I stopped by the Perplexity coffee truck
Plus, we have a new Twitter holiday on the books.
Today’s issue of PHONE TIME includes—a coffee review from a complete amateur (me) and a new Twitter holiday!
After sending yesterday’s newsletter, I took the train to Midtown to visit Perplexity’s “Curiosity Café.” Coinciding with New York Tech Week, the coffee truck stopped in the Financial District, Flatiron, and Midtown this week. Having the Perplexity app on your phone earned you a free coffee. Enterprise Pro users could get a bag of coffee beans.
It wasn’t super busy when I stopped by around 12:30 p.m. yesterday. I got an iced latte with oat milk and a little vanilla syrup. I have a bit of a sweet tooth when it comes to coffee drinks and my normal drink is an iced dirty chai latte. I wouldn’t say I have a super refined palate or know that much about coffee, so I can’t give you a super in-depth review. But I thought it was good! A bit less sweet than I’m used to.
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I noted that this is a marketing strategy I saw mostly on my college campus, where news of free food or drinks is the hottest piece of gossip around. Bumble is one example I’d reported on previously.
Perplexity introduced Supply in October 2024 and its coffee product in December. The 12-ounce bag of coffee beans features a cloudy-skies design and the tagline “A curious coffee.” I had a surprisingly hard time finding reviews of it.
“Our single-origin beans reveal a progressive flavor narrative: opening with floral notes, developing through distinct blueberry and raspberry characteristics, and concluding with tropical fruit complexity,” reads the description for Perplexity coffee beans. “A sensory journey that mirrors the path of inquiry, each sip revealing something new.”
I also wrote yesterday that I think we’ll see more artificial intelligence companies using language that emphasizes storytelling, collaboration, and authenticity rather than just efficiency and productivity. Perplexity Supply is an extension of the rest of the company’s brand narrative, using language like “curious,” “infinite possibilities,” “wonder,” “explorers,” “inquisitive,” “human understanding,” “complex patterns,” and “cosmic.”
Did I sip the coffee—quite refreshing on a sticky summer city day—so quickly that I almost forgot to take a picture for PHONE TIME? Yes. Was it a journey that “mirrors the path of inquiry”? Not really. And, wait a minute, what does Perplexity know about the path of inquiry anyway? (If you’ve been following the company’s trajectory, you can probably guess the contents of my hyperlinks.)
“This is what brand and marketing looks like in tech when there’s too much money sloshing about,” one Reddit user commented in the Perplexity subreddit about the coffee beans.
★☎️⏱️This summer will be the perfect time to bring out my Instagram purse that I bought on Etsy!⏱️☎️★
We have a new Twitter holiday on the books.
I’d define a Twitter holiday as a really good day on the platform, which I begrudgingly call X or X, formerly known as Twitter, to stay somewhat in line with AP style. But I don’t think calling it an “X holiday” really captures its essence.
My running list of Twitter holidays includes: President Donald Trump getting Covid-19 in 2020; the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the container ship Ever Given in 2021; the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, the implosion of the OceanGate Titan submersible in 2023; Willy’s Chocolate Experience in 2024; and the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024. I started using the platform regularly in 2020, so this is by no means comprehensive. Other days, like the night of a presidential election, a Met Gala, or even a papal conclave, might qualify, but to me, Twitter holidays are generally somewhat unexpected. They tend to benefit from a continual drip of new information, as was the case with the Titan submersible’s initial oxygen countdown or new angles of Willy’s Chocolate Experience.
While many of the tweets surrounding yesterday’s Musk-Trump feud were divorced parents jokes about J.D. Vance, a lot of the commentary was about the platform itself—with many saying it was the “best day on Twitter since Trump got Covid.” There were also plenty of digs at Bluesky.
