Panera Bread Co. is having a bang-up October, according to CEO Ron Shaich. He told investors yesterday that comp sales for company stores were running 6.9% above last year’s tally for the first 27 days of the month, and franchisees’ sales were tracking at a 6.3% rise.
Meanwhile, the bakery-café chain is busy plotting some significant menu changes. First on the list is the introduction of salmon, both as a sandwich ingredient and a salad component, said Shaich. That will be followed by the revamp of the concept’s panini sandwiches, which are currently pre-made, he said. New presses to be added around the middle of next year will enable units to make the grilled sandwiches to order because of their speed.
Nearer term, units will start merchandising holiday baked goods, from gingerbread men to Panatone to “holly cake,” at their registers.
Three days, three restaurant-chain bankrutpcy filings. Max & Erma’s efforts to secure Ch. 11 protection from creditors has been well-publicized. The bankruptcy of sister operation Damon’s International has been far less so. And largely unnoticed has been the Ch. 11 filing of Ham’s, operator-franchisor of a 20-unit namesake chain in North Carolina and Virginia.
More evidence that the Japanese fast-food market is whack-o: Authorities have reportedly concluded that the manager of a McDonald’s there worked herself to death by logging 20 hours a week of overtime. News reports say she’s one of about 150 people who work to the point of demise in Japan every year.
That news of course follows the introduction of a new Burger King Whopper that features seven beef patties, a tie-in with Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. There are so many reasons for head-shaking over that one that it doesn’t pay to start.
Kerrii Anderson, the CEO of Wendy’s International during the chain’s final meltdown and subsequent sale, is being paid $175,000 a year to serve on the board of P.F. Chang’s. Anderson also serves on the board of Chiquita Brands International, the banana importer, where she’s paid at least $160,000 a year. And she was expected to make about $4.6 million from the company’s 2008 sale to Triarc, the parent of the once-rival Arby’s fast-food chain. In short, if you’re scheduled to have lunch with her in the near future, there’s no question of who’s paying.
Hotel unions have voted to strike at a handful of properties in both San Francisco and Chicago. It’s not clear whether its coincidental harrumphing or a concerted effort to prove that the union’s strength isn’t being undercut by the economy, as conventional wisdom holds.
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Get real, unions
Restaurant employees’ union to Burger King: You’re cheating taxpayers.
Romeo to union: Oh, shut up.
Sorry, but I’m really tired of watching the Service Employees International Union and its fellow the traveler, Restaurant Opportunties Center of New York (and now Maine), try to manipulate public sympathy with their preposterous Grassy Knoll take on reality. They twist the facts to turn restaurant employers into the sort of mustachioed villains who once tied matrons to railroad tracks.
This time around, for instance, SEIU is hoping to convince the public that Burger King Holdings is siphoning off some of the federal bail-out funds that were channeled to banks. Follow closely, because this has more twists and turns than a day in Illinois politics.
One of the big stakeholders in BK, the union notes in a statement issued yesterday, is Goldman Sachs. And the one-time broker, now reclassified as a bank, was a recipient of some $10 billion from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) kitty.
Up to this point, we’re still reality-based. But now the acid kicks in.
The Obama Administration and Congress want more accountability for how TARP dollars are used, notes SEIU. But an additional $273 million of taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off by BK. The Bernie Maddoff-like scheme: Not providing healthcare benefits and paying “sub-poverty wage levels.”
Let me review: BK doesn’t provide health care, which means employees have to find other ways of affording medical attention. A significant stake in the company is held by Goldman Sachs, which was given $10 billion in TARP funds. Ergo, Goldman and BK are cheating the American public.
Follow?
But it gets worse, SEIU says. BK CEO John Chidsey collected $5.4 million in 2008 compensation, including bonuses. Goldman Sachs paid out $6.5 billion in bonuses, the union says. If just the Goldman Sachs performance-based pay had been given instead to BK’s workers, SEIU says, all 360,000 of them would have collected $18,000.
Never mind that BK is a publicly owned company in which Sachs merely holds a stake, albeit a big one. And that BK’s employees aren’t paid by Sachs. Indeed, there’s no flow of money from Sachs to BK, never mind to Chidsey.
I’m not saying that Sachs should have paid big-buck bonuses when it’s collecting government bailout funds. But I’m not sure what that has to do with BK. Might it be because SEIU would like to enlist its employees as members?
Similarly, whether or not BK should provide some type of health-insurance support is a legitimate topic of discussion. If SEIU wanted to start a reality-based conversation on the responsibility of minimum-wage employers, we’d be in a whole different realm. But, here again, it’s just trying to look like the white-hatted cowboy who unties Snidely Whiplash’s knots and frees the maiden from the oncoming locomotive. It’s trying to curry favor by manipulating the facts to make it look like a bravo fighter for right.
Instead, it’s accusing BK and Sachs of “opposing efforts to stop rebuilding the economy” while “taking billions of dollars through taxpayers.”
Why not just accuse the pair of kicking puppies and trying to outlaw American flags?
Romeo to union: Oh, shut up.
Sorry, but I’m really tired of watching the Service Employees International Union and its fellow the traveler, Restaurant Opportunties Center of New York (and now Maine), try to manipulate public sympathy with their preposterous Grassy Knoll take on reality. They twist the facts to turn restaurant employers into the sort of mustachioed villains who once tied matrons to railroad tracks.
This time around, for instance, SEIU is hoping to convince the public that Burger King Holdings is siphoning off some of the federal bail-out funds that were channeled to banks. Follow closely, because this has more twists and turns than a day in Illinois politics.
One of the big stakeholders in BK, the union notes in a statement issued yesterday, is Goldman Sachs. And the one-time broker, now reclassified as a bank, was a recipient of some $10 billion from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) kitty.
Up to this point, we’re still reality-based. But now the acid kicks in.
The Obama Administration and Congress want more accountability for how TARP dollars are used, notes SEIU. But an additional $273 million of taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off by BK. The Bernie Maddoff-like scheme: Not providing healthcare benefits and paying “sub-poverty wage levels.”
Let me review: BK doesn’t provide health care, which means employees have to find other ways of affording medical attention. A significant stake in the company is held by Goldman Sachs, which was given $10 billion in TARP funds. Ergo, Goldman and BK are cheating the American public.
Follow?
But it gets worse, SEIU says. BK CEO John Chidsey collected $5.4 million in 2008 compensation, including bonuses. Goldman Sachs paid out $6.5 billion in bonuses, the union says. If just the Goldman Sachs performance-based pay had been given instead to BK’s workers, SEIU says, all 360,000 of them would have collected $18,000.
Never mind that BK is a publicly owned company in which Sachs merely holds a stake, albeit a big one. And that BK’s employees aren’t paid by Sachs. Indeed, there’s no flow of money from Sachs to BK, never mind to Chidsey.
I’m not saying that Sachs should have paid big-buck bonuses when it’s collecting government bailout funds. But I’m not sure what that has to do with BK. Might it be because SEIU would like to enlist its employees as members?
Similarly, whether or not BK should provide some type of health-insurance support is a legitimate topic of discussion. If SEIU wanted to start a reality-based conversation on the responsibility of minimum-wage employers, we’d be in a whole different realm. But, here again, it’s just trying to look like the white-hatted cowboy who unties Snidely Whiplash’s knots and frees the maiden from the oncoming locomotive. It’s trying to curry favor by manipulating the facts to make it look like a bravo fighter for right.
Instead, it’s accusing BK and Sachs of “opposing efforts to stop rebuilding the economy” while “taking billions of dollars through taxpayers.”
Why not just accuse the pair of kicking puppies and trying to outlaw American flags?
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Blagojevich-foodservice connection
With all the news pouring out of Illinois about Gov. Blagojevich’s eBay approach to filling Barack Obama’s Senate seat, you may have missed the connection to the restaurant industry. Among the names that apparently came up in secretly recorded conversations was Service Employees International Union, the new-age labor organization that’s hell-bent on organizing more foodservice workers.
The New York Times reported that the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich cites the union as one of the parties the governor approached with a quid pro quo offer. The union works behind the scenes to get Blago a job as head of a union confederacy called Change to Win, and in exchange SEIU gets an ally in the Senate and help in pushing its agenda on Capitol Hill.
The revelations underscore what should be a big worry for the industry: The ally who would have been considered for the empty Senate seat, according to press reports, is Valerie Jarrett, who took herself out of contention because Obama wanted her as White House advisor. That choice has since been made, meaning a strongly pro-labor voice will be at the new President’s right hand.
Among the measures that will undoubtedly come out of Congress next year is the so-called card check law, which will take away secret balloting on whether or not a restaurant’s staff should allow a restaurant to represent it. The wrinkle in the Blago story underscores just how strong a threat the trade may be facing.
The New York Times reported that the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich cites the union as one of the parties the governor approached with a quid pro quo offer. The union works behind the scenes to get Blago a job as head of a union confederacy called Change to Win, and in exchange SEIU gets an ally in the Senate and help in pushing its agenda on Capitol Hill.
The revelations underscore what should be a big worry for the industry: The ally who would have been considered for the empty Senate seat, according to press reports, is Valerie Jarrett, who took herself out of contention because Obama wanted her as White House advisor. That choice has since been made, meaning a strongly pro-labor voice will be at the new President’s right hand.
Among the measures that will undoubtedly come out of Congress next year is the so-called card check law, which will take away secret balloting on whether or not a restaurant’s staff should allow a restaurant to represent it. The wrinkle in the Blago story underscores just how strong a threat the trade may be facing.
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