my mover says. I gape in disbelief. “Want a referral? I can send you all of them – DoorDash, Postmates, maybe Caviar because – treat yo-self”. Hell. Yes. “That would be awesome, I owe you a tip as well, add it to the Venmo.”

My world had just contracted and expanded in the space of minutes, the Big Bang of delivery. Just because I don’t live in the Village, doesn’t mean I can’t eat like I do. The confines of my local neighborhood erased, the city is once again my bread basket.

Download #1 complete. Postmates. I open, and scroll, and scroll. It was there. It was all there. Restaurants that had mysteriously disappeared from Seamless months ago, now available to me, miles away. I now saw the shifting tides for what they were: the Great Unbundling. The restaurants no longer had to hire delivery people, or share a cut with Seamless. They could just outsource it.

Further down the list: Shake Shack. This explained the mysterious lines of this non-delivering burger power house. These delivery services will order for you, and wait in line! And after a day like mine, I am more than willing to pay the service and delivery costs. I upgrade from my #2 to my #1 Thai place, now that it’s back on the map, and place a double order of chicken pad thai. And while I’m at it, I delete the Seamless app. Goodbye peirogis, hello world.

May 20, 2018January 17, 2021

AI enabled travel is here: 5 ways travel just got easier

All segments of the leisure industry seem to be having the same idea simultaneously – how can they make your travel experience more seamless. We all want to get the most out of each day, and to minimize the decision fatigue that degrades our experiences. Five companies stand out in their moves to integrate technology into a traveler’s day-to-day.

1. Before you go – KLM has your back with its voice-driven packing assistant

Just let service bot BB know where you’re going and when you’re leaving, and she will walk you through packing, piece by piece, equipped with silly pre-programed jokes to let you know bot makers have a sense of humor, too. Enabled by Google Home.

2. When you arrive – voice-driven concierge service in beta testing at Best Western

Best Western is testing out Amazon Dot for customers and staff, to quickly customize in-room experiences, from wake-up calls to room service requests.

3. For work trips – work from the shower

For those on a work trip or who are looking to create on the go, Marriott is beta testing a technology to whiteboard in the shower.

4. Also for work trips – work in a co-working space

Airbnb is offering WeWork day passes to guests.

5. For play trips – wearables making cruise navigation easy

Carnival Cruise has created the Ocean Medallion to provide customized experiences and recommendations based on your profile and location on the cruise ship.

All of these initiatives, striving to make the customer experience frictionless, both expand the customer experience, and more easily open customer wallets to ancillary offerings. I count this as a win-win.

April 23, 2018January 17, 2021

Minimum viable niceness – when high design and average quality make a happy consumer

In the consumer world, design and appearances matter. People want to feel good using the items they buy, for wearing or for everyday use. And with ever-improving just-in-time supply chains and the rapid dispersion of ideas via the internet, it’s hard to keep the best designs a secret. Which has given consumers the M.O. to comparison shop, to find a nice version of the thing they want that will work well and cost less than the ultra premium. We are looking for minimum viable niceness.

There are a few brands that have come up with a mass market model, that have cracked the “fast-follow” code such that they can rapidly roll out a cheaper rendition for a fraction of the price. No, this isn’t the Canal Street equivalent of a “Louis Vuitton” handbag anymore; these items will last well beyond one use. Here’s my view on some of the “nice with a good price” go-tos.

Wayfair

When kitting out my new home, I found lamps and bed frames that looked straight out of a Chelsea furniture store, but at a fraction of the price. I was pleased that products matched the website pictures to the tee.

Macy’s

Their buyers seriously know what they are doing. I’ve seen brands like BCBG that are rapidly losing their brick and mortar footprint have much more stylish pieces at Macy’s with 40% markdowns on top. I also found my futuristic leather couch for a fraction of what the high end decor stores would charge.

Beauty in general

A lot of skin care product quality depends on ingredients more than brands. I advise getting a facial or two and picking the brains of your estheticians. They often have a few recommendations that are inexpensive. And for make-up, I learned from a beauty business person that all eye shadows are basically the same.

Ann Taylor

This one is sort of a hidden gem. I have found some great dresses and accessories there that are nearly runway. It’s hit or miss – but the hits are well worth the browsing.

Stitch Fix

I am continually impressed with their stylists’ ability to find on-trend items, personalized to me, at reasonable prices. I’d give Stitch Fix a try if you don’t have a nose for fashion wins but, rather, “know it when you see it”.

You may be wondering how we got to this point of having so many moderately priced, stylish consumer product king pins. The advent of “masstige” brands like Target in the 1990s brought the the public the idea that they could own decent stuff that represented personal styles at a very reasonable price. This was easier to pull off in the fashion industry to start, where the styles of the season are established a year or so ahead of time, allowing fast fashion houses like Zara and H&M to crank up their supply chains as soon as Italian models hit the runway. The next frontier for affordability after fashion was home decor and furnishings. We saw brands like Ikea and Wayfair give West Elm and RH a run for their money. And beauty brands like L’Oreal convey modest luxury while also being available at CVS. So now, in our great nation, personal style can be done at prices that work with the people and for the people.

April 16, 2018

Turn it up – temperature control and the human experience

Temperature is like logistics: when everything is right, you don’t notice it. It affects our performance, and our daily experience. And yet it has only been since the 1980s that air conditioners have become a standard fixture in homes as well as office buildings. The 99% Invisible episode on the advent of air conditioners provides a clear example of what separates us from the monkeys – despite what Stephen Dubner might say – namely, that we can modify our environment to our preferred specifications to an insane degree now (pun intended).

Not only can we make our stationary spaces as comfortable as possible, but more an more we can control our personal environment as we travel, with the advent of performance fabrics. I’m not just talking GOR-TEX and the Colombia Omni Heat boot. I’m talking about Stanford’s reversible fabric innovation that can warm and cool. The inventor, Yi Cui, was slightly horrified at the green house implications of our American life style and posed the question: rather than changing a whole building, can we localize temperature control to a single person. He invented an answer. Not yet wearable, but when it gets there, we may be able to experience comfort everywhere we go, without so many negative externalizes. Right now, I’m wearing a hoodie because I’m freezing in my open office. But tomorrow, I will choose my Performance Hoodie (TM) to maximize value for my employer. It’s a win-win – my work will be better than if I micro dosed on LSD*, and office overhead costs will drop with lower energy bills. It will be the real deal.

*This reference is not an endorsement of taking illegal drugs. I mean, even Steve Jobs said you should, but I can’t endorse it.

March 26, 2018January 17, 2021

The Freakonomics edition: can parking tickets be a good thing?

Parking tickets are almost a right of passage for drivers in New York. An estimated $440 million in revenue is collected by NYC annually via parking tickets. Put another way, that’s ~$50 per New Yorker. This raises a question about incentives: are New Yorkers incentivized to violate traffic laws by the City of New York? Do ticket recipients usually feel pangs of angst and injustice at the site of the orange envelopes, or are they more often calculating whether it’s the lesser of two evils?

Let’s look at the specific example of street parking. Is it, in fact, often cheaper to rack up parking tickets than to pay monthly parking garage fees?

Suppose you are choosing between free street parking and a parking garage. Let’s assume you live above 96th Street. Parking garages above 96th cost a minimum of $300 per month, plus tax.

Let’s suppose also that you only use your car on the weekends, and that it is easier to find street parking on the weekends, so you leave your car in its spot during the week. But during the week is when street cleaning is happening where you parked. That’s a $45 ticket for each Alternate Side Parking violation. Yet even if you do this week in and week out, you may still find that your pile of tickets adds up to less than a garage.

Below 96th St, at $65 per ticket, your violations would add up more quickly, and yet still may be less costly than many garages. As the image above depicts, the expensive park-front garages seem to be anchoring around $700 p.m.

It is entirely possible this dynamic is a total unintended consequence in the NYC system. And the Department of Transportation is certainly making strides to create a better user experience: they recently made it easier to dispute tickets with a user-friendly app! No need to see a judge to raise a dispute now. This could be especially helpful for out-of-town friends who get slapped with the other NYC traffic police trope – towing.

This article contains personal opinions and observations only. The above analysis is not legal advice or advice to break the law.

March 12, 2018January 17, 2021

The Slow Shipping Movement

Had it really only been five days? It had felt like aaages (and by ages, I mean at least a week), as I wondered where my special edition collectable bobble head set was. And then it dawned on me, this company must be part of the Slow Shipping Movement! After all, why do I need those bobble heads in two days? Slow Shippers know customers will appreciate items more once they arrive because of the delayed gratification.

Like the Slow Food Movement, Slow Shipping gets you to appreciate where your products are coming from, the “ingredients” of what are being shipped to you.

I wrote in my gratitude journal that evening, still awaiting my package, that I am grateful for all the hands that have touched this unique product, to deliver it to my shelf.

March 5, 2018January 17, 2021

Adventures in re-branding: Hotel execs get wrong what Airbnb gets right

Hotel execs must be reading my blog; I think they loved the re-branding of the solar system so much, that they’ve decided to keep doing what they are doing, but re-brand it as giving a “feeling of home comfort”. Now at hotels like The Standard, the concierge is labeled the “personal concierge”. You can have laundry access, just like a home – but limited to two items per day. Some tasty snacks will be ready in your room – all for the already rolled in $100 surcharge. And at a week or longer, you can get up to 40% off of your rooms (already a common practice among hotels).

These hotels marketing a homey experience are doing nothing different to what they’ve always done; the ingredients to their conception of a “home stay” are not so earth shattering as is their marketing. And this is also where they reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of their unique selling point.

What differentiates hotels from coach surfing and home sitting is the guarantee of comfort – a good night’s sleep in a clean room and a comfy bed, and your own personal space with no house rules to follow. What makes Airbnb competitive is the lower prices and good locations, more so than the home-made experience. So unless a hotel grows legs and moves to a more optimal location or slashes prices, fresh muffins in the morning ain’t gonna win those customers back.

February 26, 2018December 28, 2022

Airport yoga: the basics

Long weekends like President’s Day can woo us to long flights to the sunshine. And to be in good form for the flight and your vacay, getting your zen on can get you in the right frame to handle the most primal of human settings: the airport gate waiting area. Below are a few simple moves that can be achieved with your travel essentials, including your phone and your luggage.

Upward iPhone

While you’re crafting your last #hashtag before boarding, make a gentle back arch, chin uplifted at a 30° angle, arms gently curved in half circles, holding your phone screen towards your face.

Luggage Lunge

Taking a wide stance, bend your right knee, with your right foot pointed outward, and lengthen your left leg, with the left foot pointing forward. Use your roller luggage handle to stabilize.

Listening Tree Pose

As you desperately crane to listen to sporadic announcements — in case they are for your flight — take a moment to re-center by balancing on one foot, one hand cupped to ear and one hand in prayer position.

Weekend Warrior 1

While waiting to board the plane, take a wider then hip distance stance. Place your hands slightly above your hips, and breath deep.

This may deter antsy travelers vying for overhead space from edging in front of you. Move forward at a regular pace, trusting that line-cutters will experience bad karma from observant flight attendants.

Snack Stretch

As the stewardess offers you a snack, accept with the outside hand (the one closest to the window), giving you an opportunity to rotate your torso and have a cross-body arm stretch.

Remember before you board to take each waiting opportunity to get that blood flowing and expand outward before you crunch into an economy seat.

January 21, 2018January 18, 2021

Robo-composed music to help you focus

Music has long been understood to have remarkable impact on mood and cognitive functioning – hence fun fads like expecting mom’s playing classical for their unborn children. And for me, moving from open office to open office, customizing my auditory environment has become an integral part of the focused work experience. Over the years I’ve tried playing all sorts of things, from white noise to movie sound tracks. Finally, I think I’ve found the ticket to getting on the right wavelength: brain.fm.

Brain.fm was dreamt up as a music writing software that has designed dozens of tracks to guide your brain into one of three states you select from: focus, meditation, and sleep.

Brain.fm leverages emergent technology to create patterns of beats that get you in the right frame of mind

Listening in, I hear binaural beats overlaid on soft melodies, which induce a deep state of engagement. While I haven’t hooked myself up to an electroencephalogram to measure efficacy, I’m sure the pros behind it are testing this out.

The focus option does the trick to blur out all distraction and leave you to think deeply. The first few sessions are free, so give it a try – you’ll thank yourself for it later when you see how well you’re using your time!