Blindside
Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
Latest
Fast Food
The $60k Machine Buyout
A $60,000 tech bill per restaurant — $500,000 for full automation — is forcing small fast-food owners to sell. McDonald's transfers jumped to 843 in 2024. FASTMaster models $4.9 billion a year in ownership changing hands.
Fast Food
Fast Food Runs Out of Price Room
Fast food raised menu prices 77% since 2020 and squeezed its recent growth from hikes, not customers. Now 69% of diners are pulling back and regulators are circling. The one lever holding profits up is running dry.
Fast Food
America Ran Out of Corners
US fast-food chains opened stores three times faster than the population grew in 2025. Each restaurant now fights for fewer customers, and our model sees $5.9bn in sales a year quietly lost to overbuilding.
Tactics
Direct Football Is a Trap: It Promotes 1.6% of the Time and Gets Relegated 24.6%
Get-it-forward sides win promotion 1.6% of the time and get relegated 24.6%. Possession sides, across seven seasons of data, went up 42.1% and were never once relegated — and the style labels were assigned blind, before anyone read a manager's name.
Fast Food
Royalties Owed on Empty Stores
Fast-food brands take a slice of every restaurant's sales even when the operator loses money. With 45% of operators unprofitable in 2025, that income sits on top of stores that are quietly bleeding out — roughly $7.7bn a year now at risk.
Fast Food
Selling Restaurants With No Buyers
Chains are pushing company-owned restaurants onto franchise buyers to look safer — but loans cost 8–11%, deals are down 28.9%, and the buyers have gone quiet. The sell-off could strand $8.5bn in yearly sales.
Blindside
Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
Fast Food
Diet Drugs Cut Fast-Food Sales
About 12 percent of US adults take appetite-cutting drugs, and each spends 8 percent less at the counter. That is roughly $4.5 billion in yearly US fast-food sales at risk — and the market mistook quieter headlines for a vanishing problem.
Fast Food
Beef and Coffee Reprice Permanently
The smallest US cattle herd since 1951, record coffee, and government-forecast record beef prices through 2027 point to a permanent reprice — not a passing spike. FASTMaster models $6.3bn a year at risk for US fast food.
Fast Food
Vanishing Workers Hit Fast Food
Fast-food chains are treating a shrinking immigrant workforce as a passing hiring dip. The numbers — 137,000 workers gone in four months — say it's a lasting cost shock worth $6.7 billion a year.
Premier League
Half the Clubs That Fell Never Came Back. The Championship Keeps the Rest.
A name-blind algorithm watched 28 clubs across 95 regime changes and flagged 31 major falls. Only 16 ever climbed back — Norwich in 50 months, Ipswich stuck below their old level for 282 and counting.