Month: July 2016

Wayback News

Louisville 52 years ago: GOP backed Goldwater; ‘peachy ham balls,’ and pricey washer-dryers

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

Kentucky’s delegation to the 1964 Republican National Convention was solidly behind ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater, who eventually won the nomination only to get shellacked by President Lyndon Johnson the following November.

Goldwater campaign button“As many as 23 of the 24 voting delegates may line up behind the Arizona senator on the first ballot Wednesday night,” The Courier-Journal’s Richard Harwood reported on the front page from the convention city of San Francisco.

Inside the paper, newly-named food consultant Loyta Higgins suggested readers bake “peachy ham balls” from leftover ham and canned cling peaches in heavy syrup. (Remember, it was the ’60s!)

And on page 10, GE Appliances competitor Kelvinator was advertising washers for $179.95 with a trade-in — or $299.95 with a matching dryer. You could buy them at 13 Louisville retailers, including Bill’s Auto Stores at Broadway and Shelby Street.

Kelvinator washer ad

Fast-forward 52 years, and you can appreciate how incredibly expensive those appliances were. In inflation-adjusted 2016 dollars, the washer would cost $1,395, and the combo would be $2,395, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

At Home Depot in St. Matthews today, you can get an Amana 3.5 cubic-foot high-efficiency top-load washer for just $299. And a matching Amana dryer also is just $299.

Postscript

Since the 1980s, the Kelvinator brand has been owned by Sweden’s Electrolux, which nearly bought GE Appliances before the Department of Justice blocked the deal on antitrust grounds. Last month, China-based Haier bought it for $5.6 billion, including 6,000-employee Appliance Park in the city’s south end.

Goldwater’s landslide loss to Johnson — 61% to 39% (he lost Kentucky, too) — brought down many conservative Republican office-holders as well, a pattern some GOP leaders fear will happen this November if Donald Trump gets the nomination.

Goldwater died May 29, 1998, at the age of 89 of complications from a 1996 stroke.

Money in Politics

Trump’s June fundraising soars, but Clinton still does better
Trump and Clinton
Trump and Clinton

Lagging presumptive Democratic White House nominee Hillary Clinton in Kentucky and elsewhere, Donald Trump said he and the Republican National Committee raised nearly $51 million last month for his White House run and the RNC, after launching his first aggressive campaign to raise cash. The total disclosed yesterday dwarfed the $3.1 million he raised in May. Clinton, meanwhile, raised even more in June — $68.5 million — including $40 million for her campaign and $28 million for the Democratic National Committee, according to Reuters.

Trump’s and Clinton’s dollar figures weren’t broken down by state. In the last Federal Election Commission report, covering all of 2015 through May 31, the New York billionaire had taken in just $43,861 from Kentucky supporters. Clinton raked in 16 times as much: $709,377.

The fresh numbers come 11 days before the Republican National Convention, which will be in Cleveland July 18-21. The Democrats meet in Philadelphia the following week, June 25-28.

In a related development today in Cleveland, anti-Trump forces “are remarkably close” to getting past the first hurdle next week to force a vote on the party’s convention floor that would throw open the GOP contest again, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Cops and Courts

Tenn. woman arrested on Taco Bell assault charge; employee ‘got her bell rung pretty good’

The latest crime news across the world of 48,000 restaurants.*

Crime scene tapeIn Rogersville, Tenn., a 50-year-old woman was charged with assault and disorderly conduct, and spent the night in jail, after attacking a Taco Bell employee Tuesday night because there was something wrong with her order, according to local police.

Shortly after 7 p.m., Kim Renee Long entered the restaurant and “became irate and began yelling and cussing her,” according to a police report cited by the Times-News. “It was during this time that Ms. Long struck [the victim] in the face twice with her hand and then threw the bag of food at her and continued yelling and cussing.”

Kim Long
Long

Officer Cambren Gibson told the newspaper he was “just dumbfounded that she punched out an employee over a messed-up order.” He added: “I never thought to ask the employee who got hit what was wrong [with the order] because she was so shaken up. She got her bell rung pretty good.”

Rogersville is 65 miles northeast of Knoxville.

* Yum has 43,000 KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells in nearly 140 countries; Papa John’s has 4,900 in 37 countries, and Texas Roadhouse has 485 restaurants in five countries. With that many locations, crimes inevitably will occur — with potentially serious legal consequences for the companies.

Just Tweets

Taco Bell gave Indianapolis Colts long snapper Matt Overton a virtual “cake” yesterday for his 31st birthday, hopping on a tradition he started two years ago.

And the player returned the love right back:

Here’s what Overton built for himself last year . . .

. . . and in 2014.

Latest Headlines

Yum close to finishing big corporate campus expansion in Plano; and Ford’s China vehicle sales jump 6% year-to-date

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:30 p.m.

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Entrance to Plano corporate offices, in photo from employment site Glassdoor.

YUM‘s expansion of its Pizza Hut and KFC international corporate campus in Plano, Texas, will boost total space by 60% to 300,000 square feet, with the addition of two three-story buildings. The pizza and fried chicken chains are opening about 1,000 new locations a year, requiring more space for employees.

One of the two new buildings will house a life-sized mock up of a Pizza Hut restaurant for testing everything from diner traffic flow to consumer reaction to artwork. There will also be a new conference room for all the campus’ 450 employees, twice the capacity of the existing conference space.

Greg Creed
Creed

Yum CEO Greg Creed and four other top corporate executives are getting new offices above the conference center, too. The five executives now divide their time between Plano, which is 20 miles north of Dallas, and  Louisville, a move in February that raised questions about Yum’s commitment to Louisville. Yum said it was more practical for the top brass to work closer to the company’s two biggest and fast-growing divisions. The corporate campus expansion was disclosed at the time (Dallas Morning News).

The Pizza Hut Division has about 14,000 restaurants in 90 countries and territories outside China. KFC has about 15,000 in 120 countries and territories, also excluding China.

The China Division, based in Shanghai, has about 7,200 restaurants, mostly Pizza Huts and KFCs. Under pressure from an activist investor, Yum is in the process of spinning off the China Division, a process it expects to complete by the end of October.

Pizza Hut and Yum’s international business have been based in Plano since Yum was spun off from PepsiCo in 1997. KFC’s U.S. division remains in Louisville, where the company employs 1,000 workers. Yum’s third division, Taco Bell, is based in southern California’s Irvine. More about Yum in Louisville.

FORD said it sold 577,097 vehicles in China during the year’s first half, a 6% increase from a year ago. Demand for Ford and Lincoln SUVs sales was strong, with combined sales of the Ford EcoSport, Kuga, Edge, Everest and Explorer and Lincoln MKC, MKX and Navigator surpassing 150,000 vehicles, 27% more than a year ago (press release). Ford’s stock closed this afternoon at $12.75, up 1.4% to $12.74.

Last week, Ford said total U.S. sales grew 5% during the year’s first six months, its best first-half performance since 2006. The automaker employs nearly 10,000 workers at truck and auto factories in Louisville.

AMAZON‘s first Prime Day 24-hour sale last year didn’t go off without a hitch. “The company hyped price-breaks on everything from beard growth rubs to nail clippers for large animals, as well as the much-mocked 55-gallon bottle of lube for over $1,000,” says Time magazine. “The overwhelming verdict for the vast majority of Prime Day deals last year was: they kinda sucked.” What to do different for this year’s Prime Day, next Tuesday? Time offers five suggestions (Time). Also, Amazon plans to hire another 1,000 employees in the U.K. at its London head office, research and development centres in Cambridge and Edinburgh and new warehouses in Manchester and Leicestershire — all on top of 2,500 jobs it announced earlier this year (The Telegraph).

In other news, Courier-Journal parent Gannett Co. said it would report second-quarter financial results July 27, followed by a 10 a.m. ET conference call with Wall Street analysts (press release).

Entrepreneurs

Exhibit space designer Solid Light moving to new quarters south of Broadway
EWBE-Carousel_01
The company designed the Evans Williams Bourbon Experience downtown.

Solid Light is consolidating operations at a newly bought SoBro building two blocks south of Broadway to house all its approximately 30 employees designing exhibits for museums and other corporate clients.

Cynthia Torp
Torp

The company bought the building at 804 South Fifth St. for $1.7 million on June 15; it was previously occupied by CED Industrial Solutions and, before that, E&H Electric Supply. Solid Light is moving from 438 South Third St. and a fabrication shop in Bluegrass Industrial Park in eastern Jefferson County, according to The Courier-Journal and Business First.

Its projects have included the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience on West Main Street’s Museum Row, and the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss. Owner Cynthia Torp started the company 16 years ago.