Kickstart: This shortage is far from refreshing

In today's supply crisis: Starbucks is out of ... a lot of things.

The news website Insider says it has seen an internal company document putting at least 25 items on "temporary hold" as of June 4 because of supply issues.

That includes items such as oat milk, certain syrup flavors and some pastries. There are also reports of shortages of plastic cold drink cups, meaning baristas may serve your next refreshing drink in a hot drink cup. That is if the cold drink is even available. Popular Refresher fruit drinks are also mostly unavailable. (A quick Twitter search yields mentions of frustration from Starbucks baristas as well as customers.)

"We are experiencing temporary supply shortages of some of our products. Specific items will vary by market and store, and some stores will experience outages of various items at the same time. We apologize for the inconvenience, and are working quickly and closely with our supply chain vendors to restock items as soon as possible," a Starbucks spokesman told Insider.

The $30 billion pending buyout of medical supply company Medline Inc. may be a sign of increased interest in medical companies by private equity groups.

Alex Kacik of our sister paper Modern Healthcare writes that investors saw the demand for equipment during the pandemic — especially early shortages for personal protective equipment — as an opportunity.

"I think this is the start of an explosion of private equity deals in health care," said Richard Scheffler, health economics professor at UC Berkeley, told Kacik, adding that he wouldn't be surprised if investment increases by 30 percent to 40 percent next year.

But that's not the only lesson industry watchers are drawing from the Medline deal. In an opinion piece from Bloomberg (you can read it via Crain's Chicago Business) notes that it also signifies a shift in the mindset toward private equity buyouts.

"Unlike the [leveraged buyout] heyday, the investment is a bet on growth of the closely held health care product firm, rather than a plan to cut costs and increase efficiency. Medline will continue to be run by the Chicago-based Mills family, now in its fourth generation in the medical-supplies industry," Bloomberg wrote.

Medline President Andy Mills told Bloomberg that the deal will provide resources for growth at home along with the opportunity for international expansion.

Recycler PureCycle Technologies Inc. may have taken some hits lately on the investment side from short selling stock traders, but its employees are continuing to focus on the long game as the company marked its inaugural Pure Planet Day.

The event is intended as an annual day of service in Ironton, Ohio, the future site of its $250 million facility able to recycle 107 million pounds of plastic per year using technology developed by Procter & Gamble. The plant is set to open in late 2022.

For Pure Planet, everyone from senior executives to interns joined forces to collect plastic waste from alongside a road and a river bank. All 2,280 pounds of solid and plastic waste went to PureCycle's pilot plant to be recycled for new polypropylene resin, the company said in a news release.

"An annual service day starting right here in Ironton, where our first production facility is located, is just one more step towards a pure planet," PureCycle CEO Mike Otworth said.