Tag: Harland Sanders

Latest Headlines

New $13B Aetna bonds prime Humana buy; 再见, GE!: $5.4B deal may close Monday; PepsiCo CEO in Yum spinoff dies at 71
Appliance Park aerial
An aerial view of the mammoth GE Appliance complex.

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 9:52 a.m.

HUMANA: Aetna sold $13 billion of new bonds yesterday to pay for its $34 billion purchase of Humana, the latest sign of growing confidence anti-trust regulators will OK the deal. Shares of both insurance giants jumped on the news, narrowing the discount at which Humana trades to the original $230 cash-and-stock offer price. That gap, around 17% at yesterday’s close, is the smallest since early April (Wall Street Journal). Humana’s stock surged 5.5% to $187.23; Aetna, up 4% to $120.05. Aetna’s CEO said recently that he expects the deal announced last July will close in the year’s second half. Humana employs about 12,500 workers in Louisville, part of its nationwide workforce of 50,000; that figure would double under the Aetna deal. More about Humana’s history.

GE: Haier Co. is expected to close on its $5.4 billion purchase of the iconic 50-year-old Appliance Park as soon as Monday. That would “sever Louisville’s half-century ties to General Electric,” The Courier Journal says, “and turn over ownership of one of the community’s flagship employers to a major Chinese appliance and consumer electronics maker” (Courier-Journal). The complex employs 6,000 making dishwashers and other home appliances. Still, GE is advertising jobs there starting at $15.51 and hour, or $32,000 a year (company website).

(Here’s how Google translates our GE news summary in simplified Chinese: 海尔股份有限公司有望尽快结束其$5.4十亿收购标志性的50岁的家电园区，截至周一。这将“切断路易斯维尔半个世纪关系到通用电气，”信使杂志说，“和社会各界的旗舰雇主之一的所有权移交给大中国家电和消费电子制造商”（信使报）。复杂的员工6000人。 GE尚广告工作开始出现在$15.51和时间，或每年$32,000.” Our headline should say: Goodbye, GE!)

Watch an inside tour of Appliance Park:

Roger Enrico
Enrico

YUM: Retired PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico, who spun off the company’s restaurant division into what is now Yum Brands, died suddenly Wednesday while on vacation with his family in the Cayman Islands. The cause of his death wasn’t immediately known. He was 71 (The Drum). CEO from 1996-2001, Enrico was known for turning Pepsi-Cola into a pop-culture leader with groundbreaking sponsorships with Michael Jackson and Madonna in the “Choice of a New Generation” campaign (The Wall Street Journal and AdAge). Watch one of the Jackson commercials. Yum’s history in Louisville started with KFC founder Harland Sanders.

AMAZON: About 40 bike messengers employed by Amazon contractor Fleetfoot Messenger Service have been laid off, effective today, as the company rethinks the way it makes quick deliveries in its corporate hometown of Seattle. The messengers carried packages and groceries for Amazon Prime Now, a popular one- to two-hour service seen as one of Amazon’s big bets to beat brick-and-mortar retailing (Seattle Times). Geekwire said the number laid off was closer to 60, and quoted one saying: “A lot of people, including myself, are thinking, ‘Why are we going to stick around and bust our ass and put our lives on our line when they don’t give a shit?’ They just cut our jobs. A lot of us just walked out” (GeekWire). Expectations were high for the couriers — with heavier-than-normal loads, fast delivery times, careful tracking, and demands for near-perfect execution (GeekWire, earlier). Elsewhere in Amazonia, the company blows away all competitors in time spent on their mobile websites by a long shot; mobile visitors spent an average 103 minutes on Amazon vs. Target’s 20 minutes and Walmart’s 14 (Business Insider).

BROWN-FORMAN: Billy Walker, who sold the BenRiach Distillery Co. scotch whiskey business to Brown-Forman for $405 million million, has been named entrepreneur of the year in the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards; the deal closed Wednesday (Herald Scotland).

CHURCHILL DOWNS: Hosting a party at the iconic racetrack runs from casual to a formal sit-down meal surrounded by historic racing décor (press release via Insider Louisville).

In other news, U.S. employers added only 38,000 workers in May, a significant slowdown in hiring that could push back a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates (New York Times). Wall Street wasn’t keen on the report; all major stock indices retreated (Google Finance) and the 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio all tumbled.

Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali
Ali last year.

Finally, Louisville native and humanitarian Muhammad Ali has been hospitalized again and is being treated for a respiratory issue in Phoenix, where he lives. Ali, 74, has been battling Parkinson’s disease for years. The Associated Press said last night that his condition may be more serious than in his previous hospital stays (ESPN). His $80 million Muhammad Ali Center opened in downtown Louisville in 2005.

We like to remember him for his stunning Sonny Liston knockout punch after 104 seconds on May 25, 1965:
Embed from Getty Images

Final Business

Up in smoke: Amid $10,000 funerals, Cave Hill Cemetery cremation rates have soared

Only 10 years ago, just 3% of the internments at storied Cave Hill Cemetery involved cremations. Today, the cemetery estimates the rate has soared to 37%. The statewide rate is lower: 22%, but across the U.S., it’s nearly 47%.

UrnNo wonder. A traditional funeral in the U.S. costs $8,000 to $10,000, with the single-biggest expense being a casket, averaging $2,300 — a pricey item cremation doesn’t require. Urns for ashes, on the other hand, are a lot cheaper, such as the $139.95 one pictured, left.

The cemetery’s more famous permanent residents include KFC founder Harland Sanders.

Related: Read more about Louisville cemeteries, and funeral homes. Much of the state’s funeral industry is regulated by the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors; the board publishes industry laws and regulations, including requirements for inspections and publicly available price lists for caskets and other merchandise, plus services.

Photo, top: the cemetery’s iconic entrance at Broadway and Baxter.

Entrepreneurs

In Yum’s history, 11 herbs and spices became a recipe for a fast-food giant

Boulevard focuses on news about some of Louisville’s biggest employers, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. This is one in an occasional series about them.

Harland Sanders
Sanders

Louisville-based Yum Brands traces its corporate roots to one of the most-recognized entrepreneurs — and cooks — in the world: Col. Harland Sanders. He launched his iconic Kentucky Fried Chicken chain in 1930 from his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Ky., during the Great Depression.

It grew into a business giant based on his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. In 1964, at age 73, Sanders sold the chain for $2 million ($15 million in 2016 dollars) to a partnership led by Kentucky businessman John Y. Brown Jr. (a lawyer and future governor of the state) and Jack C. Massey, a venture capitalist.

In the 1970s and 80s, KFC passed through a series of owners, ultimately getting acquired by PepsiCo.

The beverage giant added Pizza Hut in 1977, and Mexican fast-food chain Taco Bell in 1978 — and then it spun off all three into Tricon Global Restaurants in 1997. Tricon made Louisville its corporate headquarters, and then adopted the name Yum! Brands. (Boulevard doesn’t use the exclamation mark because it looks like a typo to readers who aren’t familiar with the brand!)

With nearly 43,000 restaurants in more than 130 countries and territories, Yum is now one of the biggest restaurant chains in the world. Its marquee brands — KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell — are one of the biggest private employers, with a combined 505,000 employees; a majority of them work part-time. Revenues in 2015 exceeded $13 billion. It ranked No 218 in the Fortune 500 in June 2016.

Greg Creed
Creed

In Louisville, Yum employs 1,000 at the corporate headquarters as well as KFC’s U.S. division offices. In early 2016, however, CEO Greg Creed and the four other top executives shifted to Plano north of Dallas, where the company’s biggest two divisions, KFC Global and Pizza Hut, are headquartered. Allaying concerns that Yum’s corporate headquarters might move, too, a spokesman told WDRB in February 2016 the executives would work from Louisville one or two weeks per month. Taco Bell is based in southern California’s Irvine.

Sanders’ affiliation with KFC hasn’t entirely ended. He continued as a spokesman for many years after he sold the chain to Brown and Massey. He died in 1980 at Jewish Hospital and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery before a monument designed to look like the KFC-Yum headquarters, at 1441 Gardiner Lane. For many years, his grave has been the most-visited there.

Last year, Yum resurrected the colonel — actually, former Saturday Night Live comedian Darrell Hammond — to boost sales. But the new series of commercials that followed have gotten mixed reviews. Here’s one:

Latest Headlines

Trump renews Amazon attack, 93-year-old KFC retiree hits rare milestone; and UPS plans big new Austin facility

A news summary focused on big employers; updated 2:02 p.m.

Donald Trump
Trump

AMAZON: White House GOP candidate Donald Trump attacked Jeff Bezos again, claiming the Amazon CEO bought The Washington Post to promote a political agenda that would help the company on taxes (CNN). Also, a former software director who led the company’s new FireTV initiative was charged with promoting prostitution in the Seattle area (KIRO).

KFC: A retired 29-year employee in Ontario has reached an American Legion milestone that few reach in any organization: he’s been a member for 60 years. William Young, 93, worked at a KFC franchise, rising to manager before retiring. And he met founder Col. Harland Sanders (Argus Observer).

UPS plans a new $70 million, 300-employee distribution center in Austin with room for 300 vehicles; it’s to open at the end of 2018 (Austin Statesman). Asked and answered: How important is e-commerce to the shipper’s sales (Motley Fool).

In other news, The Courier-Journal has joined 199 other investors in buying a two-year-old colt, which the nascent Churchill Downs Racing Club hopes to run during the current spring meet. The horse is being trained by Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas (Courier-Journal).