Tag: Amazon

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GE outsources, shuts down line — shifting 320 jobs; and KFC franchise owner in Ky. offers ultimate meal deal to cops: free food

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:23 p.m.

GE said today it will outsource work at a warehouse and distribution operation at Appliance Park and also close a water-heater manufacturing line, displacing about 300 good-paying union jobs and another 20 salaried ones. Officials said they expect all the affected workers will be absorbed into current operations, a prediction union leaders worry still could cost jobs (Courier-Journal).

KFC sign law enforcement eats free
Franchise owner Doug Knipp reportedly posted this sign outside an Ohio KFC.

KFC: An Ashland KFC franchise owner is offering uniformed law enforcement officers free meals 24/7 at his restaurants in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, and a photo of a sign announcing the deal on the front door of one outlet is spreading across Facebook like wildfire. Doug Knipp’s KFCs in Kentucky include outlets in Pikeville, Ashland, Grayson, Hazard, Jackson, Prestonsburg, Morehead, Paintsville, and Louisa (WKYT). It’s unclear how long Knipp’s been making the offer, but it follows several high-profile cases where law enforcement officers have been treated poorly at Yum restaurants, most recently at a Taco Bell in Louisville last week; news of that incident continues to spread.

Keith Meister
Meister

YUM: The activist investor and Yum director who drove last October’s agreement to spin off the China Division is at it again, this time at the Williams Cos. Keith Meister of Corvex Management, which holds a 4% stake in the energy giant, is using an unusual approach to run his own 10-member slate of nominees for the board of directors. Trying to meet a sudden deadline, he’s nominated 10 who will merely serve as placeholders until after the election. At that point, if he’s victorious, they would resign in favor of permanent ones. Meister favors a merger deal with a Williams competitor, but he’s been thwarted by the CEO and some board members (New York Times).

PAPA JOHN’S: A Memphis couple has been sentenced to a combined 30-plus years in federal prison for robbing a Papa John’s and multiple other businesses across Memphis in May and June last year (Fox 13 Memphis).

AMAZON: Three years after it started opening distribution centers in Texas as part of a settlement with the state over the collection of sales taxes, Amazon says it will open its eighth major shipping facility in the state. It will be in Coppell, 22 miles northwest of Dallas; an existing center there employs about 1,000 workers. Two more are under construction in San Marcos and Houston (Dallas Morning News and press release). The retailer employs 6,000 in the Louisville area at centers in Jeffersonville and Shepardsville; more about the company here.

Amazon is expanding its bricks-and-mortar footprint across the United States, undeterred by the fact many physical bookstores have been struggling for years. It’s adding stores in Chicago, San Diego, and Portland, Ore., after opening its first last year in its Seattle hometown. The Chicago store is to open next year (Financial Times).

Executive Pay

Three top Amazon execs sell nearly 9,000 shares, but Bezos way out ahead

The trades were all on Monday, according to a series of Securities and Exchange Commission filings this afternoon, after stock markets closed. They were:

But their sales were dwarfed by the 1 million shares founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold Aug. 2 for $757 million, his SEC filing showed. That brought to $1.4 billion his total sales in the past three months, according to GeekWire. But he still owned 80.9 million shares after that big trade, worth $62 billion.

Jeff Bezos
Bezos

Bezos’s SEC filing said the most recent sale was made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows company insiders to sell a predetermined amount of stock at a set time, to avoid the appearance of insider trading.

The retailer’s AMZN shares closed today at $764.63, up 59 cents. The three executives sold for prices ranging from $768 to $771.

Amazonpays its top executives far more in stock than cash. See how much they got paid last year and in 2014 in Boulevard’s highest-paid executives databases.

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Music to our ears: Pizza Hut U.K. offering five boxes doubling as playable DJ decks; today-only giveaway is latest to capture more young techie consumers

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 2:37 p.m.

PIZZA HUT: Using Bluetooth to connect a computer or smartphone, the playable cardboard decks mix digital music using a special conductive ink design from printed electronics specialist Novalia, according to Digital Spy. (Watch DJ Vectra demo it in the video, above.) Starting today, the pizza maker is offering them in a promotion rolling out via the @PizzaHutUK Twitter feed, where it will announce which of only five restaurants will have one box each. The decks feature two turntables, a cross-fader, pitch volumes, cue buttons and the ability to rewind music, all like traditional mixers. What’s a deck?

Watch DJ Vectra demo it in the video, above; he’s playing “P Money 10/10,” according to music and media identification app Shazam.

This isn’t the first Yum unit to create electronic packaging to grab the attention of technology-loving young consumers. In June, KFC India gave away Watt a Box, a 5-in-1 meal box with a lithium-ion battery cellphone charger. The chicken chain has also fitted photo printers inside buckets and Bluetooth keyboards onto paper tray covers.

Today’s promo will surely boost U.K.’s Twitter traffic. Right now, its feed has 53,700 followers. The U.S. site has far, far more: 1.46 million; how other companies’ Twitter count compares. Pizza Hut teased customers about the cardboard gadget via Twitter yesterday:

HAIER, which bought GE Appliances in June, is pumping about $10 million into 9KaCha, a Chinese wine information app and e-commerce platform whose database and label recognition software will power its new smart wine cooler. It’s unclear whether the cooler will be offered in the U.S. (China Money Network and Decanter China).

HUMANA: Insurance companies “keep pretending” that participating in the Affordable Care Act exchanges is killing their business model, says Haider Javed Warraich, a cardiovascular disease fellow at Duke University’s Medical Center, in a Guardian newspaper column today. Humana merger partner Aetna was the latest, announcing late Monday it will withdraw from 70% of the Obamacare exchange markets where it operates by next year, including 10 Kentucky counties. Humana disclosed a similar pullback earlier this month. But, Warraich writes, “this corporate hardship story couldn’t be further from the truth. Aetna’s overall profits surged last year, and its share prices have risen consistently since the ACA passed in 2010” (Guardian).

Humana and Aetna logos 250Aetna’s Kentucky exit leaves consumers in Boone, Campbell, Owen and Kenton counties with only two exchange plans. Other counties affected are Continue reading “Music to our ears: Pizza Hut U.K. offering five boxes doubling as playable DJ decks; today-only giveaway is latest to capture more young techie consumers” →

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Hooded U.K. youth whacking Papa John’s drivers with eggs; and singer Fergie’s got milk for her ‘primal’ spicy Taco Bell craving

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:14 a.m.

PAPA JOHN’S: Police in south England are investigating a string of recent attacks where hooded youths are pelting motorbike-riding Papa John’s delivery men with eggs, causing at least one serious crash that sent  a driver to the hospital with a bruised shoulder and black eye. The latest incident in south England came after the same driver was attacked with 10 eggs several weeks ago in Cheltenham an hour west of Oxford.

“Even I have had eggs thrown at me,” the store manager there said. “It’s very dangerous, you do not know what is going to happen next. My staff say it is not safe out there” (Gloucestershire Live).

Back in the United States, Panera Bread claims the former top IT executive who left to work for Papa John’s this month wiped his work computer of critical trade secrets, a statement a federal judge said justified a temporary restraining order barring the executive from joining the Louisville pizza giant. In a lawsuit filed in its St. Louis hometown, the bakery chain says the executive, Michael Nettles, will use the secrets to compete for business from young consumers drawn to the latest ordering technology. Nettles’ LinkedIn profile says he was Panera’s vice president for enterprise architecture and IT strategy (Courier-Journal).

Meanwhile, in the Detroit area, the pizza chain was advertising yesterday for delivery people with a “keen sense of direction with the ability to read a map or use GPS” (Craigslist).

PIZZA HUT was also advertising for drivers — “awesome people,” in fact — to make $12-$15 an hour delivering pies in Cincinnati (Craigslist, too).

TACO BELL: Singer Fergie is still a huge fan of super-spicy Taco Bell food, turning a meal into what a British newspaper today called “absolutely carnage,” citing an interview in NME magazine. The 41-year-old megastar behind the recent hit “M.I.L.F.$” told NME: “It’s a binge meal for me, so I don’t do it all the time. But when I do, I go hard.” She added: “I’m like, primal.”

The singer-songwriter pledged undying love to the fast-Mexican chain six years ago in her smash hit single “Glamorous,” singing: “I still go to Taco Bell/Drive through, raw as hell/I don’t care, I’m still real/no matter how many records I sell” (Sunday World). Watch her (NSFW!) M.I.L.F.$ video: Continue reading “Hooded U.K. youth whacking Papa John’s drivers with eggs; and singer Fergie’s got milk for her ‘primal’ spicy Taco Bell craving” →

Latest Headlines

KFC is bubbling over with ideas — a gravy fountain, for one; 170 years later, there’s more to toast than ever Sept. 2; and Haier and GE Appliances union prep for contract talks

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 12:29 p.m.

KFC sent fans into a food frenzy when its official U.K. and Ireland Twitter account tweeted a photo of its latest invention: the “Gravy fountain of dreams.” Employees at the fast food giant said the fountain is “only at head office for now,” but they’re reportedly trying it out in stores across the Kingdom. No word on whether it will make it across the gravy pond (Mirror). Reaction approached crack-addict levels:

BROWN-FORMAN: This year’s annual batch of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon celebrating founder George Garvin Brown‘s Sept. 2 birth is bigger than usual — 14,400 bottles total, about 1,000 more than last year. Woodford Reserve master distiller Chris Morris, who set aside this year’s batch way back on June 4, 2004, isn’t sure why it’s so much more plentiful. “[It] could be the result of many factors,” he says, “such as the cooperage [barrel and cask makers] made some extra tight barrels that day or we had a lot of slow growth oak in the barrels.” Birthday Bourbon is bottled at 97 proof and has a retail price of $79.99 — $1.2 million if you could somehow round up all of it at once (Men’s Journal).

Birthday Bourbon
Available next month.

How’s it taste? Imagine the food equivalent of a porno movie.

Bottled in a decanter-style glass, the commemorative whiskey was initially launched 15 years ago. “In 2002, when we first introduced Birthday Bourbon, the market for premium Bourbons was almost nonexistent; Birthday Bourbon represented a ‘first’ in this category,” Morris said in a press release. “But 15 years later, global interest for premium Bourbons and well-crafted whiskeys is at a record high.” Each barrel in the Birthday Bourbon selection is drawn from the same day of production; 2016’s totals 93 barrels. It goes on sale nationwide starting next month (press release).

George Garvin Brown
Brown

Brown was born in Munfordville, Ky., on Sept. 2, 1846 — coming up on 170 years ago — and moved to Louisville in 1862, where he attended Male High School. He worked as a pharmaceuticals salesman until starting the company in 1870 with the original Old Forester brand, when he was 24. Brown married Amelia Bryant Owsley in 1876, and they had two children, Owsley and Robinson. George died in 1917 and is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery (Explore Kentucky History).

PIZZA HUT: VentureBeat says Domino’s has beat Pizza Hut to launch a Facebook Messenger bot, but it could be smarter (Venture Beat).

HAIER says the wages of about 4,000 union-represented Appliance Park workers “are not in line with market realities,” as the Chinese conglomerate and labor leaders get ready for next week’s contract talks. They will be the first since China’s Haier bought GE Appliances in June for $5.6 billion (WDRB and Business First).

AMAZON is opening a distribution center in Etna, N.J., on Sept. 14, and has already taken nearly 2,000 applications for a planned 1,500 jobs there. Company officials have said the center could eventually employ 3,000 during peak periods. Construction on the 855,000 square-foot, four-floor center started in mid-2015 (Newark Advocate here and here). Amazon employs 6,000 workers at distribution centers in Jeffersonville and Sherphardsville; more about its Louisville-area operations.

Latest Headlines

Amazon’s not out to replace UPS and other shippers — it’s goal is more ‘fantastical’

The big Louisville-area employer wants to add as much capacity to its operations as possible, says New York Times technology columnist Farad Manjoo. “And rather than replace partners like UPS and FedEx,” he says in a new column, “it’s spending boatloads on planes, trucks, crowdsourcing and other novel delivery services to add to its overall capacity and efficiency.” Manjoo continues:

Prime Air logoAmazon’s longer-term goal is more fantastical — and, if it succeeds, potentially transformative. It wants to escape the messy vicissitudes of roads and humans. It wants to go fully autonomous, up in the sky. The company’s drone program, which many in the tech press dismissed as a marketing gimmick when CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled it on “60 Minutes” in 2013, is central to this future.

How fantastical is that future? Amazon has already filed patents for self-driving trucks as mobile shipping warehouses. Prestocked with items Amazon has determined a given neighborhood might need, the trucks could roam around cities. When an order comes in, a drone might fly from the truck to a customer’s house, delivering the item in minutes.

Amazon’s how-it-would-work video about Prime Air is funny, and instructive:

The Seattle-based retailer employs 6,000 workers at distribution centers in Jeffersonville and Shephardsville. UPS, where Amazon is a major customer, employs 22,000 workers at Louisville International Airport, making it the city’s single-biggest private employer.