Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert is a senior reporter at Business Insider on the West Coast team, covering education alongside food, beverage, technology, and legal stories. Her reporting connects how institutions and brands respond to changing consumer behavior, with work that ranges from law school classrooms to fast-food chains, functional drinks, and AI-driven corporate upheaval. She brings an investigative background and experience across retail, hospitality, and nonprofits to this mix, grounding trend pieces in business realities.

Food, drink, and shifting consumer habits

Tangalakis-Lippert devotes a substantial share of her coverage to how people eat and drink, and how brands chase those habits.

She has examined the boom in functional drinks as a “wellness arms race,” looking at fiber, protein, adaptogens, and nootropics through the lens of a growing multibillion-dollar market. Her reporting on “muscle mommies” and the demand for higher-protein snacks follows women’s fitness culture into the grocery aisle, focusing on product innovation and category growth rather than lifestyle fluff.

She tracks changing alcohol norms as well, from the rise of daytime “daycap” drinking pitched to Gen Z to bars rethinking menus because younger drinkers are uncomfortable with traditional drinking culture.

In profiles of alcohol-free social events, she highlights entrepreneurs building inclusive spaces that cater to sober, sober-curious, and wellness-focused attendees, linking cultural shifts directly to new business opportunities. She brings this same lens to education when students’ preferences and institutional norms collide, such as law school classes experimenting with no-laptop policies as a new “gadget” in the classroom.

Restaurant chains, menus, and value propositions

Another core strand in her work is deep reporting on restaurant chains and menu strategy. Tangalakis-Lippert has written on fast food’s “newest rival” not as another burger chain, but as grocery stores using prepared foods and value-oriented offerings to compete for the same occasions.

She has unpacked the “never-ending limited-time offer” strategy, explaining how a constant churn of special menu items can become a permanent tool to manage demand, signal innovation, and protect margins. In coverage of brands like Chipotle and Cava, she describes how bowl-based formats are “getting their groove back” as consumers prioritize value, customization, and perceived health over traditional combo meals. She applies an on-the-ground, observational style to visits such as her reporting on Pizza Hut after its parent company explored a sale, tying what she sees in-store to questions about value, relevance, and investor pressure.

Across these pieces, she mixes consumer detail with chain economics, showing how menu decisions and store experiences translate into broader competitive dynamics.

Technology, law, and corporate disruption

Tangalakis-Lippert also covers technology and legal battles, particularly where they reshape major companies and platforms. Her work includes reporting on large-scale layoffs, such as internal memos from Cloudflare cutting more than a thousand roles in the name of preparing for an “agentic AI era,” pairing internal language with strategic context.

She has detailed how Meta’s Muse image AI model changes default rules for sharing on Instagram, looking at product shifts and their implications for users, creators, and rival platforms. Her author biography notes her coverage of major legal actions involving companies like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI, and scoops related to the Supreme Court and large consumer brands such as Starbucks, reflecting a track record at the intersection of law, tech, and corporate power.

This strand complements her education reporting when legal and regulatory questions touch universities, law schools, and the training of future lawyers, giving her a wide-angle view on how classrooms connect to courtroom and corporate strategy.

Narrative business features and founder stories

Alongside trend and corporate coverage, Tangalakis-Lippert regularly writes narrative business features and as-told-to pieces that center founders and operators.

She has told the story of a veterinarian who left a family clinic to build a pet health brand, tracing the evolution from a niche supplement to a multimillion-dollar global company. In another feature, she documents how an amateur biohacker created a non-alcoholic social tonic that grew into a fast-expanding beverage startup with a partnership from a major drinks conglomerate, using the founder’s voice to show product development, branding, and distribution decisions. Her profile of an alcohol-free event company similarly focuses on the founder’s motivations and business model while connecting them to broader shifts in drinking culture.

These pieces show a consistent interest in how individuals spot gaps in consumer behavior - whether in pet care, functional beverages, or social experiences - and turn them into businesses that reshape their categories. That narrative approach extends to education-related stories when she looks at how professors, administrators, and students adopt or resist new tools and norms, treating classrooms as another arena where entrepreneurial thinking and institutional change meet.

Across beats, Tangalakis-Lippert’s work is distinguished by its mix of close consumer observation, strong sourcing inside companies, and attention to the business logic behind cultural shifts. She writes with an investigative reporter’s discipline but applies it to everyday settings - fast-food counters, grocery aisles, fitness routines, drinking rituals, and classrooms - to show how subtle changes in behavior can drive strategy at large brands and institutions. Her experience on award-nominated projects and appearances on national broadcast outlets underline that she is comfortable translating complex stories into accessible narratives, whether the subject is a Supreme Court scoop, an AI policy memo, or a new rule in a law school lecture hall.