Latest Headlines

Saturday night dive: a bad one for Pizza Hut, after a good one for Roadhouse; and Jack Daniel’s reveals a hard truth

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 6:36 p.m

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In an undated photo, Jack Daniel — center, in white hat — and to the left, a man who could be a son of Nearis Green, a slave who taught Daniel how to make whiskey.

PIZZA HUT: In Memphis, police are investigating why an officer shot and critically wounded a suspect around 11:10 last night in front of a Pizza Hut, after a caller reported two men were robbing a driver there. One suspect was shot and taken to the Regional Medical Center in critical condition. The second suspect fled; it’s unknown if he was also hit (Commercial Appeal).

In Ohio, Harrison Township deputies were investigating a break-in at a Pizza Hut early this morning; reports indicate a cash register from the business was located by deputies, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether burglars were able to get away with anything (WHIO).

And in northern Delaware yesterday, two armed men confronted a male clerk closing a Pizza Hut in Bear at 1 a.m., demanding cash from the register. The clerk complied and turned over an undisclosed amount. The suspects then fled the store; no injuries were reported (Delaware Online). BTW: Yelp reviewers don’t like the Bear restaurant one bit.

BROWN-FORMAN‘s Jack Daniel’s unit is using its 150 anniversary celebrations this year to talk candidly about its history: the founder learned his craft from a slave named Nearis Green. “This version of the story was never a secret,” The New York Times says today, “but it is one that the distillery has only recently begun to embrace, tentatively, in some of its tours, and in a social media and marketing campaign this summer” (New York Times).

TEXAS ROADHOUSE‘s new restaurant in Roanoke, Va., drew 350 diners when it opened last week for the first time. But managing partner Eric Grow wasn’t surprised in the least, “even though there was very little spectacle at the opening — no formal ribbon cutting or announcement,” says the Roanoke Times. “A few weeks ago he began switching on the building’s LED lights. The first night he did this, he estimates the restaurant got more than a hundred calls asking if it was open yet” (Roanoke Times).

Books

A UPS aircraft mechanic, her ‘Dark Brown Lies’ book, and a very expensive advertisement on the CJ’s front page today

Many Courier-Journal readers were no doubt left totally confused this morning when they saw an advertisement on the front page — one of the most expensive you can buy — for a three-year-old book written by a former UPS aircraft mechanic.

CJ June 26 detail

Debbie Simpson’s “Dark Brown Lies” doesn’t show up in the CJ’s database, which means a lot of readers were learning about it for the first time. The book, which she self-published through a company she apparently incorporated in Arkansas in 2013, is about her 19-year-career at Louisville’s biggest private employer — one that ended very badly.

Debbie Simpson
Simpson

“This true story,” she writes on her website, “is about a female aircraft maintenance technician that worked for one of the most powerful companies in America and the consequences she faced for standing up and speaking out against harassment within the workplace. The consequences were: employee entries, warning letter(s), retaliation, intimidation, suspension, the constant real threat of termination and termination.”

What exactly happened isn’t detailed. But her beef with UPS, which employs 22,000 people at its hub here, may stem at least partly from a whistleblower case she lost in 2008 before the U.S. Labor Department.

Simpson’s advertisement this morning is only indirectly about her book. Instead, she’s drawing attention to another legal case where a pilot, Douglas Greene, has sued the Frost Brown Todd law firm in federal court in Louisville and two of its attorneys. Simpson says she’s dealt with one of the attorneys, Tony Coleman, in her own legal fight against UPS.

Travel

Das ist schön! Louisville to Berlin for a $32,000 gay tango festival weekend

An occasional look at premium travel from Louisville.

Tango has always been an art form friendly to same-sex couples — hardly surprising, when you consider one possible origin of the traditional Argentine dance is in Buenos Aires brothels, where men danced awaiting their turns for sexual assignations.

Now, with June’s gay pride month kicking off a busy summer of events for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks, The New York Times suggests the International Queer Tango Festival, July 28-31.

Let’s dance!

When: July 28-31. Airline: American. Route: Louisville to Washington to Berlin; total travel time: 16 hours and 30 minutes. How much: $7,720 per business-class ticket. Reservations.

For accommodations, the Waldorf Astoria Berlin ist schön, especially the King Presidential Suite — a large, luxurious apartment on the 31st floor. It sleeps four adults in two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms; a living room with a piano, fireplace; panoramic views from two balconies; a kitchen; separate office and service access. Here’s the view from a bedroom . . .

Corner bedroom
A corner room with Berlin at your feet.

. . . and the living room. Continue reading “Das ist schön! Louisville to Berlin for a $32,000 gay tango festival weekend” →

Jobs

$30,410 a year: How much you’d earn as a Louisville dog catcher — if you have a license to kill

time-clockBoulevard reports extensively on executive pay at big local employers. But we also look at what folks make down in the trenches — or in the animal kingdom. Here’s an opening listed on the City of Louisville’s help-wanted website.

The job: animal control officer.

The duties for this Louisville Metro government job appear fairly straightforward: explain to the public procedures, laws, codes and ordinances; patrol an assigned geographic area year-round; investigate complaints and issue citations, violations and warnings; and capture and impound animals with a net, rope, trap, food, other equipment or other technique or method.

But then there’s this special requirement: “Must possess EBI (euthanasia by injection) certification issued by the Kentucky Board of Veterinary Examiners or obtain within six months of employment.”

What it pays: $14.62 an hour. At that rate, working 40 hours weekly for 52 weeks, you’d make $30,410 a year.

Your net income after taxes would be about $2,007 a month, according to this tax calculator.

But can you live on that?

Continue reading “$30,410 a year: How much you’d earn as a Louisville dog catcher — if you have a license to kill” →

Cops and Courts

In these Papa John’s holdups, ‘it sounds like they got out of control with their addiction and spending’

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

Crime scene tapeSalt Lake City police arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of robbing “several” Papa John’s restaurants just outside the Utah city during a robbery spree this month involving as many as 20 businesses.

At first, Mathew Kuepper, 32, was robbing businesses about once daily, said Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell. But over the last week, police believe Kuepper was committing two or even three robberies a day to support his addiction to heroin and crack cocaine. His ex-wife, Kellie Kuepper, 31, was also arrested in connection with the alleged armed robberies.

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Kellie and Matthew Kuepper.

“It sounds like they got out of control with their addiction and spending,” Bell said. Police say Mathew Kuepper displayed a firearm during each robbery. But he told detectives after his arrest that he used a “plastic toy that looked realistic,” according to the Deseret News.

Texas Roadhouse

In Paducah, police arrested 34-year-old Anthony Davis on suspicion of assaulting a Texas Roadhouse employee with a beer mug two weeks ago.

The victim told police he was walking through the restaurant when Davis hit him with the mug and kept hitting him until restaurant patrons pulled him away. The employee’s face was cut, there were cuts inside his mouth, and one of his teeth was knocked out, according to police cited by WPSD.

* 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.

Latest Headlines

B-F’s Welch in $183K stock transfer; and no overtime for Marta and Bruno: Tech exec develops all-robot pizza shop

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:53 a.m.

James Welch
Welch

BROWN-FORMAN: Retiring Director James Welch sold — sort of — 1,741 class A shares on Thursday at $105.17 each for a total $183,000, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, the SEC Form 4 says, Welch surrendered the shares “to satisfy withholding obligations associated with the vesting of restricted stock upon [his] retirement” (SEC document).

PAPA JOHN’S and PIZZA HUT: A former executive at the maker of FarmVille online games has started a pizza restaurant in the heart of Silicon Valley where he hopes all pies will someday be made by robots. The process at Zume Pizza in California’s Mountain View involves two robots — named Marta and Bruno — that spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product,” says owner Alex Garden. The robots then move the pizza into an 850-degree oven to pre-bake. From there, the pizza is given a final bake in a bank of ovens inside the delivery truck on its way to a customer’s door. Traditional humans are still required for tasks like sprinkling cheese and driving the truck, however (Grub Street).