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Quest Means Business

Authorities Tracking Origin of Growing Parasite Outbreak; Line- Sitting Service Lets New Yorkers Skip the Queue. Oil Prices Rice After Houthis Threaten Red Sea Blockade; U.S. Officials: Trump Approves Nuclear Deal with Saudi Arabia; OpenAI Says its Experimental A.I. Models Hacked a Rival Firm. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired July 22, 2026 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[16:00:13]

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": The closing bell is ringing on Wall Street. There you see the markets. Let me show you

what the day has been like. Interesting sort of day. Not terribly exciting or overly exciting. The gains that we saw evaporated and we are just barely

-- we actually -- and a one and two, and one, two, three, four.

The market has now closed and the events of the day that you and I will be talking about over the next hour.

Houthis blockade in the Red Sea is heaping more pressure on global energy supplies.

OpenAI has admitted one of its A.I. agents broke out of a testing area and then hacked another company, and it did it all on its own.

And fast food chains in the U.S. are offering steep discounts. The parasite outbreak scaring customers away.

We are live in New York on Wednesday, midweek. It is July the 22nd. I am Richard, and I mean business.

Good evening.

Oil prices continue to rise after an Iranian ally threatened to cut off a second shipping corridor in the Middle East. Brent crude has put on three

percent, at over $94.00 a barrel, as Texas is the other one, of course, that's still -- it is up, but it is a bit cheaper. And the reason is the

Houthi rebels in Yemen are now cautioning vessels not to use the Bab Al- Mandab Strait to reach Saudi ports.

At the top of the screen, you can see the Strait of Hormuz. Further down, you see, of course, what we are talking about.

Much of the Saudi oil exports passes through this waterway with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed. Windward Intelligence says five tankers

transiting the Red Sea have now turned round since the Houthis issued their threat.

Tehran's latest threats are also weighing on oil markets. Iran's top negotiator posted in the region "Where we do not sell oil, no one will sell

oil."

David Goldman is in New York.

David, I am looking at that price behind you, but what is surprising me is it is not a hundred, a hundred and ten plus. That is what we need to

explain tonight.

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes. Right. So you would think, given everything that you just said, this would be somewhere around

$100.00 a barrel, we are not there yet, and that has everything to do with demand, Richard.

So remember that not only do you need a buyer, but you need a seller. And these folks are not finding buyers.

In fact, there was around two, well, let's see if I can draw that 200 million barrels of oil that escaped the Strait of Hormuz during that period

in June, when Iran and the United States had that agreement, and it basically found no one. I mean, China is not buying. Southeast Asia was a

little bit interested, but Qatar and the UAE needed to reduce the price of oil just to sell it.

QUEST: All right, let me jump in -- let me jump in. Why is that demand from China weaker? Is it general economic? What is going on there?

GOLDMAN: So China has a couple of things going on.

First of all, there are 1.9 billion -- 1.9 billion barrels of oil in Chinese reserves right now. That is 117 days' worth of supply. So they

don't need to import oil. In fact, imports -- Chinese imports have gone down from 12 million to around nine million. So we are looking at a

significant reduction in Chinese imports.

And they are just saying, you know what, we don't need that as much. We are happy using our own stuff.

QUEST: What is the sustainability? Excuse me -- what is the sustainability of the status quo.

GOLDMAN: Well, for now, the oil market is saying that it is fine, right? We can have oil under $100.00. But as you pointed out, and this is very

important that we have now two choke points. You can't get through here and you can't get through here.

The only way that you can get oil out is up through the -- up north through the Suez Canal. So, that's not the best way to get to Asia and that's who

wants the oil. And so if Saudi Arabia is piping it out this way and we are getting quite a bit of oil, it was around four to five million barrels of

oil every single day that were -- that was going to go through the Persian Gulf that ended up in the Red Sea. If we can't get that out the normal way,

that's going to potentially raise oil prices.

[16:05:16]

But to your point, not as much as you might think.

QUEST: All right, David, I am grateful. David, thank you.

GOLDMAN: Thank you.

QUEST: Now, 20 percent of the world's oil, David thinks he is the only one -- huh! Don't you believe it? Twenty percent typically goes through the

Strait of Hormuz, which, as you can see, that is that classic route that we know about. And now, with all of these disruptions, the players in the

region are trying to reduce their dependence. Of course, we know what we've just been told about this particular route and the difficulties there.

However, let's look at those other options and the ones that are already there. You've got the Saudi East-West Pipeline. This one is almost running

at capacity, but it offers great potential if they can manage to extend its capacity for further. And you've got the Habshan-Fujairah oil pipeline,

down here in the UAE.

The UAE is not resting on its laurels, though, and it is building another pipeline around here to export exports at Fujairah. DP World has got some

container ports that it is putting in here, and the biggie, I suspect, is coming from Iraq, where ultimately you're talking about two pipelines and

they would take oil up and they'd take them out, up and out through Syria. You would then go up through Turkey, and you would also go up through

Jordan. Forgive my less than accurate --

But the point still remains, as long as this bit and now this bit is choked off, then you are in a rather desperate situation because none of this

relieves energy strains in Europe.

Natural gas prices have surged nearly 40 percent in the last month alone. Nathan Sheets is with me, Citi's Global Head of International Economics.

The economic side of this, we always talk about adaptation and substitution. Can economies adapt and substitute for this level of energy

disruption?

We've already been going six -- five to six months. Can they keep going a bit longer?

NATHAN SHEETS, GLOBAL HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS, CITI: My sense is so far, so good.

A part of the story is very much as we enter this episode, we had historically high global inventories of petroleum and crude oil over 10

billion barrels, and we've drawn on those oil inventories and that has been a significant buffer.

In addition, as you say, we are seeing substitution to other kinds of fuels, notably in the short run including coal, maybe over the longer term,

it is renewables and nuclear, but a lot of substitution. But there is a fragility here that we have lost with the closure of the Strait and the

other pressures in the Middle East, massive, massive oil flows.

And if that continues for an indefinite period, eventually we are going to feel a greater hit from it.

QUEST: There is no question that Southeast Asia is being very badly hit, the countries there, we are seeing that in economics, but how much of the

global effect is mitigated by the fact that the U.S. is not affected by a shortage, to be sure, it is affected by the higher price that's

internationally.

SHEETS: Yes.

QUEST: But there is no shortage. The U.S. is continuing to pump and provide elsewhere, and that must surely, to some extent, be an engine dragging

everybody else, albeit slowly.

SHEETS: Absolutely. I think that U.S. supply has remained ample and if anything over this period has increased. And I think we are seeing in a lot

of ways these global oil markets adjust in very flexible ways and that that is part of the story as to why we have been as resilient as we have been so

far.

QUEST: We are seeing inflation coming off its top levels, slightly odd. I mean, there is obviously technical reasons, numbers drop off one side of

the equation. It depends what is happening elsewhere in the economy.

But if oil prices go back up again towards the mid-90s and maybe a bit higher, would you expect those gains in inflation to either be arrested or

reversed?

SHEETS: My sense is that the weakness that we've seen in June consumer prices in the United States, but in a number of other major economies, very

much did reflect the fact that we were in a period where oil prices were falling off sharply.

[16:10:13

It was in that period when oil prices had fallen to nearly $70.00 a barrel and if we are reversing that dynamic and now, we are going to have oil

prices, $90.00 a barrel, $95.00 or even $100.00 or higher dollars a barrel, then we are going to see a resurgence in headline inflation and second

round effects in decor and it is going to make life for Kevin Warsh, the fed and other central bankers all the more complicated as they seek to

fight inflation.

QUEST: The ECB, of course, has already bought itself a bit of extra insurance. Are you -- two sort of sub questions here. Firstly, are you

seeing evidence of second round or secondary effect inflation? And related to that, have you changed your forecast on what you think the FOMC does

between now and the end of the year?

SHEETS: Broadly speaking, we are seeing some second round effects in core inflation. And across the globe, we at Citi, have marked up our

expectations for core inflation, so excluding the effects of energy for this year by about a half percentage point relative to where we were in

February before this conflict erupted.

And we certainly for a range of central banks have shifted policy expectations as markets shifted expectations toward tighter policy. For the

Federal Reserve, our U.S. team has not yet changed its call appreciably, but I do think there is a strong case that the Fed is going to be more

cautious than it would have been otherwise.

QUEST: The question of an if, not a yet.

All right. thank you. Good to see you, sir. And thank you for always coming in and helping us understand this thicket of issues. Thank you.

Now, two U.S. officials have told us that President Trump has approved a deal to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium for nuclear reactors. The

agreement is controversial because enriching nuclear fuel could theoretically lead to Saudi Arabia developing nuclear weapons.

Israel is thought to have undeclared nuclear weapons more than thought to, and has long been wary of the Saudis accessing nuclear technology. The U.S.

Congress would have to approve to move this forward.

Kevin Liptak is at The White House.

Right, now, let us not go down the road of are they building a bomb, because there is certainly no suggestion of that yet. But why does the

President -- why is the President giving MBS this very much sought after ability to enrich?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and why is he giving it to him now? I think is a big question, too. And clearly there have been

some major differences in opinion on how the Iran War is going between the President and Prince Mohammad and it seems as if the President is looking

for something of a carrot to keep the Saudis on side, and the Prince has been trying to get this kind of deal in place for many, many years,

including during the Biden administration.

Back then, it was sort of linked to this idea that Saudi and Israel would normalize relations. That idea sort of went by the wayside after the

October 7th terrorist attacks, and President Trump sort of revived these talks at the beginning of his term and had been sitting on it for quite

some time and it is only now that he has decided to approve it and I think the timing, given the Iran War, given, I think, the differences in how the

Saudis think that this should be waged, is a sign that the President is looking to keep Mohammed Bin Salman sort of on side in what is otherwise a

fairly contentious moment in their relationship.

QUEST: Yes, will it pass Congress?

LIPTAK: It will probably pass Congress, and even if Congress were to decide to disapprove it, they would have to disapprove it by a veto proof

majority. So there is expectation that this will be approved and put into place.

QUEST: Can I throw something at you? If I might, off left field, Kevin.

Mamdani, the mayor of New York's comments about arresting the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, he has made -- on the ICC warrant -- he has

made clear -- he has made clear that he doesn't have the power or the jurisdiction to do so. However, formerly, his announcement made. What does

The White House make of it? Because it really is entirely up to them.

LIPTAK: Yes and it has been interesting to see how the President has sort of played all of this. He has extraordinarily complicated relationships,

both with Zohran Mamdani, but also with Benjamin Netanyahu and he came out yesterday to say, and this was after Mamdani suggested he was exploring

options to arrest Netanyahu.

[16:15:13]

But before he said that he didn't have the power to do it, President Trump came in there and said that if Netanyahu came to the United States, that he

would under no circumstances be arrested and I think, you know, this probably says more about the President's relationship with Netanyahu than

it says about his relationship with Mamdani.

You know, the President knows that he has an incredible political cudgel when it comes to Netanyahu, who is facing elections in several months now,

he has been more willing than almost every one of his presidential predecessors to break with Netanyahu on his conduct in the war in Iran, I

think because he knows that Netanyahu needs his political support in this upcoming election, and this was a sign that when push comes to shove, the

President would actually be behind Netanyahu, at least on this particular issue.

But how that Israeli election unfolds over the next three months, and how the President decides to engage in it, is something I think we should all

keep pretty close eye on.

QUEST: And, Kevin, you merely prove that no matter what we throw at you, from whichever direction it comes, you bat it back with elegance and

aplomb.

Thank you, sir. Kevin Liptak at The White House.

Now, some cyber security experts are sounding the alarm. It is about a hack. It was carried out by A.I., but here is the point, the A.I. did it on

its own. It broke out of its sandbox. So how does it manage to break out and then go rogue and start attacking -- well, it wasn't going rogue. It

was doing what it had been told to do, but just doing it in a way it wasn't told to do it. We will discuss it all. QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

QUEST: OpenAI says some of its experimental models left a supposedly secure test environment or a sandbox as they are called, and then hacked a rival

company. OpenAI says the models were trying to cheat on a cyber security test.

The company says the situation is unprecedented because the models were acting autonomously. Some researchers have warned that it was only a matter

of time before something like this happened.

Jacob Ward is with me, the technology journalist and host of the "Rip Current" podcast. Good to see you, sir. I swear, you look younger every

time I see you.

[16:20:00]

The reality is here at one level, the A.I. was doing what it was told to do, which was break into a cyber security or break into it, you know, find

X, Y, Z and do it by breaking in to. What it was not told to do was be cunning and, and break out of its own sandbox. That's the worrying bit that

it was able to do that or that it sort of had the intelligence to think if I -- if I need to achieve my goal, I am going to have to do something I

wasn't supposed to do.

JACOB WARD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Richard, great to be with you. And you're absolutely right.

This is in theory, you could say, well, we wanted it to do this one thing, but it went on and did this other thing. But the problem with that is that

this industry has been advertising for the better part of a year now what they are all calling the agentic area era, right, this moment that were

going to enter in which you're going to have, you know, these bots go off and buy a car for you, go off and do your grocery shopping. And in fact,

OpenAI has really been at the forefront of this.

You'll probably remember about a little under a year ago, a thing went around in Silicon Valley called Open Claw. This was like, you know, a

garage made piece of A.I. software that you could basically hand like your credit card information and a phone number and an e-mail to and set it

loose in the world. Thousands of people went with this, wound up sort of raw dogging the world in this scary, scary, unsupervised way.

The guy who created that got hired by OpenAI in February of 2026 to build exactly this kind of capability, these agents that can go off and act on

their own, that's the whole point of this. And so the idea that they are somehow surprise on the part of OpenAI that this is happening strikes me as

disingenuous, not to mention the way that they describe it also makes it sound like it is an exciting new development in their product launch.

An unprecedented thing, it sounds like marketing language as much as it does about a caution.

QUEST: Should we be worried about this?

WARD: I mean, I think so. I think that for one thing, there is all of this talk about the idea that somehow we are going to be able to create values

and pre-cook them into these systems such that they won't do bad things.

But what paper after paper, after paper and I have been spending the last 48 hours compiling a whole list of these for my show, you know, those

examples all show researchers four or five years ago saying there is going to be no way to control this once you deal with this at scale. Once you

teach this thing that it has an objective, it is going to do anything it can to get it done, and you can't get two people in the world to agree on

what human values should be, much less bake it into a robot in this advanced kind of way, Richard.

QUEST: So now change horses. What can regulators do? And let's not worry -- let's not worry about those people or those bad actors who will ignore the

regulators anyway, there will always be those people.

But as a general tone, what can regulators do? Because they are going to inevitably be behind in all of this?

WARD: Well, I mean, for one thing, we already have a thing around dangerous research that could be of harm to the public. It is called the dual use

research of concern framework. We have a whole system.

You know, if you're a scientist who is going to do work on anthrax or, you know, try and turn H5N1 Into something that can be transmitted between

humans, you have to apply to an independent agency and have it evaluated before you're allowed to go forward. We've recognized that in the fields of

biology, weaponry, those sorts of things.

In this case, we are still thinking of this as a thing that writes knock- knock jokes, right? And as a result, we are not, I think, taking seriously enough the notion that it really could blow things open and that the

companies making this stuff for as much as they say that they are worried about this and that they want to take it seriously, they are not submitting

themselves to independent agencies, and when they write about it, they write about it in terms that could be read as equal parts excitement as

much as alarm.

QUEST: And of course, they are not necessarily spending the necessary money in terms of considering the issues.

I am grateful to you, sir. Thank you very much indeed.

Now as we continue, almost anyone who flies with regularity has experienced turbulence in the air. The number of turbulence events is rising as the

atmosphere gets warmer, bumpy air, as they say.

Traditionally, aviation has struggled to predict exactly how and where the dual impact of flight. Therefore, you keep your seatbelt fastened all

along. There is this app now called SkyPath, which aims to change that.

SkyPath uses crowdsourcing and A.I. to provide pilots with notifications about turbulence on their flight route before it hits. Maya Shpak is the

CEO of SkyPath. Maya is with me now.

This is fascinating, and I can't sort of understand -- I mean, what is the downside here? Surely any app that tells planes to talk to each other, that

there is turbulence ahead, get out of the way, must be regarded as a good thing.

[16:25:17]

MAYA SHPAK, CEO, SKYPATH: It is a good thing. It warns the pilot, it provides additional data and it basically transformed this elusive weather

phenomena into data that you can measure and then you can manage. So there is no downside there.

QUEST: How does it work? What is it doing that existing radar and meteorology and all the radar that the cockpit already has? What is this

thing doing that is different.

SHPAK: So turbulence is a phenomena where rather in the plane actually can catch. And so you're a frequent flier, probably and imagine any aircraft as

a sensor, this sensor, this aircraft supposedly when it feels rough air or smooth air, it provides this data back into all the network that is using

the system. So evidently now you have a map of turbulence reports and turbulence recording.

On top of that, this data enables to predict better in better reliability and better accuracy what it is about to become from this point, when you

have data, you can notify the pilots in advance, you can use this software, this data to plan ahead and to predict better.

QUEST: And of course, if the plane flies through smoother air, it is safer not only for the passengers, but also potentially saves the airline money,

as well, in terms of fuel costs, et cetera.

I do wonder though, you know, I am old enough to remember more turbulence, but I say more turbulence because planes used to fly at lower altitudes in

those days, the old noisier planes would fly at lower altitudes where there is more turbulence.

But overall, because of climate change, are we seeing more turbulence?

SHPAK: Yes, we definitely see more turbulence. We see an increase of around 40 percent over the Atlantic in the last 40 years and if you look at the

upcoming El Nino, our peer scientists indicates an increase of almost 30 percent over the Atlantic and the Pacific. So for sure, we see more

turbulence, but we also see technology that support the airlines by managing it better than what you used to experience in the past.

QUEST: Do you get frightened by turbulence?

SHPAK: Turbulence is a scary phenomenon. I am not scared of it because I'm fully aware of the capabilities of it. Turbulence can take down an

airplane, but it can create injuries and hurt the cabin crew and passengers.

So my advice to you and everybody that flies is to use the seatbelt sign when needed to.

QUEST: Thank you. I am very grateful that you came in to talk to us about it. Thank you very much.

SHPAK: Thank you.

QUEST: And it is extremely important advice. I mean, the number of people who think that, oh, I am immune from it all. Well, you watch your head as

it cracks open at the top like an egg. Like an egg in a bottle, that's what I always say. Thank you.

Now, there is a nasty outbreak of the parasite, cyclospora. It is growing in the U.S. and researchers are trying to lock down the source of the

sickness. You wouldn't have thought it was that difficult, but it is. And the fast food chain at the center is trying to win back customers with

special deals. We will talk about it all after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:31:53]

QUEST: After its supply chain of lettuce was linked to an outbreak of severe intestinal illness, Taco Bell is working to lure customers back. For

today and today only, it's offering two of its lettuce-free menu options for $1 each.

The traffic into Taco Bell stores has dropped nearly a third when U.S. health officials linked the chain to an outbreak of cyclospora. Thousands

of people in the U.S. have now been made sick, and authorities are still working to confirm the source of the parasite.

David Relman is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University's School of Medicine. The good professor is with me now.

This is very tricky, much trickier than I thought to find out the source. Why is that? Surely with today's large models we can say it was here. It

was here. It has to be the lettuce.

DAVID RELMAN, PROFESSOR OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY, STANFORD MEDICINE: Yes, well, you're right. One would think that something, especially this

big, would be a little bit easier to sort out. But it's in fact the reason that it is so big which is sort of the centralization and the

industrialization of a fresh produce production and supply. That very feature, which makes an event more noticeable, also makes it more difficult

to sort out because think about it.

In this case, it's likely lettuce, we think, but lettuce that may have been grown on multiple farms then brought to a central facility, cleaned and

processed, and packaged and then distributed and redistributed and finally retailed all over the United States. Each of those steps is a complicated

step, many of which have risk of contamination.

QUEST: Right.

RELMAN: And it's going to be hard to sort this out for one of these major centralized distributors.

QUEST: So does the -- does previous -- does precedent suggest that these sort of outbreaks eventually just blow themselves out for whatever reason

and everybody is left scratching their head doing postmortems on the events and thinking, well, we think it was this, it was probably that but actually

it seems to have gone away so let's all have a cup of tea?

RELMAN: Yes. Yes. Well, you're right. They in fact in this case literally blow themselves out. But often because the exposure is limited and the

source is perhaps identified belatedly and the exposure is, you know, terminated. But it's often a trial and error process and often we don't get

the answer at the end of the story.

QUEST: That can't be very satisfying for somebody like yourself who wants to know, who needs to know?

[16:35:01]

RELMAN: Absolutely. There's a disconnect between what one can do in a laboratory and what one can do in the real world. In the laboratory, we

have methods for specifically typing each of the strains of something like cyclospora. If I had the time and means, I could tell you whether a

cyclospora on a head of lettuce in one town of Ohio is the same as a strain on another head of lettuce in a different town in Ohio, or in two different

people.

But in the real world, those methods are difficult. They're costly. They take an investment of time and people. And we haven't made those kinds of

investments. We simply haven't owned up to the responsibilities of running a large distributed food system of the sort we have.

QUEST: What would you like to see --

RELMAN: We like the benefits of fresh produce overnight but we're not willing to pay.

QUEST: So what would you like to see them do? What would you like to see supermarkets or distributors do, not just to prevent this from happening,

but to improve the supply chain so that it doesn't happen?

RELMAN: Yes. Well, it starts at the source. This is an organism, for example, cyclospora, it only infects human beings. So you've got to look at

the place where -- and then it's communicated, it's transmitted by food and water. So you go back to the original source where the food was grown. And

you have to ask, how did this human contamination get on the food, out in the field, maybe through irrigation water, maybe in the processing plant,

through contaminated water they were using to clean the lettuce.

You have to identify those early points of exposure and then interrupt them. And the way you do that is you have testing and monitoring and

surveillance at those early steps in the process before it's all mixed together and sent all over the world.

QUEST: Wow.

RELMAN: And that we know how to do. It just is going to take money and time. And for companies, I would think it's worth it. It's worth it for

their good name to avoid events like this because of the blowback and the cost to human health.

QUEST: And I'm sure that any one of those companies affected now, if they have skimped on those other side of the equation, they're regretting it.

Bearing in mind the costs of the crisis management that they're now having to deal with.

Professor, I'm grateful to you, sir. Thank you very much. I wish you clean and good lettuce all summer long. Thank you.

Now, as we continue, the humorist George Mikes once said, an Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one. Queuing. As an

Englishman, it is in my DNA. You call it line, or some people might call it lining up. It's far from an English phenomenon. According to one survey,

people in the United States spend a collective 37 billion hours a year in one form of line or another.

In New York, there's a line, a queue, on every corner, and line dudes is here to help. They will queue on your behalf for whatever you want.

Sometimes it can be a few hundred dollars for the day.

Robert Samuel is the founder and CEO of Same Ole Line Dudes. He's been line sitting for 13 years, and he told me there is more to wait for than ever.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERT SAMUEL, FOUNDER AND CEO, SAME OLE LINE DUDES: It's been -- it's turned into a monster ever since we started back in 2012. And I think

what's largely the cause of that is TikTok mainly and also other social media platforms. It's everybody has this fear of missing out and they want

to try the latest thing, the latest gadget, the latest thing to eat. And it's just completely an animal with legs and tentacles all over the place.

QUEST: So what do on most requests? Is it to be in line for theater tickets or say, you know, a sporting event or a concert? What's most requested?

SAMUEL: It depends on the time of the year. We're just coming out of the World Cup. So we had a lot of World Cup bracelet requests that were big.

They were free giving around -- giving out all around the city. At the end of Tony season, we had a lot of theater requests, people trying to see

nominated shows before the awards. So it varies depending on the time of the year.

QUEST: Do -- is there anything you won't line up for?

SAMUEL: I'll line up for basically anything, but I don't like to line up for sneakers.

QUEST: Have you had any difficult moments when the real person arrives? Or do you always -- do you usually complete the transaction at the end or is

it one, I mean, obviously it's a restaurant you're lining up for, then they will come in and take your place. But how does that break down between

taking your place and you complete the transaction?

SAMUEL: Well, one of the things that we've been successful at doing is advertising while we're working. So we wear hats, we have banners, we have

one-man tents that explain what we're doing and people can talk to us for the duration of the time they were waiting.

[16:40:09]

So they know that someone is either coming to replace us or we're there as a proxy on behalf of someone else. There are some restaurants that may give

us pushback because they don't think that it's fair that someone is putting their name down on their behalf, but people don't want to waste, you know,

PTO or, you know, precious visiting time in the city to wait on the sidewalk to try, you know, Taylor Swift's favorite restaurant or something

like that.

QUEST: There's a certain -- I've got a certain sympathy with that argument. I realize that's against your business, but I have a certain sympathy, not

because I want to put you out of business, but --

SAMUEL: OK.

QUEST: Part of the experience is the lining up, the queuing, as I would say. Part of the experience is sleeping on the street. No?

SAMUEL: Well, that is the case.

QUEST: No.

SAMUEL: To give you a good example, that definitely was the case during the Hamilton craze when the original cast was there. We were standing in line

for upwards of four days, so it became --

QUEST: Oi.

SAMUEL: Yes, it became something of a camp Hamilton.

QUEST: Is it cheating to pay somebody to wait in line for you?

SAMUEL: I don't think it's cheating. If you think about a lot of the things that end in sitter, people pay someone to babysit their kids. People pay

someone to dog sit or pet sit, to take care of their loved ones. Why can't you hire a proxy to stand in line? People outsource the things that they

don't want to do in life. So standing in line and paying someone to do it shouldn't be treated any differently.

QUEST: Longest wait in sort of -- at a restaurant or in a line in New York?

SAMUEL: In a line?

QUEST: Yes.

SAMUEL: Two days. It was always the iPhone release. 48 hours.

QUEST: Worst wait?

SAMUEL: Worst wait? The Donald Trump hush money case because just the polarization of society. People were hating us and people were loving us.

So it was being in the middle of that was a bit taxing.

QUEST: What do you do when you have to go to the toilet and you're in line?

SAMUEL: OK, that's the top question I always get.

QUEST: Yes, I'm sure.

SAMUEL: You're in line.

QUEST: I'm sure.

SAMUEL: Yes, you're in line for a number of hours. So the other people have to go to the bathroom as well. So it's an honor system. They watch your

space while you go. You watch they their space while they go. So it's no -- it's not as complicated and as restrictive as people would like it.

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QUEST: There you are. Stay in line and pay somebody to do it for you instead.

And that is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS for tonight. I'm Richard Quest in New York. Whatever you're up to in the hours ahead, I hope it's profitable.

"MARKETPLACE EUROPE" is next.

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[16:44:37]

(MARKETPLACE EUROPE)

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