“If somebody spent their life building something and all they have to do is move across the border to Tennessee, or move to Texas or move to Florida, they’d be a fool not to do it.”
— Louisville investor Bruce Lunsford, responding to a question about why Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed and other c-suite executives moved to Texas, which doesn’t have a state income tax (Insider Louisville). In February, Yum said they switched to be closer to the Dallas area headquarters of the company’s two biggest divisions, but would continue to spend one or two weeks a month at Yum’s Louisville headquarters.
If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? A bird. I could travel for free and then eat the bugs.
Ma will play Oct. 30 at 4:30 p.m. at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $50 to $400, for a post-concert party at the Muhammad Ali Center with cocktails, dinner, and live entertainment to celebrate the 2016-2017 season opening.
A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 6:17 p.m.
Varga
BROWN-FORMAN said fiscal fourth-quarter operating income soared to $726 million on sales of $933 million, on the continued strength of Jack Daniel’s whiskey sales. But the figures included a one-time $485 million gain from the sale of Southern Comfort and Tuaca during the quarter, which ended April 30. On a diluted per-share basis, earnings were $2.60 per share vs. 66 cents a year ago at the spirits and wine giant (press release and the SEC 8-K). What analysts had forecast. The company’s class A and class B shares both closed up 3.5% (Google Finance). CEO Paul Varga called the fiscal year “a tale of two halves,” with emerging market sales rising by 8% in the first half of the year before paring that decline to 1% in the second half (Wall Street Journal). Management held a 10 a.m. conference call to discuss the results, and it’s now available for replay. More about Brown-Forman.
UPS: New York’s attorney general yesterday accused UPS of knowingly shipping about 700,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes from Native American reservations to consumers and smoke shops between 2010 and 2014, even though the company had agreed to halt the practice more than a decade ago. UPS denied the allegation (Associated Press).
AMAZON will invest another $3 billion in its India operations, more than doubling its prior commitment in what CEO Jeff Bezos said yesterday is the company’s fastest-growing market. Two years ago, the online retail giant announced a $2 billion investment in the nation, where it already employs 45,000 workers. Bezos disclosed the news at a Washington business summit attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (BBC and International Business Times). Amazon didn’t help its efforts when consumers threatened a boycott over the company’s selling doormats bearing the image of the Hindu gods and other religious symbols; the company pulled the items this week (Mashable).
KINDRED: Jurors heard opening statements yesterday in a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital and nursing home giant, brought by the family of a man who died in 2011 at the Greenbriar Terrace nursing home in Nashua, N.H. Byam “Bing” Whitney Jr. had developed pneumonia, followed by bedsores that led to sepsis; he was 84 (Union-Leader).
PAPA JOHN’S: A Miami delivery driver filed another proposed class-action lawsuit against 31-store franchiser Pizzerias LLC in Florida federal court on Monday, accusing the company of shorting drivers on mileage reimbursements (Law 360). In August, Papa John’s agreed to pay $12.3 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of underpaying mileage reimbursements to drivers in Florida and five other states. That suit was originally filed in federal court in St. Louis in 2009, and represented about 19,000 drivers (KYCIR).
TEXAS ROADHOUSE: Noted, because it popped up in Boulevard’s news search results this morning: TripAdvisor users rated Texas Roadhouse No. 21 of 194 restaurants in St. George, Utah. “This was possibly our best meal out of the four that we had in St George,” user Tired Boy of the U.K.’s Sheffield wrote yesterday, in a perfect five-star review. “Some people may feel that they don’t like the chain restaurant scene, but it was our first time there and we’d definitely go back again” (TripAdvisor). St. George is a Mojave Desert resort in the state’s southwest corner.
In other news, U.S. stocks closed the day up modestly, as did most of the 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio (Google Finance). Finally, the cast of “The Phantom of the Opera” was to pay tribute to the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali this afternoon at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, where it began a 12-day run last week; Ali died last week at 74, and his funeral will be Friday (WDRB).
UPS started its hub at Louisville International Airport in 1982.
Boulevard focuses on news about some of Louisville’s biggest employers, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. This is one in an occasional series about them.
The first time many people in Louisville heard of United Parcel Service was in a May 1938 issue of The Courier-Journal, when syndicated columnist Dale Carnegie wrote about 11-year-old James E. Casey walking down a sidewalk in Seattle, and catching sight of a Special Delivery wagon pulled by a team of high-stepping horses.
Casey in an undated photo.
“I’m going to have a team of horses and deliver things for people,” Casey said that day in 1899, in Carnegie’s retelling. Casey eventually started the American Messenger Co. with seven boys delivering packages by bicycle.
By the time Carnegie’s column appeared, the company was called United Parcel Service and employed 2,500 employees delivering as many as 500,000 packages a day during the Christmas rush.
Nearly 80 years later, UPS has become a giant in shipping worldwide, with Louisville the heart of a global network of 12 major air hubs. It employs 22,000 workers at the Worldport hub at Louisville International Airport. It’s the biggest fully automated package handling facility in the world, according to UPS. It turns over approximately 130 aircraft daily, processing an average of 1.6 million packages a day, with a record of nearly 5 million packages processed on peak day 2013.
(If it was a city, Worldport would rank as Kentucky’s 17th biggest by population — one rung ahead of Radcliff in Hardin County.)
UPS has had a hub in Louisville since 1982, when it was expanding into air service to meet growing demand for faster delivery. Louisville was a logical choice because it’s centrally located in the U.S. Since then, it’s been through two $1 billion expansions here. Driven by growing demand for e-commerce, especially via Amazon, UPS announced plans in May 2016 to spend another $300 million to boost capacity.
This time-lapse video shows some of the activity that takes place during each sort.
Founder Casey died in 1983, at age 95. Today, UPS is headquartered in Atlanta. Its $58 billion in revenue last year ranked it No. 48 on the Fortune 500 list of biggest companies. Worldwide, it has 440,000 employees. It’s been a publicly traded company since November 1999. David Abney has been chairman and CEO since 2014.
Boulevard reports extensively on executive pay at big local employers. But we also look at what folks make down in the trenches — and behind those huge commercial espresso machines. This is from a recent ad in The Courier-Journal’s help-wanted section for Louisville.
The duties: If you guessed, make “coffee.” Or even, make one of those obnoxious Starbucks orders, like a “venti, half-whole milk, one-quarter 1%, one-quarter non-fat, extra-hot, split-quad shots, no-foam latte, with whip, two packets of Splenda, one sugar-in-the-raw, a touch of vanilla syrup, and three short sprinkles of cinnamon” — well, you’d still be off.
The Seattle-based purveyor of coffee culture says being a barista actually means “contributing to Starbucks success by providing legendary customer service.” Of course, it’s not all that vague. You’ll need to
Maintain a calm demeanor during periods of high volume or unusual events to keep the store operating to standard and to set a positive example for the team.
On the other hand, some of it does sound awfully touchy-feely/New Age-y. For example, be prepared to
Anticipate customer and store needs by constantly evaluating customers for “cues.” You’ll need to pass along that information to a manager so the team can respond as necessary to create the required “Third Place” environment.
Ditto for
Recognizing “alarms,” or changes in co-worker morale and passing that along, too.
Perhaps most surprising to anyone who’s visited a Louisville Starbucks recently, there really is a limit to what you can wear, because the dress code
Prohibits displaying tattoos, piercings in excess of two per ear, and unnatural hair colors, such as blue or pink.
What it pays: Maddeningly, the ad doesn’t post this most important information. But employment site Glassdoor reports the nationwide average for Starbucks baristas is $9.42 an hour. Working 20 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you’d make about $9,800, before taxes.
Related: You say “barista,” we say “baristo” — or do we?
“If somebody spent their life building something and all they have to do is move across the border to Tennessee, or move to Texas or move to Florida, they’d be a fool not to do it.”
The 
AMAZON will invest another $3 billion in its India operations, more than doubling its prior commitment in what CEO Jeff Bezos said yesterday is the company’s fastest-growing market. Two years ago, the online retail giant announced a $2 billion investment in the nation, where it already employs 45,000 workers. Bezos disclosed the news at a Washington business summit attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (
Boulevard reports extensively on 
Boulevard 