Like many in the fireworks industry, Stephen Vitale is in the family business. He runs a fifth-generation company, Pyrotecnico, in New Castle, Pa. In October, he made a surprising alliance with Nova Sky Stories, the drone company Kimbal Musk acquired from Intel.

Increasingly, drones illuminate skybound entertainment shows. Swarms of flying robots have created magical illusions everywhere from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to the coronation of King Charles III this spring. And the global drone lightshow market, virtually non-existent a decade ago, is estimated to be worth about $1 billion by 2021, according to allied market research.

Drone shows are, in some ways, the newer, hipper brand of fireworks. And they are quieter, safer and better for the environment.

Fireworks providers like Vitale face a tough decision: invest in the expensive equipment and regulatory clearance needed to get into the drone business, or believe demand for fireworks will remain steady even as a new type of competition skyrockets.

Change is coming. Fireworks providers collect most of their revenue around July 4. And some organizers of those events are switching to drones. Places, like Salt Lake City And Boulder, Col.plan to use them instead of fireworks for Independence Day celebrations this year, citing the reduced risk of wildfires and pollution.

But not everyone is convinced that the light shows will suffice as a replacement. Galveston, Texas, yes fall back on fireworks after using drones in 2022. And Reddit pages on the downsides of drone shows complain about the fact that drones don’t evoke the booming sounds that fireworks do.

“Drones are much more advanced,” said Chris Hopkins, co-owner of Celebration Fireworks and Star Flight Drone Shows. “They just don’t have the same visceral response.”

Turning is a big investment. Hopkins invested in drones last year, eager to take advantage of the creative freedoms they offered. “In the past, I could have hinted at the Demogorgon,” he told DealBook, referring to a monster on the Netflix show “Stranger Things.” “Now I can have the Demogorgon.”

It was an expensive gamble: drones cost more than $1,500 apiece, and he soon learned that a good show needed at least 75. Then there was the hassle of filling out a nearly 200-page application to the Federal Aviation Administration for regulatory approval and finding people skilled in piloting the devices.

Some companies stick to fireworks. “I know there are some companies out there that do — I think our philosophy is we’re going to do what we do best,” Heather Gobet of Western Display, an Oregon-based fourth-generation fireworks company, told DealBook.

Gobet, who bought the company from her parents about eight years ago, has decided that dealing with the expertise, certifications and costs of acquiring drones is prohibitively expensive. Instead, she’s going to partner with companies that offer drone shows when customers request them.

In addition, she has other challenges on her mind: the industry is grappling with supply chain issues, labor shortages, an aging generation of pyrotechnic experts and costly compliance.

There is hope for harmony in the industry. Drones can be used for advertising in a way that fireworks cannot, for example displaying a company logo above a busy road. Many shows, such as a Democratic party of the results of the 2020 presidential election contain both drones and fireworks.

But growing competition presents opportunities, says Rick Boss, who runs Sky Elements, a drone show company that’s nearly three years old. Larger traditional fireworks companies want to expand or enter new areas, such as drones, while smaller fireworks companies are struggling.

“There are companies that are shrinking, maybe even exiting – and so that creates opportunities,” he said. “It’s a good time to be aggressive.” —Lauren Hirsch

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Bidenomy 2.0. President Biden tried to restart reporting on his economic record as his polls have hit rock bottom despite apparently good data: 13 million new jobs, unemployment rates for black and Hispanic Americans at record lows, and a new industrial policy to stimulate green investments . Inflation is a major reason, with Americans still feeling the sting of rising prices. But the Biden team believes it also needs to sell better.

Ryan Reynolds and RedBird stepped on the accelerator. The Canadian actor teamed up with the private equity firm to lead a 200 million euros ($218 million) investment in Renault-owned Formula 1 team Alpine. The group also included actors Michael B. Jordan and Rob McElhenney, Reynolds’ partner-owned Welsh football club Wrexham AFC, who has become a media phenomenon thanks to the Hulu series on the team.

The Supreme Court is having a big week. The court made a series of important decisions: it struck down affirmative action in universities; it supported a company that refused to provide services to a same-sex couple despite a state law prohibiting discrimination against gay people; and it rejected Biden’s proposal to cancel at least some of the student debt, placing new restrictions on presidential power.

Weekend wins. As people’s schedules changed during the pandemic, consumer spending shifted from weekdays to weekendssaid The Economist. The reasons: Fewer employees go to the office and go out after work, and many restaurants, bars and clubs close for good during lockdowns.

The never-ending Aperol spritz summer

For many Americans, summer vacation weekends mean cold drinks during cookouts. Beer is the stereotypical go-to choice, but sales by volume have declined. What has become more dominant? For many an Italian cocktail called the Aperol spritz.

For more than a decade, the drink, with its signature bright orange hue and slightly bitter bite, has survived countless summer rival drinks and pandemic lockdowns. Its continued success is a testament to how smart marketing and deftly navigating trends have made an obscure Italian aperitivo a staple for urban millennials.

An introduction to Aperol. Created in 1919, the drink was largely confined to northern Italy until 2003, when Campari Group purchased Aperol and began rolling out a painstaking marketing campaign. The company quickly seized on the spritz — a simple cocktail with an easy-to-remember recipe of three parts sparkling wine, two parts Aperol, and one part club soda — as a vehicle.

Those efforts paid off for Campari. Aperol accounted for 21 percent of the company’s €2.7 billion ($2.9 billion) revenue last year and grew 28 percent globally and nearly 50 percent in the United States alone.

Experts attribute its success to a number of factorsbeyond wall-to-wall marketing:

• The rise of low-alcohol cocktails. After decades of what Spiros Malandrakis of the research agency Euromonitor called “energy-rich” night drinking (read: shots), Aperol is a relatively light alcohol of 11 percent.

• The ease of making it. “It’s a very forgiving cocktail,” says Julie Reiner, co-owner of New York cocktail bars Milady’s and Leyenda, even for home bartenders.

• The inherent attractiveness of Aperol on social media. “The shade of orange looks so good in Instagram feeds,” said Malandrakis — and its association with European glamor is reinforced by its prominence in HBO’s “The White Lotus.”

Aperol’s success stands out in the fad-driven cocktail industry. Remember when hard seltzers like White Claw were the talk of the town? Or how Dirty Shirleys were last summer’s must-have drink? Those concoctions may have faded, but Aperol’s appeal hasn’t: Campari said first-quarter sales were 33 percent higher than a year earlier.

This has led to an increase in sales of bitters in general. The category sold 487.8 million liters last year, according to Euromonitor, an increase of 30 percent compared to 2012.

The popularity of the Aperol spritz has helped make a slew of cocktails — many of which follow the blueprint of the original drink but substitute other ingredients — into bar must-haves.

“For a brunch menu, you have to have a spritz,” Reiner said. “It’s a category that’s only growing because people like it.” (When she reopened Milady’s last fall, she created two cocktails: a martini riff and a take on an Aperol spritz that uses ruby ​​sparkling Lambrusco instead of Prosecco.)

Aperol will likely have legs for some time to come. “I don’t see it going anywhere for the next three to five years,” Malandrakis said, noting that tastes will eventually change.

Campari also continues to have high hopes for its bestseller: In February, Robert Kunze-Concewitz, the company’s CEO, told analysts, “We’re just at the beginning of a very long Aperol runway.”

---

Which BBQ Ingredient Is an Inflation Anomaly?

Ingredients for your 4th of July cookout are more expensive this year. While inflation is down from its 2022 highs of about 9 percent, prices remain high: On average, prices for grill favorites are about 31 percent higher than they were four years ago, according to the “BBQ Index,” a report by the market. from Rabobank. research unit, RaboResearch. But there is one exception. Which of these items will cost about the same as in 2020?

• Minced meat

• Hamburger Buns

• Salad

• potato chips

• Beer

• Tomato

Find the answer below.

Thank you for reading! We’re taking a break for the holidays. We’ll see you on July 5.

We want your feedback. Email your thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

quiz answer: It’s the tomato. The US market has seen a surge in tomato imports, particularly those from Mexico, said Almuhanad Melhim, a fresh produce analyst at RaboResearch. That has driven prices down.

The item with the highest price increase? Hamburger buns, the prices of which have skyrocketed due to a rise in wheat prices after Russia invaded Ukraine, remain high.

Like many in the fireworks industry, Stephen Vitale is in the family business. He runs a fifth-generation company, Pyrotecnico, in New Castle, Pa. In October, he made a surprising alliance with Nova Sky Stories, the drone company Kimbal Musk acquired from Intel.

Increasingly, drones illuminate skybound entertainment shows. Swarms of flying robots have created magical illusions everywhere from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to the coronation of King Charles III this spring. And the global drone lightshow market, virtually non-existent a decade ago, is estimated to be worth about $1 billion by 2021, according to allied market research.

Drone shows are, in some ways, the newer, hipper brand of fireworks. And they are quieter, safer and better for the environment.

Fireworks providers like Vitale face a tough decision: invest in the expensive equipment and regulatory clearance needed to get into the drone business, or believe demand for fireworks will remain steady even as a new type of competition skyrockets.

Change is coming. Fireworks providers collect most of their revenue around July 4. And some organizers of those events are switching to drones. Places, like Salt Lake City And Boulder, Col.plan to use them instead of fireworks for Independence Day celebrations this year, citing the reduced risk of wildfires and pollution.

But not everyone is convinced that the light shows will suffice as a replacement. Galveston, Texas, yes fall back on fireworks after using drones in 2022. And Reddit pages on the downsides of drone shows complain about the fact that drones don’t evoke the booming sounds that fireworks do.

“Drones are much more advanced,” said Chris Hopkins, co-owner of Celebration Fireworks and Star Flight Drone Shows. “They just don’t have the same visceral response.”

Turning is a big investment. Hopkins invested in drones last year, eager to take advantage of the creative freedoms they offered. “In the past, I could have hinted at the Demogorgon,” he told DealBook, referring to a monster on the Netflix show “Stranger Things.” “Now I can have the Demogorgon.”

It was an expensive gamble: drones cost more than $1,500 apiece, and he soon learned that a good show needed at least 75. Then there was the hassle of filling out a nearly 200-page application to the Federal Aviation Administration for regulatory approval and finding people skilled in piloting the devices.

Some companies stick to fireworks. “I know there are some companies out there that do — I think our philosophy is we’re going to do what we do best,” Heather Gobet of Western Display, an Oregon-based fourth-generation fireworks company, told DealBook.

Gobet, who bought the company from her parents about eight years ago, has decided that dealing with the expertise, certifications and costs of acquiring drones is prohibitively expensive. Instead, she’s going to partner with companies that offer drone shows when customers request them.

In addition, she has other challenges on her mind: the industry is grappling with supply chain issues, labor shortages, an aging generation of pyrotechnic experts and costly compliance.

There is hope for harmony in the industry. Drones can be used for advertising in a way that fireworks cannot, for example displaying a company logo above a busy road. Many shows, such as a Democratic party of the results of the 2020 presidential election contain both drones and fireworks.

But growing competition presents opportunities, says Rick Boss, who runs Sky Elements, a drone show company that’s nearly three years old. Larger traditional fireworks companies want to expand or enter new areas, such as drones, while smaller fireworks companies are struggling.

“There are companies that are shrinking, maybe even exiting – and so that creates opportunities,” he said. “It’s a good time to be aggressive.” —Lauren Hirsch

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Bidenomy 2.0. President Biden tried to restart reporting on his economic record as his polls have hit rock bottom despite apparently good data: 13 million new jobs, unemployment rates for black and Hispanic Americans at record lows, and a new industrial policy to stimulate green investments . Inflation is a major reason, with Americans still feeling the sting of rising prices. But the Biden team believes it also needs to sell better.

Ryan Reynolds and RedBird stepped on the accelerator. The Canadian actor teamed up with the private equity firm to lead a 200 million euros ($218 million) investment in Renault-owned Formula 1 team Alpine. The group also included actors Michael B. Jordan and Rob McElhenney, Reynolds’ partner-owned Welsh football club Wrexham AFC, who has become a media phenomenon thanks to the Hulu series on the team.

The Supreme Court is having a big week. The court made a series of important decisions: it struck down affirmative action in universities; it supported a company that refused to provide services to a same-sex couple despite a state law prohibiting discrimination against gay people; and it rejected Biden’s proposal to cancel at least some of the student debt, placing new restrictions on presidential power.

Weekend wins. As people’s schedules changed during the pandemic, consumer spending shifted from weekdays to weekendssaid The Economist. The reasons: Fewer employees go to the office and go out after work, and many restaurants, bars and clubs close for good during lockdowns.

The never-ending Aperol spritz summer

For many Americans, summer vacation weekends mean cold drinks during cookouts. Beer is the stereotypical go-to choice, but sales by volume have declined. What has become more dominant? For many an Italian cocktail called the Aperol spritz.

For more than a decade, the drink, with its signature bright orange hue and slightly bitter bite, has survived countless summer rival drinks and pandemic lockdowns. Its continued success is a testament to how smart marketing and deftly navigating trends have made an obscure Italian aperitivo a staple for urban millennials.

An introduction to Aperol. Created in 1919, the drink was largely confined to northern Italy until 2003, when Campari Group purchased Aperol and began rolling out a painstaking marketing campaign. The company quickly seized on the spritz — a simple cocktail with an easy-to-remember recipe of three parts sparkling wine, two parts Aperol, and one part club soda — as a vehicle.

Those efforts paid off for Campari. Aperol accounted for 21 percent of the company’s €2.7 billion ($2.9 billion) revenue last year and grew 28 percent globally and nearly 50 percent in the United States alone.

Experts attribute its success to a number of factorsbeyond wall-to-wall marketing:

• The rise of low-alcohol cocktails. After decades of what Spiros Malandrakis of the research agency Euromonitor called “energy-rich” night drinking (read: shots), Aperol is a relatively light alcohol of 11 percent.

• The ease of making it. “It’s a very forgiving cocktail,” says Julie Reiner, co-owner of New York cocktail bars Milady’s and Leyenda, even for home bartenders.

• The inherent attractiveness of Aperol on social media. “The shade of orange looks so good in Instagram feeds,” said Malandrakis — and its association with European glamor is reinforced by its prominence in HBO’s “The White Lotus.”

Aperol’s success stands out in the fad-driven cocktail industry. Remember when hard seltzers like White Claw were the talk of the town? Or how Dirty Shirleys were last summer’s must-have drink? Those concoctions may have faded, but Aperol’s appeal hasn’t: Campari said first-quarter sales were 33 percent higher than a year earlier.

This has led to an increase in sales of bitters in general. The category sold 487.8 million liters last year, according to Euromonitor, an increase of 30 percent compared to 2012.

The popularity of the Aperol spritz has helped make a slew of cocktails — many of which follow the blueprint of the original drink but substitute other ingredients — into bar must-haves.

“For a brunch menu, you have to have a spritz,” Reiner said. “It’s a category that’s only growing because people like it.” (When she reopened Milady’s last fall, she created two cocktails: a martini riff and a take on an Aperol spritz that uses ruby ​​sparkling Lambrusco instead of Prosecco.)

Aperol will likely have legs for some time to come. “I don’t see it going anywhere for the next three to five years,” Malandrakis said, noting that tastes will eventually change.

Campari also continues to have high hopes for its bestseller: In February, Robert Kunze-Concewitz, the company’s CEO, told analysts, “We’re just at the beginning of a very long Aperol runway.”

---

Which BBQ Ingredient Is an Inflation Anomaly?

Ingredients for your 4th of July cookout are more expensive this year. While inflation is down from its 2022 highs of about 9 percent, prices remain high: On average, prices for grill favorites are about 31 percent higher than they were four years ago, according to the “BBQ Index,” a report by the market. from Rabobank. research unit, RaboResearch. But there is one exception. Which of these items will cost about the same as in 2020?

• Minced meat

• Hamburger Buns

• Salad

• potato chips

• Beer

• Tomato

Find the answer below.

Thank you for reading! We’re taking a break for the holidays. We’ll see you on July 5.

We want your feedback. Email your thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

quiz answer: It’s the tomato. The US market has seen a surge in tomato imports, particularly those from Mexico, said Almuhanad Melhim, a fresh produce analyst at RaboResearch. That has driven prices down.

The item with the highest price increase? Hamburger buns, the prices of which have skyrocketed due to a rise in wheat prices after Russia invaded Ukraine, remain high.

Each year, a new batch of innocents enter the market for a bachelor’s degree. Soon they receive training in some unwritten rules.

Families often do not pay the quoted rate. Schools offer website calculators that estimate what families may have to pay, but they make no guarantees. Help seekers can’t get a real quote until they’ve applied and been accepted.

And if a student is considering a school Manhattanville college in Purchase, NY, something strange can happen if the student both seeks the estimated cost and gets the real one after being accepted: The university will list the prices of five competitors, even though the student didn’t ask for them. Those citations can also all be higher than Manhattanville’s.

These estimates come with a big disclaimer: they could be wrong. As you can imagine, some of these other schools are not happy with this turn of events. So why would an institution that offers education in mathematics and economics publish suspicious figures?

That question — and its elusive answers — lie at the root of a fundamental problem that crops up every admissions season: College applicants and their families are seriously information-deprived, and many of the people who could do something about it are in no great hurry. to make things less complicated.

Since 2011, the federal government has required all colleges to post anything that contains a net price calculator on their websites. College buyers input a ton of financial information and it comes out with an estimate of what the university can charge an admitted student to pay.

Net price calculators are much better than nothing. At their best, they prove that a university’s list price is something of a fiction for many, if not most, students.

However, the calculators are often confusing. Detailed studies have pointed out their shortcomings.

The problems with the calculators are nobody’s fault, but everybody’s fault. The government doesn’t set strict enough guidelines, confused families enter incorrect grades, and colleges use substandard calculators or don’t regularly update the tool’s formulas. Additionally, while the calculators predict financial need based on your income and relevant assets, they may not try to estimate the so-called merit aid, which is based more on what a high school student has done inside or outside the classroom.

When William E. Staib, a technology and financial services veteran with six kids, including a foster daughter, first explored this mess as a parent, he thought—like other parents I wrote about two weeks ago—that he had a could build a better tool. Today, more than 250 schools have licensed his net price calculators and his company, College Raptorprovides rankings and other information on a consumer website.

And those competitor price comparisons? College Raptor also generates those for client schools.

Here’s how that equation works. When it compares a client school to a competitor who also happens to be a client, it pulls estimated prices from that other school’s net price calculator – the one running College Raptor.

If the competing school is not a client, College Raptor uses federal data and other proprietary mechanisms. Then, according to its marketing materials, “advanced AI” takes over. Customers are presented with a list of similar schools and can choose which – the more expensive ones, it seems – are shown to prospective students. They can reveal those competitor prices on the results page of their net price calculator and on the so-called reward letters they send to admitted students.

Three of the five comparison schools in Manhattanville — Marist and Mercy Colleges in New York and Drew University in New Jersey — declined to comment or criticize a competitor’s tactics. The other two had some objections.

“These tactics make it harder for students and families to make accurately informed decisions,” Drew Aromando, vice president of enrollment management at Rider University in Lawrence Township, NJ, said in an email. “There are too many unique variables in the financial aid process for a college to estimate for a student/family what to expect in financial aid from another institution.”

Shannon Zottola, vice president of enrollment management at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, said she was concerned that posting competitors’ prices could discourage people from further shopping.

“It would be a shame for a family to write off a school that might just be the right fit,” she said.

The “note” that College Raptor includes with comparisons it provides for schools like Manhattanville offers a few caveats, and they’re not in a small font either. “These figures are only net price estimates based on available information from College Raptor, have not been verified by Manhattanville College, and may be inaccurate,” it reads. “We encourage you to consider the results of each school’s net price calculator and/or your actual financial aid offers and costs at schools you are considering before finalizing your college decision.”

Elsewhere on one of his websites, the company gets a little more specific. “In general, our models are able to provide costs accurate to within 10-20% of the costs provided by actual financial aid reports or as estimated by college net price calculators,” it says.

These revelations are good and clear. But if competitors’ quotes may be inaccurate, why encourage client schools to use them in the first place?

“It doesn’t bother me that our answers aren’t perfect,” said Mr. Steve in an interview. “They’re better than anything else out there.”

He also said that any school that disagreed with how a competitor quoted its prices could contact College Raptor and offer data to improve those quotes. When I suggested that this might sound like he was giving the school two bad choices — provide data to a third party helping competitors or College Raptor will continue to use the inaccurate numbers — he disagreed.

“It comes back to the question of what is the purpose of a net price estimate in the first place,” he said. “It’s a good faith estimate of what a student will pay for a school, where we don’t end up with the problem of them being held back from applying for the best opportunity because they’re put off by the sticker price. ”

Indeed, it is entirely possible for a family to see the comparison and discover that a competing institution it is considering is much cheaper than the family thought. It is also possible that an estimated price higher than that of the original school a family wanted to research may prevent the family from asking further questions about that competitor.

College Raptor doesn’t see this as a likely outcome, and I urge anyone reading this column to prove it right. But I worry about people who might not read it or be new to the process of trying to pay for higher education. Nearly half of Manhattanville’s students are the first in their families to attend college, and I hope someone warned them to read every disclaimer they encounter anywhere in their lives.

Meanwhile, if higher prices from competing schools show up on an actual award letter, a family might conclude that the school offering admission is a leader with a low price. That family may not be inclined to appeal the aid offer and ask for a better price. This could cost the family five figures in four years — and save a school a whole lot more for a whole new class.

So who benefits the most from the comparisons? “The school,” said Paula Bishopan accountant and a financial aid consultant in Kirkland, Washington, who sent me the quotes from Manhattanville’s competitor.

Manhattanville’s vice president of enrollment and marketing, Troy L. Cogburn, said he was just trying to help. “College Raptor is a trusted resource,” he said. “We try to give a prospective student as much information as possible.”

He wasn’t fond of my use of the term “competitors,” saying that the other schools Manhattanville mentioned were there because they were similar, not necessarily because they had a lot of overlap in their applicant pools.

Manhattanville’s tactic – and it’s far from the only one – should serve as a reminder that this can be a sharp-elbowed marketplace where the stakes are high. If you’re looking for an undergraduate degree that might cost you five times as much as a car, spend that much more time questioning the diploma dealers selling their four years of experience.

The College Raptor story has a neat ending. Last year, Citizens Financial Group, a major education loan firm, acquired the company for an unknown price. College Raptor would, the bank said, “reinforce our commitment to financial empowerment.”