In Austin, Rick Watson (RMW Commerce) and Nate Skiver (LPF Spend Management) joined Auctane’s Chris Worley for a four-wing gauntlet. Each wing hotter than the last. Each question spicier than the menu. By the end, we weren’t sure if the tears were from ghost peppers or the state of retail logistics.

You can tell a lot about an industry by how its leaders eat wings. Some nibble like accountants reviewing invoices. Others dive in like they’re trying to bury their last bad forecast in buffalo sauce. But the ability to navigate the Scoville scale has been thrown into the limelight by Sean Evans and the American YouTube show, “Hot Ones.” Guests are asked to complete a 10-wing challenge. Sean interviews celebrities, actors, musicians, athletes, comedians, and entrepreneurs while they both eat a lineup of progressively spicy chicken wings (or vegan substitutes). The sauces start mild and gradually intensify to brutal levels of heat, usually culminating in “The Last Dab,” a sauce made with one of the world’s hottest peppers.

The genius of the format is that as the spice level increases, the guests’ polished media-trained facades tend to break down. Between the sweating, swearing, and desperate gulps of milk or water, the interviews get rawer, funnier, and more revealing than typical press junkets. Over a text message, Nate Skiver said to me (Rick Watson), I can go hotter than you. Skiver had forgotten that my roots are buried in spice and food. I am a NOLA native, born and bred. Skiver was not prepared. Or was he?

Either way, here’s what we learned while the napkins piled up.

Wing 1: Mild heat, spicy myth

This is the sort of wing spice you give to bold children. Not enough to do damage, but they won’t do it again.

Question the first. What’s one shipping myth that needs to die?

Me: The Big Three aren’t your only option. UPS, USPS, and FedEx had the market in a stranglehold for over 20 years. Brands still act like it’s 2004 and DHL never left. Reality check: there’s now an alphabet soup of regional carriers and tech players waiting for volume.

Nate: “The myth is dying, but not fast enough.” He’s right. Half the mid-market is still locked into “our [carrier] rep says…” as if it were a sacred oath.

Multi-carrier shipping isn’t innovation anymore, it’s table stakes. If your shipping strategy still depends on a single partner, you’re not strategic, you’re codependent. Recent political and economic shifts have underscored the need to remain agile at all times.

Wing 2: Medium heat, fast promises

Did someone say milk? Milk was a bad choice.

Question the second: Is fast shipping still a competitive advantage?

Nate actually brought receipts. He checked major retailers’ shipping estimates that morning: Gap quoting a week. Macy’s, five days. Aeropostale? Two weeks if you’re lucky. Standard shipping in 2025 apparently means “pray to the fulfillment gods and wait.”

My take: Customers don’t just want fast, they want promises. Amazon figured this out ages ago. A three-day promise delivered in two builds more trust than a vague “5-7 business days.” (Pro tip: if your website still says “business days,” you’ve already lost.)

Speed is an edge because most retailers still suck at it. Show the date. Hit the date. Win the basket. Otherwise, customers will walk to Walmart for toothpaste and never come back.

Wing 3: Free shipping—still addictive, still expensive

This is where wings got serious. My cap went from snapped to in reverse.

Question the third: Is free shipping still worth it?

“Free is still the most powerful word in the English language.” Every A/B test proves it. Customers will wait 7, 10, 15, even 30 days for something if you slap “free shipping” on it. COVID proved that.

Note for reader: Delayed onset wing heat kicking in now.

Nate: “You can’t not offer free shipping. It isn’t free, but you can manage it like marketing.” He’s dead right. Most brands treat shipping like a janitorial expense. Instead, it should be sitting in the marketing budget with bold red ink and strategy wrapped around it. This is how commitment to ROI is obtained. Shipping needs this type of investment. 41% of consumers said that delivery cost factors into their purchase decision, according to Shipstation.

Free shipping doesn’t die. It quietly eats away at your margins until you either negotiate harder, optimize smarter, or collapse under the weight of your CAC/LTV fantasies.

Wing 4: The final burn

We are tingling intensely. We are not yet at Conan levels, but both are going for the final dab.

Question the fourth: If brands want to win in 2025, they need to…

Me: “Stand for something.” If you can’t answer “what problem do we solve for which customer?” you don’t have a brand—you have a logo on Shopify.

Nate: “Prioritize delivery.” Not as an afterthought. As a strategy. With a budget. With people.

The brands that win won’t just post TikToks. They’ll deliver on promises. They’ll stop quoting “5-7 business days” like it’s still dial-up internet. They’ll treat shipping like the revenue-driver it is, not a begrudging cost center.

The milk chasers

By the final wing, the table was chaos: watery eyes, runny noses, and at least one consultant rethinking his career choices.

But here’s what we learned in the teary, swollen tongue truth-off:

● Single-carrier dependency is over. 

● Fast shipping without promises is a half-measure. 

● Free shipping is marketing, not charity. 

● And if you don’t stand for something, you’ll get smoked by someone who does.

The wings may have been hot, but as Sean Evans says, we had even hotter takes. Who’s next?

Rick Watson
Rick Watson
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