Why Restaurants Are Making a Comeback, With Toast CEO Aman Narang

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
I'm Micheline Sharp, Head of Insurance and Retirement at Janice Henderson Investors. For 90 years, we've worked to help clients achieve superior financial outcomes and to fulfill our purpose of investing in a brighter future together. To learn more, go to janicehenderson.com.

**Telis Demos** (0:18)
So Gunjan, I have really had a heck of a time getting restaurant reservations this holiday season. It has taken many hours on Rezzy and other apps to find places to book, even like small groups. I was at one point trying to book for eight people. That was tough. It seems like restaurants are packed. Have you had this same experience?

**Gunjan Banerji** (0:42)
I'm impressed that you've even tried to play the reservation game because at this point, I just go to restaurants in my neighborhood in Chelsea that I know I can walk into because I don't want to stay up until midnight on Rezzy trying to book something 30 days out. Who is remembering to do that?

**Telis Demos** (1:00)
Well, it seems like despite what we hear about people being concerned about inflation and the price of things, which is absolutely a legitimate concern, people seem to be going to restaurants, at least here in New York, they're packed. I find that very interesting.
I hope that today's guest on our show can share some ideas about how to snag holiday reservations this season, and also maybe just help us understand what's going on with restaurants. We're going to talk with Aman Narang. He's the CEO of Toast. That's the technology company behind those little gadgets that you now see at so many restaurants where you can pay, you can tip your server. I talked with Aman about how the industry has evolved since the pandemic, and toast and technology's general role within all that. You'll hear that later in the show. But first, let's get back to who we are, what we're doing here. I'm Telis Demos. I write for the Journal's Heard On The Street column.

**Gunjan Banerji** (1:53)
And I'm Gunjan Banerji, lead writer for Markets here at The Wall Street Journal. And this is WSJ's Take On The Week, where we're giving you a leg up on the world of money and investing. Each week, we're bringing you conversations with insiders about markets, the economy and finance.

**Telis Demos** (2:11)
So, Gunjan, before we get to that big conversation about restaurants, what's going on? What's the latest news?

**Gunjan Banerji** (2:17)
You know, I thought that BlackRock deal this week was really, really interesting. I know you follow this type of stuff pretty closely. BlackRock acquired a private credit provider called HPS for $12 billion mammoth deal. What did you think of that?

**Telis Demos** (2:32)
So, okay, so a lot of people probably know BlackRock, people who aren't in the markets, general people, know BlackRock because they own big stakes in so many public companies. And one way they got to that massive scale is because they bought an ETF business called iShares way back in 2009 Back then, ETFs were big, but they were not completely dominating like they are today. So that move proved to be a genius deal by BlackRock. So they're making what I kind of now see as, in some ways, a corollary bet on private markets as the next frontier. And that's what HPS does. They mainly do what is called private credit. A lot of that involves private loans to private companies. And that is the next big growth frontier for a lot of asset managers.

**Gunjan Banerji** (3:17)
So is it just me or is this the year? I mean, we have a few weeks left of 2024 Has this been the year that private credit really entered the mainstream?

**Telis Demos** (3:26)
Well, I think you had a big moment when the CEO of Apollo, Mark Rowan, who was at some point reported to be a Treasury Secretary candidate. So this is a person that a lot of people listen to, was saying that Americans are basically betting too much in their retirement on big stock indexes, big public company stock indexes, and within those, a handful of big tech companies that dominate those indexes like NVIDIA. And that what they should be doing is really thinking about diversifying their investments into the broader market of private companies and loans to private companies. So now with a mega giant like BlackRock increasingly in the mix of this private market, you are just going to be increasingly participating in these markets potentially kind of in behind the scenes ways, right? If you are buying and something from an insurance company like a life policy or an annuity or you have a big pension from a big company. Increasingly it seems like the BlackRock and others of the world are going to be helping those funds get into these private markets and diversifying away from the public stuff, the S&P 500, the Barclays aggregate index, right? For fixed income into these private market asset classes.