Food & beverage · 3.5M views
Timeless case studies
Every business has
its strategy.
It’s the difference between winning and losing.Most content skims the surface; Modern MBA goes deep with long-form, evergreen videos of industries, down to financials, market dynamics, and economics.We analyze Fortune 500 giants and the overlooked businesses that keep the world moving, based on our own experiences leading $MM products for years in corporate America.
Catalog
83 case studiesFood & beverage · 3.5M views
The Timeless Business of Steakhouses
Travel · 3.5M views
Why Airbnb Fails to Disrupt the Hotel Industry
Food & beverage · 2.3M views
Why Crumbl Cookies Can't Survive
Travel · 2M views
The Rigged Economics of Airlines
Media & entertainment · 1.9M views
The Secret Business of Nightclubs
Technology · 1.7M views
How Casper Failed & Why DTC Startups Lose Money
Food & beverage · 1.7M views
How Boba Shops Really Make Money
Retail & brands · 1.6M views
The Crumbling Business of Marijuana
Food & beverage · 1.5M views
The Territorial Business of Tacos
Food & beverage · 1.3M views
The Invincible Business of Diners
Travel · 1.3M views
How Cruises Make More Profits Than Airlines
Retail & brands · 1.2M views
How Dollar Tree Conquered Low Income America
Services · 1.2M views
How Self Storage Thrives Off The American Dream
Technology · 1.2M views
DoorDash & The Myth of Profitable Food Delivery
Retail & brands · 1.1M views
The Rise & Fall of Under Armour
Finance · 1.1M views
Buy Now, Pay Later: Echoes of the 2008 Recession
Technology · 992K views
Facebook's Collapse & The Metaverse Crusade
Retail & brands · 974K views
The Shrinking Business of Sneakers
Technology · 968K views
Why AI Is Tech's Latest Hoax
Food & beverage · 936K views
The Evolving Business of Donuts
Technology · 935K views
Real Estate Tech: A Crumbling House of Cards
Food & beverage · 933K views
Fried Chicken Wars: The Curse of Popeyes
Media & entertainment · 846K views
The Wild Economics of Online Gambling
Food & beverage · 836K views
How McDonalds Evolved from Boomers to Zoomers
Food & beverage · 834K views
Why Ice Cream is Tough Business
Services · 819K views
How Barbers Really Make Money
Services · 813K views
The Dreadful Business of Balding & Hair Loss
Technology · 787K views
The Absurd Economics of Wish, AliExpress, and Temu
Food & beverage · 763K views
Why Taco Bell Got So Expensive
Retail & brands · 735K views
How GameStop Fell Apart
Retail & brands · 714K views
Why Self-Checkout Failed to Replace Cashiers
Finance · 694K views
Western Union: Banking & Finance for the Poor
Media & entertainment · 693K views
Why Football Is Bad Business
Food & beverage · 686K views
Why Texas BBQ Joints Rarely Survive
Media & entertainment · 646K views
Unfinished & Unstable: How SaaS Changed Video Games
Media & entertainment · 643K views
How Microsoft Wasted $113 Billion on Xbox
Retail & brands · 629K views
How Adidas Caught Up to Nike
Technology · 625K views
The Extinction of GoPro
Food & beverage · 616K views
Why Smashburgers Are Everywhere
Services · 611K views
Tree to Box: The Billion Dollar Cardboard Business
Food & beverage · 609K views
How Pizzerias Really Make Money
Services · 594K views
The Bait & Switch of Home Security
Food & beverage · 589K views
Why Buffets Suddenly Disappeared
Food & beverage · 587K views
Why Starbucks Must Crush Unions to Survive
Food & beverage · 582K views
La Croix's Succession of Coca-Cola & Pepsi
Media & entertainment · 569K views
The Crooked Economics of Esports
Food & beverage · 559K views
How A Single Hedge Fund Killed Chipotle
Media & entertainment · 518K views
Why BuzzFeed & VICE Went Extinct
Travel · 492K views
Why Uber Fails to Disrupt
Travel · 467K views
Why Tech Failed to Disrupt Walking
Retail & brands · 456K views
The Extraordinary King of Luxury Fashion
Media & entertainment · 455K views
Why Adults Spend Billions on Pokémon Cards
Media & entertainment · 444K views
Why Roller Coasters Are Bad Business
Food & beverage · 431K views
How Burger King Lost to Wendy’s
Finance · 426K views
Why Americans are Hooked on Credit Cards
Technology · 413K views
A Tale of Greed: How 4 CEOs and $5B Failed Twitter
Media & entertainment · 407K views
The Future of Arcades Is Weirder Than You Think
Media & entertainment · 295K views
The Rise & Fall of Lionsgate Movies
Food & beverage · 290K views
Why America's Most Expensive Meal Is Getting Cheap
Retail & brands · 275K views
The Hidden Economics of American Gun Stores
Travel · 265K views
Nobody Makes Money Renting Cars
Food & beverage · 265K views
How Papa Johns Lost the Pizza Wars
Travel · 253K views
Why the West Can't Build a Cheap EV
Media & entertainment · 237K views
The Secret World of Nightcrawlers
Retail & brands · 231K views
What Moncler & Canada Goose Are Really Chasing
Travel · 228K views
The Doom Loop of American Public Transit
Travel · 215K views
The Volatile Business of Luxury Cars
Services · 190K views
Why MLMs Can't Survive
Services · 177K views
Why Big Pharma Wants the Whole World on Ozempic
Retail & brands · 165K views
How UNIQLO Makes More Money Than Gucci
Food & beverage · 164K views
Why No One Makes Money in Milk
Media & entertainment · 160K views
Movie Theaters Are Just Airlines With Popcorn
Media & entertainment · 158K views
The Business That Only Works 6 Weekends a Year
Services · 158K views
The American College Cartel
Technology · 151K views
Why OpenAI Can't Survive
Technology · 150K views
How Axon Became Wall Street's Hottest Stock
Food & beverage · 149K views
How Wall Street Ruined Your Favorite Snacks
Retail & brands · 142K views
The Resurrection of Abercrombie
Travel · 141K views
Why U.S. Airlines Stopped Caring
Finance · 127K views
Why Ukraine's Minerals Are Worthless
Technology · 119K views
Why Everyone Stopped Buying GoPro
Services · 90K views
Inside the Cutthroat Business of Eating
No case studies in this industry yet.
Originals
Field-shot documentariesDocumentaries with exclusive access, proprietary financials, real-world insight, and never-before-seen strategies from everyday businesses — NYC pizzerias, Ohio haunted houses, Texas barbecue, LA dispensaries. All filmed and edited by Emmy-winning former VICE, HBO, and Netflix staff.
Boots on the ground
Shot on site with the owners themselves — New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas.
Proprietary financials
Verified profit & loss numbers from private operators in industries that file nothing and disclose less.
Real-world insight
All primary and secondary research, with nothing recycled from a search engine or an LLM.
Everyday industries
Learn economics from the people with everything to lose, where the stakes are highest, and the competition fiercest.
Food & beverage · 2.3M views
Why Crumbl Cookies Can't Survive
Media & entertainment · 1.9M views
The Secret Business of Nightclubs
Food & beverage · 1.7M views
How Boba Shops Really Make Money
Retail & brands · 1.6M views
The Crumbling Business of Marijuana
Food & beverage · 1.5M views
The Territorial Business of Tacos
Retail & brands · 974K views
The Shrinking Business of Sneakers
Food & beverage · 936K views
The Evolving Business of Donuts
Food & beverage · 834K views
Why Ice Cream is Tough Business
Services · 819K views
How Barbers Really Make Money
Food & beverage · 686K views
Why Texas BBQ Joints Rarely Survive
Food & beverage · 616K views
Why Smashburgers Are Everywhere
Food & beverage · 609K views
How Pizzerias Really Make Money
Media & entertainment · 455K views
Why Adults Spend Billions on Pokémon Cards
Media & entertainment · 407K views
The Future of Arcades Is Weirder Than You Think
Food & beverage · 290K views
Why America's Most Expensive Meal Is Getting Cheap
Retail & brands · 275K views
The Hidden Economics of American Gun Stores
Media & entertainment · 237K views
The Secret World of Nightcrawlers
Media & entertainment · 158K views
The Business That Only Works 6 Weekends a Year
Technology · 119K views
Why Everyone Stopped Buying GoPro
Services · 90K views
Inside the Cutthroat Business of Eating
Read
Written case studiesEvery episode, in writing. The charts, the numbers, the key points — for when you don’t have time to watch.
Why Insta360 beat GoPro at its own gameGoPro invented the category. A startup took 82% of the market and now owns a future that nobody thought was possible.10 min read
Why Ukraine's minerals are Iraq's oil all over againAmerica has signed this deal twice before, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and lost both times to the same rival.15 min read
Why Asian airlines are so much betterAsian carriers deliver a service Americans barely recognize. American airlines earn more doing far less.11 min read
Why your favorite brands got so much worseRecipes got cheaper and portions smaller across American brands at the same moment. Not a coincidence.10 min read
Why police departments can't quit AxonForced by regulators to put a camera on its own weapon, Axon found the business that replaced it.12 min read
Why the AI boom is the dot-com bubble againDifferent technology, same house of cards — and this time the pump happened in private, where nothing is marked to market.10 min read
Why college is so expensive in AmericaHarvard holds $57B and charges $82,866 a year. Tuition isn't the business — the undergraduate is the seed, not the customer.16 min read
How much a haunted house actually makesA haunted house has six weekends a year to make its money back. The good ones out-earn Disney Parks on margin.12 min read
Why movie theaters survive off popcornTheaters keep less than half your ticket and lose money on the film. The popcorn is not a joke, it is the plan.10 min read
Why the dairy industry is failingOatly lost $344M in a year and Dean Foods went bankrupt. Milk is priced by politics, and the subsidies stop at the farm gate.16 min read
Why UNIQLO makes more money than GucciSame playbook, three outcomes. The only variable was whether the boss knew what stage he was in.16 min read
Why Ozempic is so expensiveThe same two companies that quintupled the price of insulin now want obesity classified as a disease.16 min read
Why almost nobody makes money in an MLMTupperware went bankrupt and Avon was dissolved. The model works spectacularly, and then it always fails.10 min read
Why almost no luxury carmaker makes moneyToyota sells 10.3 million cars a year. McLaren sells 2,137. Only two exotic makers have made that arithmetic work.16 min read
Why American public transit sucksNew York's subway loses $8.5 billion a year. Tokyo turns a 15% profit on an older system carrying more people.17 min read
How a $1,000 jacket became a luxury brandCanada Goose built a real luxury brand in ten years. The margins prove it. The share price says it may not matter.14 min read
How much nightcrawlers actually get paidLocal news cut the night shift and kept the footage. The freelancers who replaced it carry every cost and get a watermark.11 min read
Why Chinese EVs are so far aheadCheaper, faster and better equipped than anything the West sells, and cheap labor has nothing to do with it.10 min read
How Papa John’s buried Papa JohnSix regimes in thirty years, four of them engineered by the founder. The filings contradict his version.13 min read
Why car rental is such a bad businessMargins as thin as an airline, and the companies make more money selling the cars than renting them out.10 min read
Why gun prices make no senseThe most lucrative consumer market in America is also the only one with no prices, no ads and no data.16 min read
Why omakase is suddenly everywhereNo servers, no walk-ins, no storefront, revenue booked before the door opens. Omakase deleted every cost that kills a restaurant.11 min read
Why there’s no money in making moviesThe Big Five survive flops because movies are one line item in a conglomerate. Lionsgate had nothing to fall back on.14 min read
Why arcades never actually diedConsoles killed the arcade market. They did not kill the arcade business — it just stopped being about games.14 min read
Why Twitter never made moneyA Facebook user was worth $8 to advertisers. A Twitter user was worth $2.75. Everything else follows from that.12 min read
How credit card companies actually make moneyThe swipe fee is not the business. The interest is — and the networks taking the blame were founded by the banks collecting it.15 min read
Why regional amusement parks are dyingA decade of growth moved the average ticket from $21.26 to $24.86, and in-park spend by about a dollar.13 min read
Why Pokemon cards are worth so much moneyA piece of cardboard printed in 1999 sold for $420,000. What sets the price is not rarity or nostalgia.11 min read
Why Hermès bags are so hard to buyGucci spends 12% of revenue on advertising. Hermès spends 4%, makes you earn the bag, and its products appreciate 14.2%.9 min read
Why the scooter startups all went bankruptA Bird scooter grossed $2,000 a year, cost $1,300 to buy and $1,000 to maintain. It lost money on every vehicle, always.15 min read
Why free content never became a businessBuzzFeed's advertising revenue has never once covered what it costs to make the content. That is the whole story.13 min read
Why Chipotle got so much worseA weekly staple became a byword for small portions and high prices in under ten years. Here is what broke.10 min read
Why esports collapsed and who got paid for itThe audience never left. The money still vanished. That makes this a story about who was selling, not about fans.16 min read
Why Americans stopped drinking sodaBig Soda spent years funding scientists to blame exercise instead of sugar, and lost to a Midwest seltzer it never took seriously.8 min read
Why Starbucks is fighting its own baristasIt can afford the raise. What it cannot afford is an operating margin that looks like a restaurant's.12 min read
Why buffets went extinctThe buffet did not lose to a better restaurant. It lost to the deli counter twenty feet away, and to its own cost structure.16 min read
Why pizza is the best restaurant businessThe one restaurant category where independents beat the chains on margin and almost nobody goes bankrupt.10 min read
Who makes all the cardboard boxesTwo of every three Amazon boxes is International Paper. Every pizza box is WestRock. Neither company is visible.10 min read
Why fast food can't make a good burgerMcDonald's makes more from rent than from food. That is why it can't fix the burger — and why four LA independents can.13 min read
What happened to GoProIt invented the action camera and then spent a decade learning what an action camera is for.11 min read
How Yeezy and UltraBOOST saved AdidasThree failed five-year strategies, then one year that produced UltraBOOST, NMD and Yeezy together.10 min read
Why Xbox lost the console warsFrom defining a console generation to a distant third twice running, and the cause was never the hardware.10 min read
Why video games launch unfinishedSquare Enix went all-in on live service and wrote down $105 million. Take-Two did it properly. The difference is the case.9 min read
How much a Texas BBQ joint actually makesOne in three fail, brisket yields 40%, and the biggest variable in whether you survive is one magazine editor's palate.16 min read
Why football clubs never make moneyBarcelona spends 80–90% of everything it earns on player wages. It has done for eight straight seasons.12 min read
How Western Union makes money from the unbankedIt has more US locations than Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, Capital One and Bank of America have branches combined.11 min read
Why self-checkout didn't replace cashiersAmazon's cashierless store was a thousand people in India watching cameras. Every retailer copied it anyway.15 min read
Why GameStop failedThe pre-owned disc was a perpetuity at 47% margins. Then the publishers worked out how to make it non-transferable.14 min read
Why Taco Bell got so expensiveThe most profitable chain in fast food is being squeezed hardest, and the reason is KFC and Pizza Hut.11 min read
Why Temu and Wish can't make moneyWish spent 90 cents of every revenue dollar on ads to buy customers worth $10. AliExpress never profited either. Temu is next.15 min read
Why private equity can't kill your barberRegis spent forty years consolidating barbering. The stock went $725 to $9, and independents still hold 80%.15 min read
Why nobody wants to own ice cream anymoreUnilever, Nestlé and Kroger all owned the biggest brands in ice cream. All three decided it wasn't worth keeping.16 min read
How McDonald's recovered from its worst yearThe turnaround began when McDonald's stopped trying to be something else and started collecting rent instead.10 min read
How casinos actually make moneyCasinos run 40%+ margins on gambling. DraftKings has never had a profitable year. The difference is not technology.14 min read
Why the Popeyes chicken sandwich was so goodThe sandwich came from a decade of R&D discipline its new owners inherited and did not build. That is the problem.14 min read
Why Opendoor and Zillow failed at flipping housesIt needs to flip 60,000 homes a year to break even. It flipped 21,000. The rest is debt and vocabulary.12 min read
Why donut shops out-earn Krispy KremeThe average Krispy Kreme grosses $119K a year. A 650 sq ft Portland shop grosses $600K at a 40% margin.12 min read
Why AI is just big data againBig data was sold for a decade and produced nothing. The same players are running the identical playbook with AI.15 min read
Why the sneaker market collapsedStimulus money made everyone a reseller. What survived is the people who can price a used shoe from memory.11 min read
Why Facebook bet everything on the metaverseOne iOS setting cost $10 billion in profit. The metaverse is what a company does when it cannot own the device.9 min read
Why buy now, pay later never makes moneyThe loan you take is not funded by the company you owe. It is bought back days later, above what it is worth.13 min read
Why Under Armour failedIts products were ugly. Rather than fix that, Kevin Plank spent $700M on fitness apps and called Under Armour a tech company.14 min read
Why food delivery is never profitableUber admits in its filings that it has never charged enough to cover the cost of an Eats delivery. It is not alone.11 min read
Why self storage is so profitableA building with no plumbing, no insulation and no staff, on land nobody else wanted, netting $958,000 a year.10 min read
How Dollar Tree makes money selling everything for a dollarA fifteenth the size of a Walmart, a better gross margin than either giant, and 700 new stores while Target opened 58.10 min read
How cruise ships actually make moneyAirlines carried 4.5 billion passengers the year cruises carried 29 million — and the cruise lines earned the better margin.15 min read
Why diners never go out of businessThree chains, three opposite strategies, and identical 13% store margins. Diners survive everything and grow at nothing.14 min read
How much a taco truck actually makesTwo sisters run fifteen unbranded taco stands in LA grossing $7.58M a year. Almost nobody knows the business exists.11 min read
Why marijuana legalization never paid offEvery public cannabis company loses money. Three self-funded LA shops do not. Being unable to lose money is the advantage.15 min read
Why bubble tea is so profitableA Sawtelle boba shop grosses $1.08M at a 30% store margin on $9 orders. The moat is the supply chain, not the brand.11 min read
Why Casper lost money on every mattress it soldBuy a mattress for $400, sell it for $700, spend $300 on ads and $300 on overhead. Lose $200 a mattress.10 min read
How nightclubs and club promoters make moneyA club has to look packed before it is packed. The people who manufacture that are not on the payroll.8 min read
Why budget airlines stopped winningThe low-cost carriers say the industry is rigged. It isn't. The legacy carriers just copied the only thing they had.16 min read
Why Crumbl won't lastMrs. Fields had its decade too. Crumbl store margins fell from 30% to 10% while corporate went from $4M to $152M.15 min read
Why Airbnb never killed the hotel industryHilton owns under 2% of its rooms. Marriott owns 1%. Wyndham owns none. The incumbents were already platforms.8 min read
Why KFC got so bad in AmericaThe same company, the same recipe, two outcomes. What changed was who owns the buildings and cooks the chicken.11 min readNew episodes
Don’t let an algorithm decide what you get to see.
Get an email the moment a new episode drops, with commentary that never made the final cut.
Audience
Founders, executives, operators, working professionals and the students coming up behind them.
600K+Average views per video
~20 minAverage view duration
2M+Average monthly viewers
85%Viewers are men
64%Aged 18–34
42%Aged 25–34
70%In North America
60%In the United States
15%In Europe
Modern MBA is watched most in the leading economic / finance hubs of the world.
Los Angeles500K+
New York336K+
Chicago334K+
Singapore332K+
Toronto320K+
London311K+
Sydney200K+
Top 7 cities by viewership · 2024–2025
Education
Taught in universities & classroomsModern MBA videos are trusted, shared, and repurposed for teaching at accredited schools.
University
Assigned at UC Davis, a top-five public university, for watch-and-discuss in business classes.
High school
Carried on the online learning platforms used by the largest school districts in the country.
Course material
Reflection questions, graph studies and handouts built from Modern MBA videos for classroom use.
