Happy Wednesday.

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World Cup Tourists Just Discovered Buc-ee's - International fans flying in for the World Cup are stumbling into Buc-ee's and Waffle House for the first time, and their stunned reactions are pulling millions of views. ne German eating brisket at 1am off a stack of deer corn cleared 6.6M alone. It's the kind of organic brand moment money can't buy, and two regional chains are getting a global audience handed to them for free.

The K-Cup Killer Is Just Compressed Coffee - Lavazza is launching Tablì in the US this August. A single-serve espresso that ditches the pod entirely in favor of compressed tablets that are nothing but coffee, no plastic, no binders, no waste. It's a direct shot at Keurig, which owns roughly half the US market but is still living down a $1.5M SEC penalty over misleading recyclability claims.

Pizza Hut Is Cashing In on Nostalgia  - Pizza Hut is restoring its classic Red Roof dine-in touches like red cups and arcade games at over 150 locations and relaunching Book It, where kids still earn free Personal Pan Pizzas for reading. The kicker: anyone who shows up with a Book It button from any year since 1984 gets a free pizza, and a new Box Tops partnership ties every Book It family meal to school funding.

By Colin Dougherty

Isaac Reyna built his whole business, M Agency, on Axon by Applovin.

Not Meta or Axon. Not Axon or Amazon. Only Axon. He started running it in September for cannabis-adjacent brands (ones who can lose their Meta accounts overnight) and what was supposed to be a backup channel became the foundation for scale. 

Isaac’s data: 60 to 75% of customers coming through Axon are net new. Not retargeted. Not warmed up by Meta and claimed by AppLovin's attribution.

Isaac didn't just trust the dashboard. His team ran everything through Northbeam, then went into the Shopify back end and checked customer journeys by hand. First touch: Axon. No prior purchase. Completely new people.

One of his brands launched in January with a $5K ad credit to test the platform. Today Axon drives 18% of their monthly revenue and those customers come back for a second purchase in 18 to 20 days.

That repurchase window completely changed how they model LTV and how aggressively they can spend. 

Meta and Google have 10+ years of head start. AppLovin, which went ecommerce just over a year ago, should be where you’re deploying ad dollars next.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team