The Top of the Fold kicked this week off with Easy Money, a 43-year-old movie.
The Deal Room has something to say, “hold my beer.”
When Branded launched its podcast, the Hospitality Hangout, our original sponsor was Chico’s Bail Bonds, the fictitious bail bond provider from the now 50-year-old film, The Bad News Bears.
This 1976 classic movie about a rowdy baseball team of misfits wouldn’t pass today’s family-friendly movie standard, but it’s still a film that Gen Xers love to quote!
Yes, Chico’s was our (unofficial) sponsor (b/c Chico’s isn’t a real company) but it made us laugh and that seemed to be good enough as far as Schatz and I were concerned. That was until our friends at PepsiCo thought we should retire Chico and begin what has been a wonderful media collaboration.
Over the last couple of weeks, a few headlines caught my eye and specifically, OpenAI buying TBPN and Beehiiv launching podcast infrastructure.
This isn’t just a deal or a product expansion respectively, this is a signal, from two different angles. It’s a full-blown land grab for attention, narrative, and distribution. Podcasts are no longer “content.” They’re infrastructure for influence.
OpenAI buying TBPN is about their wanting to own the conversation. OpenAI didn’t buy tech, it bought audience, credibility, and distribution. TBPN is where founders, CEOs and insiders talk in real-time and do so unfiltered. This acquisition signals that, at least according to OpenAI, traditional communications don’t work for them anymore. More to the point, for OpenAI, PR is dead and owned media is the new control layer. This isn’t marketing, this is narrative control at scale.
Beehiiv launching podcasts is the opposite side of the same coin and it’s about owning the audience. Beehiiv’s move is about collapsing e-mail, audio, and monetization into one creator-owned ecosystem. They’re budling podcasts with newsletters and subscriptions. The statement they’re making, the future is not platforms, it’s owned audience across formats.
Why am I focusing on these moves and why did it make it into the Deal Room? B/c podcasts remain a most under-leveraged asset in hospitality.
Restaurants historically rely on location, foot traffic and third-party discovery. Podcasts are flipping the script from being “discovered” to be “followed.” Restaurants don’t just sell food, they sell stories, and podcasting turns these stories into scalable emotional connections.
The real game here is first party data and Beehiiv nailed it: podcasts + newsletters = owned audience. For restaurants, the e-mail list is a retention engine, and the podcast is an engagement engine. Put them together and you’re no longer dependent on third parties to be discovered.
A podcast listener is more loyal, has higher frequency of visits and a higher spend b/c they feel like they know the brand.
Let’s bring this home, POS is table stakes, loyalty is table stakes and now content is becoming table stakes. But this isn’t just about content, this is about owned, personality-driven, multi-format storytelling.
OpenAI buying media, Beehiiv becoming a media stack tells me the restaurants that win won’t just serve customers, they’ll have an audience before the customer even walks in the door.
And in hospitality, the next great brand won’t just be fully booked, they’ll be fully subscribed.
To learn more about how to leverage podcasting, digital story-telling and opportunities to engage with us, please click here (or contact me directly).
Tanner got into a fight. Who with? The 7th grade
