The NYC Snack That Ate My Lunch!
Plus! Protein cage match!! Bodega worker predictions for 2026!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #192 of CAFÉ ANNE!
It’s been a while! I missed you! I did, however, enjoy my extended vacation tour of Upstate New York which included one sort-of blizzard, 63 servings of my favorite holiday drink (coffee with Stewart’s eggnog), a brief stay with a pair of rebel nuns and, somewhere between Buffalo and Albany, at a rest stop on the I-90, my first visit to a Popeyes.
Wow! Have you tried their chicken tenders? They are insanely good! My little fast food adventure made me wonder what else, for better or worse, I’ve been missing out on. While NYC has more mom-and-pop businesses than any city in the nation, it also features more than 500 different national retailers and restaurant chains—most of which I’ve never experienced because I’m a bit of an indy snob.
So starting soon, I’m launching a new regular feature, “First Time Try,” in which I will patronize a national chain and report on what it’s like. Any you’re curious about? Post your request in the comments or email annekadet@yahoo.com. I’ll explore a Qdoba or Sephora so you don’t have to!
In other news, huge subway-fare-is-now-$3 shoutouts to new paid subscribers Byron S., Jennifer M., Stace, Brendan L., Pete S. and Ann F. Plus a sweet Venmo donation from Beverly B. All told, that’s enough $$$ to cover my train fare all year reporting CAFÉ ANNE adventures! Many thanks!
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. We’ve got my annual bodega worker predictions survey (sort of!) and a feature about a NYC protein bar with global ambitions. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
Bodega Worker Predictions for 2026—Not!
It’s a CAFÉ ANNE tradition that in the first week of January, I run around the city surveying NYC bodega workers to get their predictions for the coming year. You can read past accounts here and here and here.
Typically, bodega workers are brimming with prognostications—from the nutty (flying cabs) to the prescient (buy gold!) on subjects ranging from the economy to the next hot neighborhood. And then there’s always one honest man who admits that well, he really can’t predict anything.
But this year? That man was everywhere. I interviewed more than two dozen bodega workers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and pretty much came up with zilch. Will Mamdami be a good mayor? “Too soon to tell.” How will the stock market perform? “I don’t know.” Will crime go up or down? “We’ll have to wait and see.”
What’s happening, I think, is that events have been so unpredictable for so long, everyone has completely given up on trying to predict anything.
Well, almost. I did garner a few nuggets from the two mornings I spent grilling shopkeepers.
Yogandra, a trainee at City Gourmet Market in Chelsea, said 2026 will be a great year, mainly because two weeks ago, at age 49, he finally moved to New York City. Born in Nepal, he spent 25 years working in Abu Dhabi before realizing his life-long dream. He also predicts the year’s hot food and fashion will be burgers from McDonald’s and attire from the Gap—which happen to be his personal favorites.
Along similar lines, Saqr and Ali, cousins behind the counter at 782 Mini Market Corp in Bed-Stuy, said Purple brand jeans and Moose Knuckles jackets would be the year’s hottest looks—which they both happened to be sporting. (I did a little research, by the way, and discovered their outfits cost at least $1000 each.)
Alex, who works at Convenience NYC, in Chelsea, said it’s not too late to buy Nvidia: “Everything depends on chips!” But he advised against Tesla because Elon Musk seems to have fallen out of favor with you-know-who. “He’s not following orders or something, he’s not a good relationship like before. The stock is going to go down.”
Amer, behind the counter at Madison Square Convenience store on 8th Avenue, was 100% confident about the hot snack for 2026: “Spicy popcorn.”
I also got a few folks to offer some 2026 advice for their fellow New Yorkers.
“Don’t be noisy,” said Adam, who works at the newly opened Heavenly Market in Chelsea. “The thing is, you can go on the street, there can be a crackhead anywhere. If you’re noisy, he could stab you. Just walk your way.”
“Calm down, relax,” said Ali at Franklin Finest Deli in Brooklyn. “Everything’s going to get better.”
But most said they couldn’t even offer suggestions. After sitting down to chat about the weird state of the economy, politics and crime, Maged, the manager at West Village Finest Deli, cheerfully pronounced himself fully clueless: “I don’t have advice,” he said, “even for myself!”
Dare to make a prediction or offer advice for 2026? Leave your thoughts in comments!
Unhinged: The NYC Snack That Ate My Lunch!
The main reason it’s fun to live in NYC is you can never predict what the day will bring. Anything could happen!
My latest adventure started last Tuesday morning when, a block from my home in Brooklyn Heights, I happened to glance at the digital billboard on one of those LinkNYC kiosks. It was advertising a new caffeinated protein bar with a peculiar name: “Unhinged”. The tagline: “Fuel for the hours that don’t exist.”
Oh boy. Because I won’t shut up about it, you all know I am a huge coffee addict—five cups a day is the norm. What I haven’t written about before, because it is kind of boring, is my ridiculous protein obsession. I typically gobble 160 grams a day—twice the recommended amount for a lady my size. My perfect snack is coffee and a protein bar. And now, here they were, mooshed together.
As soon as I got home that afternoon, I looked for the bars on Amazon. Nothing. Huh! But a Google search took me to the Unhinged website. It featured a photo of a robot hand emerging from the monitor of 1980s Mac, proffering a protein bar. Was this some sort of joke product?
I clicked around the site looking to see who was behind it. But no company name, no location, no contact info. And the product FAQ didn’t help. Sample question: “Is it good before or during a rave?” Answer: “Yes.”
There was, however, a “shop now” button, so I clicked on that. The product page offered bars by the box: twelve for $36. Why not? I paid an extra $7 for one-day USPS shipping and then promptly forgot the whole thing.
Here’s where things got weird. A few hours later, I opened my door to find a plain brown bag waiting out in the hall, bearing my last name and apartment number in black marker. I was on the phone with my friend Aaron, so I told him what was up.
“I think it might be these new caffeinated protein bars I ordered earlier,” I told him. “But they were supposed to come in the mail.”
“It was hand-delivered to your apartment?” said Aaron. “They came up your elevator and left it at your door? I don’t know if that’s awesome or really disturbing.”
I took the bag inside. Enclosed was a little card featuring the Manhattan skyline and a hand-written note. “Anne!” it said. “Thanks for being an early supporter. It means a lot to us.”
I also unpacked two plain white boxes which, judging by their size and heft, contained the protein bars.
Aaron sounded alarmed. “It could be some dude in his kitchen who just makes this shit!” he said. “It could be an arsenic bar! It could be anything!”
I opened one of the cartons. Inside I found a dozen bars in commercial packaging. While there was no company name on the wrapper, there was a nutrition label, which looked very official. I read through the ingredients. Almond butter, chicory root fiber, dates...no arsenic!
“Do you feel better about it now?” I asked Aaron.
“Just barely,” he said.
It was too late in the day for caffeine, so I waited until morning to try my first bar. But first, I did some more research. Another search turned up the product’s Instagram page. It had just 118 followers and seven posts dating back to December 25, 2025. The account was just three weeks old!
I decided to send a direct message, introducing myself and my newsletter. “I am a little caffeine and protein obsessed, so I ordered a box,” I wrote. “I was very surprised when the package arrived at my door in Brooklyn Heights just a few hours later!!! In any case, I am planning to try the bars today and write about it for my next issue. I would love to chat with whomever is behind the company.”
I was running around Bed-Stuy reporting another story when a reply came in.
Hi Anne! Thanks again for your order. We were delighted to see it. We founders are scattered about, but I live in Brooklyn Heights and hand-delivered the order. Happy to jump on a call or meet for a coffee in the neighborhood.
Can’t wait to hear what you think of the bar.
Byron
Byron included his number, so I immediately gave him a ring, and we agreed to meet at a Brooklyn Heights café at 4 pm. Only in New York can you spot a new product on a billboard, buy it, and the next day schedule a coffee date with the company founder—who turns out to be your neighbor!
It was essential to try my first Unhinged bar before interviewing Byron, of course. I’d brought one along on my reporting expedition, so I fished it out of my bag and gobbled it on the street.
Reader, it was delicious! It had a chewy brownie texture and an intense chocolate flavor—more dessert than protein bar. But an hour later, I was still hungry. So I ate a second bar. Surely, that would do it.
Nope! When I got home I was still hungry, and a little sleepy! So I ate a third bar and washed it down with a cup of coffee. Then, instead of my usual post-lunch nap, I went to the gym.
Hahaha! By the time I hit the weight room, I was feeling totally, well, Unhinged! I breezed through my usual lifting routine and did thirty minutes on the treadmill, full incline. I wanted to keep going, but had to meet Byron. “Golly!” I thought, “I haven’t felt this great in a long time!”
And then I crashed. Hard. I only made it home by grabbing a Starbucks on the way.
I met Byron Sorrells at Joe Coffee on Hicks Street, the least-worst option in a neighborhood full of not-so-great cafés. “Do you need more coffee?” he greeted me. “Do you ever get enough?”
Good question! I ordered a latte, bringing my total caffeine intake equivalent to eight cups. I WAS FEELING VERY EXCITED FOR THE INTERVIEW!
Byron was curious to hear about my experience with his snack bar, so I described the day so far. “And now I feel pretty good!” I concluded.
He nodded in recognition. “In America, instead of taking a nap, we just drink another coffee, right?” he said. “I don’t know if you saw on the back of the wrapper. It says, ‘Keep going.’”
The barista brought our coffees to our table, and Byron introduced the server as Jacob.
“He must come here often,” I said to Jacob.
“A little too often,” said Jacob.
Byron, who is 45, said the caffeinated protein bar idea came to him in June, 2024 when he was at Cannes Lions, a conference for advertising and marketing types: “I was going from meeting to meeting to meeting, and I wasn’t eating, and suddenly it was three in the morning,” he said. “I’m used to grabbing a bar, used to grabbing a coffee, right? So what if you put them together, but made it taste good?”
Byron, who has a day job doing AI stuff for Microsoft, had a long history in startups, but never created a food product. He hooked up with a friend, co-founder Corey Stanton (who lives in Dumbo), who introduced him to Matt Paine, a personal chef running a catering company in California. Matt experimented with bar recipes in his home kitchen, sending samples to Corey and Byron in Brooklyn.
After three rounds of testing, the trio started working with YouBar, a California food manufacturer that specializes in—I love this—protein bars.
Anyone, it turns out, can invent a protein bar and have YouBar produce it with custom packaging (minimum order: 10,000 bars). After eight rounds of test runs, Byron and his team ordered 20,000 bars, which are now stashed in a temperature-controlled food storage facility in Williamsburg. He spent the last few months running around a select group of NYC neighborhoods (Tribeca, Brooklyn Heights, Greenpoint) convincing markets and bodegas to stock the bars.
Unhinged hit the shelves just three weeks ago. “Clark Market has it, Penny Bridge has it, Skyline has it on the corner of Hicks,” said Byron, naming several nearby bodegas. “Food Town has it. They were all so nice!”
The partners also ran ads on LinkNYC, targeting neighborhoods where the bar is available for sale. Which, of course, is how I learned about the product.
We marveled at how easy it is to create, market and sell a product these days. I could offer a CAFÉ ANNE protein bar! Or, better yet, a protein toaster pastry!
The Unhinged team is still tweaking the formula based on early feedback, said Byron. They plan to boost the caffeine content from 75 to 100 milligrams (a move I highly endorse!) and add a little L-Theanine to help prevent crashes (ditto). They’ve created new flavors that have yet to hit the market including salted caramel, and plan to expand the product line to include caffeinated protein drinks.
Their sales effort, meanwhile, is expanding to include local hospitals, fire stations, health clubs and hopefully a big nightclub in East Williamsburg.
How big could Unhinged get? “This is not meant to be a little hobby or side project,” said Byron. “I don’t know if we’ll become a household name, but I think there’s potential there....I want it to be on every shelf—at Hudson News when you’re at the airport.”
Before we parted, he gave me samples of the new flavors, and I told him I might try eating two more bars for dinner.
Byron wasn’t sure this was a great idea. “That,” he said, “would be Unhinged.”
PS: On Friday, I was getting a trim and telling my Brooklyn Heights hairdresser about my latest reporting adventure, and he told me he’d already heard the whole story earlier that day from Byron’s mom when she came in for a haircut. NYC: The World’s Greatest Small Town!
The Price of Protein: A CAFÉ ANNE Cage Match!
The Unhinged bar isn’t the first caffeinated protein product to hit the market, of course. I was very excited this fall when Starbucks came out with its Vanilla Protein Latte.
So which is the best bang for the buck? I did some Anne math to determine which is the better deal—the $3 Unhinged bar, which has 75 grams of caffeine and 11 grams of protein, or the $7 Starbucks tall protein latte, which has 150 milligrams of caffeine and 29 grams of protein.
And just to mix things up, I added an alternative I invented last week after drinking too much coffee: a cup of cottage cheese mixed with two teaspoons of instant coffee, which has 180 milligrams of caffeine and 25 grams of protein. The ingredients cost $2.30. I call it the Anne-ergy Bowl.
Here’s the breakdown:
Price-wise, the Anne-ergy Bowl is the clear winner! OF COURSE.
So how does the Anne-ergy Bowl taste? When I came up with the idea, I had no intention of actually eating it. But then I did, and I did not die. While it looks like hell, it tastes a bit like coffee-flavored cheesecake.
The Anne-ergy Bowl’s main shortcoming, of course, is that unlike the Starbucks latte and the Unhinged snack bar, it is not really portable. Perhaps you could dump it into the pocket of your cargo pants, ala Napoleon Dynamite and his tater tots, and dip in during math class. Enjoy!
CAFÉ ANNE, a free weekly newsletter about NYC, is created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
This is sort of content is EXACTLY why I subscribe to this Substack!
Anne, thanks for sharing another delightfully nutty experience.
Keep on!