Tag: Brown-Forman

Philanthropy

In FoodPort’s sudden failure, a rare defeat for Louisville’s blue-chip philanthropists: the Brown family
FoodPort rendering 600
An aerial rendering of 24-acre site at 30th Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard.

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

For the past two years, developers of the West Louisville FoodPort worked mightily to bring urban farming and as many as 250 good jobs to the heart of a neighborhood yearning for a better future. Mayor Greg Fischer said the project would “change the look and feel of Russell forever.” Their ambitious, $35 million plan was going so well, one of the world’s foremost advocates of organic food paid a headline-grabbing visit last year: Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.

Stephen Reily
Reily

But yesterday, the entire enterprise collapsed when the non-profit developers, Seed Capital Kentucky, abruptly announced they’d lost a linchpin partner, and without enough time to find a replacement. “We don’t have a way to put it together,” Seed Capital co-founder Stephen Reily said. “We are deeply disappointed.”

Many, many other people were disappointed as well: the mayor, who’d pushed the project as a centerpiece for revitalizing the Russell neighborhood, only to see it steadily scaled back amid community infighting; some 150 residents who helped shepherd the project past months of political hurdles, and the Russell councilwoman, Cheri Bryant Hamilton, “heartbroken” last night over its failure, The Courier-Journal said.

But less publicized was the distress almost certainly felt by a high-profile Louisville family who had invested heavily in its development: the Browns, founders of the spirits giant Brown-Forman. It was an unusual defeat for a family that’s often in the vanguard of high-profile causes ending in resounding success.

Christy Brown
Brown

The Browns were there at critical junctures for the FoodPort, including last year’s goodwill tour by Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. In a speech at the Cathedral of the Assumption on that overcast Friday in March, the CJ reported at the time, “the prince credited his visit to the persuasive powers of Louisville philanthropist Christina Lee Brown, matriarch of the family that controls Brown-Forman.”

Indeed, in 0ne photo with the newspaper’s online story, the unidentified woman in an orange coat and strands of pearls, beaming in the royal couple’s wake during one of their walkabouts, is Christina, known to many in Louisville as Christy.

Augusta Brown Holland
Holland

As one of the city’s best-known philanthropists, she and her immediate family have formed the core of the extended Brown family’s support of Seed Capital. Her daughter, Augusta Brown Holland, an urban planner and investor, is one of the non-profit’s six board members. Another daughter, Brooke Brown Barzun, has a more direct line to Buckingham Palace: Her husband, Matthew Barzun, is U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

A tale of IRS tax returns

The Browns donate multimillions of dollars annually to charities from coast to coast, although especially in Louisville. But they don’t often seek attention for their contributions.

Prince and Christina 300
On the CJ: Camilla, Christy and Charles.

In fact, Seed Capital only hints at the family’s hefty financial support,
on a difficult-to-find page of its website with a barebones alphabetical roster of “funders.” Of the 16 names listed, six are Brown family members or their personal charitable foundations. A seventh is the source of their $6 billion fortune: Brown-Forman, the nearly 150-year-old producer of Jack Daniel’s and other well-known brands. And an eighth, the Community Foundation of Louisville, is home to at least 10 individual Brown donor-advised funds.

Brown family foundation public IRS tax returns fill in details. In 2012-2015, six of the foundations donated a combined Continue reading “In FoodPort’s sudden failure, a rare defeat for Louisville’s blue-chip philanthropists: the Brown family” →

Latest Headlines

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” →

Food and Dining

Soft and creamy: This master’s description of a special bourbon hitting stores next month sounds like classic food porn

“It starts off as soft butterscotch with candied orange peel. It transitions into a creamy vanilla in the middle and finishes with subtle anise and moderate spice. It’s like eating black jelly beans in the middle of an orange grove.”

— Jackie Zykan, Old Forester master bourbon specialist, describing the 2016 Birthday Bourbon commemorating Brown-Forman founder George Garvin Brown‘s birth going on sale next month.

Here are his additional notes: color, deep reddish umber; nose, complex and cinnamon, wood-spiced with nutty chocolate, dark caramel and rich oak notes all brightened with a dash of crisp citrus fruit; taste, mulled spice sweetness and fruity with bright citrus peel highlights; finish, long and warm with mulled fruit character lingering on.

(Ironically in a Sam Malone of “Cheers” way, Boulevard Publisher Jim Hopkins doesn’t drink alcohol.)

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

Nuns play legal hardball against Yum; B-F names new Australia region chief; Roadhouse rival is bust; and Amazon’s Bezos sells $757M in stock — most ever

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 1:01 p.m.

Boxing nun puppet
$35.99 at eBay!

YUM: Two activist groups filed a shareholder proposal today requesting that fast-food giant Yum quickly phase out harmful antibiotic use in its meat supply, taking particular aim at the KFC unit’s nearly 15,000 restaurants, according to Reuters. The request from the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and As You Sow of Oakland, Calif., say KFC lags rivals McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Subway and Wendy’s in setting policies to curb routine use of antibiotics in chicken production.

In a statement issued after reports of the shareholder proposal, KFC said its “position on antibiotics is currently being reviewed to determine the viability for our suppliers to go beyond the FDA guidelines for antibiotic usage,” according to The Courier-Journal.

Yum’s 6,500-Taco Bell chain has agreed to stop using antibiotics for humans in its chicken supply early next year. The 14,000-unit Pizza Hut division has made a similar promise for pizza topping chicken. But KFC, which buys far more chicken than the other two brands, hasn’t budged (Reuters and Courier-Journal). Buy a boxing nun hand puppet at eBay for just $35.99 (auction listing).

Marc Satterthwaite
Satterthwaite

BROWN-FORMAN named Marc Satterthwaite as new managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, taking over from Michael McShane, who’s retiring Oct. 31 after 17 years with the company. Satterthwaite has held several leadership positions, including division director for the U.S. central states and Canada, director of North America Region sales operations, and as the interim country manager for India. Most recently, he’s been chief of staff to the U.S. commercial director (The Shout).

TEXAS ROADHOUSE competitor Logan’s Roadhouse — founded in Lexington in 1991 — has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. The Nashville-based steakhouse chain said Monday in its petition that it will close 18 under-performing restaurants; it has 250 overall. Logan’s was easily confused with Louisville-based Texas Roadhouse because of their similar formats, including encouraging patrons eat buckets of free peanuts and drop the shells on the floor (Lexington Herald-Leader). Texas Roadhouse shares recently traded for $45.48, up 1.3%, or 59 cents.

Jeff Bezos
Bezos

AMAZON founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold one million of his company shares last week, raising $757 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That’s a record for Bezos, exceeding the $671 million he sold in May (Fortune). Amazon’s stock closed yesterday at $766.56, near its all-time high of $770.50 (Google Finance). Say yes to this dress: The retailer’s best-selling wedding gown is gorgeous and a bargain to boot: as little as $16, a steal when the average bridal dress costs $1,357 (Refinery 29). Amazon employs 6,000 workers at distribution centers in Jeffersonville and Shephardsville; more about its local operations.

GE: Twisting the knife in the back of all the cities that didn’t land GE’s new headquarters, the conglomerate has unveiled renderings of its planned, new, high-tech 2.4-acre corporate campus in Boston. The design shows a 12-story building with a giant, sail-like veil and GE logo on top. The former owner of GE Appliances is moving from Fairfield, Conn., its corporate home since 1974 (Boston Globe and Seattle Times).

GE headquarters
New GE headquarters includes two century-old brick warehouses.

GE sold GE Appliances to Haier for $5.6 billion in June. The maker of refrigerators, dish washers and other “white goods” employs 6,000 workers in Louisville’s Appliance Park.