Seattle's pumpkin spice obsession ranks fifth nationwide
And, if you think August is too early for anyone to be putting in those PSL orders, you'd be wrong.
By the numbers: Among U.S. states, Washington ranks fifth in terms of per-person pumpkin spice latte (PSL) orders, according to DoorDash data shared with Axios.
That's based on pumpkin spice orders placed through the app from Aug. 1 to Dec. 1 of last year.
The big picture: Last fall, national PSL demand spiked on Aug. 19 — nearly two weeks earlier than it did in 2021 — per DoorDash.
And searches for "pumpkin spice" in July increased by 49% this year, according to Yelp data.
What's next: Starbucks won't start rolling out pumpkin spice lattes in its cafes until Aug. 26 this year.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
37 minutes ago
- Axios
Richmonders to get $3.5K tax cut in 2026
The average Richmonder will see a federal tax cut of nearly $3,500 in 2026 thanks to the "big, beautiful bill," per an analysis from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group that mostly supports lower taxes. Why it matters: That's money folks can spend on other things — which could be essential next year given that wages still haven't caught up with inflation and tariffs threaten to push costs up further. State of play: The spending bill Congress passed last month made President Trump's first term tax cuts permanent — and added on a bunch more. The new tax breaks include deductions for tips and overtime income, a cut for seniors and an expanded child-care credit. These are temporary provisions. By the numbers: At $3,773, Richmond city residents will see the largest average tax cut next year among RVA metro area localities, per the Tax Foundation's number crunching. Chesterfield residents will see the smallest — $3,183. For Hanover taxpayers: $3,668. And it's $3,366 for Henrico residents. Zoom out: There are broad geographic differences in tax benefits from the spending bill due to variations in state and local taxes, plus areas where more high-earners live, Axios' Emily Peck and Jason Lalljee report. Virginia's Goochland County residents will see some of the largest average tax cuts in the state ($7,359), while Petersburg taxpayers will see the smallest ($1,428). The largest cuts in the country are going to mountain resort towns where high-earners and business owners live. In Teton County, Wy., residents will see an average tax cut of $37,373, the highest in the U.S. The smallest breaks are in rural counties — like Loup County, in Nebraska, where the average tax cut is $824. Zoom in: Business owners will get some of the biggest cuts — thanks, in part, to tax breaks being made permanent for research and development expenses and other provisions. Those in high-tax coastal regions will also get big breaks, thanks to the increased cap on state and local tax deductions (known as SALT — also temporary). For example, the average tax cut in 2026 for Westchester County, N.Y. — a high-income New York City suburb poised for a big SALT payoff — is $6,644. But just to the south, in the Bronx, the average tax cut is $1,761. Reality check: The "big, beautiful" bill also made some steep cuts to social spending on food benefits and Medicaid, but those mostly don't kick in until 2027 and 2028.
Axios
37 minutes ago
- Axios
Grant Demaree wants to make military staff "superhuman"
Speed matters. Just ask Grant Demaree, the chief executive at Onebrief. "We succeed by making military staffs superhuman — faster, smart and more efficient," he told Axios in an interview. "Staffs with Onebrief can get their work done a bit over three times as fast as those without," he said. "I think we can enable over 100 times in the coming years." Why he matters: Demaree is a former U.S. Army officer. Plus, his company's military workflow-and-planning software is used around the world. Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind? A: Decentralized execution — lots of autonomy for each echelon, combatant command down to small unit — has worked well for a long time. I think this will keep working for two to four more years. Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots? A: Can be? 2036. Will be? Maybe never. Drones are improving rapidly across air, ground, surface and subsurface. It's easy to imagine a war by 2029 where most shooting is done by drones. I think military headquarters will be mostly automated by 2029 as well. As will a lot of cyber warfare. The hard part is executing functions that still need hands, like sustainment or manning legacy naval vessels. Humanoid robots unlock that. I expect a balance of power in 2036 so lopsided there's not much incentive for large-scale war. I'm more interested in the limited autonomy that dominates the much more dangerous late 2020s. Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why? A: Asia-Pacific. The China hawks in Congress have it right. The last 75 years have been the best in the history of the world, because the U.S. was a mostly benign hegemon. A multipolar or China-dominated world won't be so nice. It's not just that our biggest threat is in the region. Our interests are there, too: semiconductor production in Taiwan and the bulk of global trade. Most senior officials believe the Pacific is the priority, but they only weight the Pacific about 30% above other theaters. They should weight it 10 times the others and be willing to sacrifice readiness elsewhere to achieve deterrence where it matters most. Q: What time do you wake up? What's the morning routine look like? A: I wake up around 5am. I'm very energized in the morning. I go to bed at 9pm and don't perform so well at night. Workout first. Then a bit of quiet, focused work. Q: What are you currently reading, or what's a book you'd recommend? A: Jen Pahlka, who blogs at Eating Policy, has the best mental model I've seen for understanding government customers. Culture eats policy. Civil service culture decides how policy gets implemented. Culture is who gets hired plus what incentives they face.
Axios
an hour ago
- Axios
RTP startup uses AI to fight health insurance denials
A Research Triangle Park startup wants to make appealing health insurance denials easier through a new artificial intelligence tool. Why it matters: A growing number of startups are turning to new AI tools to help patients navigate complex policies and byzantine processes to appeal insurance denials, according to NBC News. The number of prescription drug claims denied by insurance grew by 25% between 2016 and 2023, according to the New York Times. And in 2023, Affordable Care Act insurers denied 20% of claims, Axios reported. Driving the news: Enter Counterforce Health, a startup founded at the Frontier coworking campus in Research Triangle Park. The company's AI assistant drafts customized appeal letters that comb through a patient's policy, looking for the best line of defense, greatly reducing the amount of hours many patients spend drafting appeals. At the moment, few patients appeal denied claims at all, according to an analysis by KFF. Zoom in: Neal Shah, a former hedge fund manager turned startup founder, has been trying to change the health care industry he has found frustrating for years, through a succession of startups run by a handful of employees in RTP. Shah, who left his job on Wall Street to move back to North Carolina to take care of sick family members, is the founder of CareYaya, an online platform that helps connect people looking for at-home care workers with students studying health care. That platform has taken off in the past three years, growing from hundreds of workers based at Triangle-area universities to thousands across the country. Now, he's focused on expanding Counterforce Health, which he co-founded last year to provide free AI tools to patients and funding through several grant awards. The company's platform uses a variety of AI models to run its appeals process, pinging medical journals and insurance review commission data to make a case for why a patient's appeal should be granted. He views it as a way to counteract the algorithms that insurance companies use to deny claims. (Some insurance companies are currently being sued for using algorithms to deny claims, Axios previously reported.) What they're saying: "You end up spending hours and hours researching, fighting on the phone and just stressing the hell out," Shah told Axios about the current appeals process. "And many people will be too intimidated and scared to do that." In some ways, it's become a battle of AI versus AI in the insurance world, Shah added, and if the patient doesn't have a tool, "you lose." What's next: Right now, the Counterforce tools are free for patients and clinics to use. Some clinics are using the service, like Wilmington Health, to make it easier to draft appeals for its patients, and some pharmaceutical companies have begun reaching out to the team about the tools.
