Tag: KFC Yum Center

The A-list

In Ali’s final big show, Hollywood royalty attended a sendoff worthy of a king
David Beckham
Beckham

The glittering roster of celebrities at yesterday’s Muhammad Ali memorial service is still growing, according to news reports — attesting to the enduring star power of the late prize fighter, who rocketed to global fame from a racially segregated childhood in 1940s Louisville.

Among the latest bold-face names to emerge: actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who Instagrammed a grinning selfie with eulogist and former President Bill Clinton), and David Beckham, the retired British superstar soccer player.

 

Beck’s wife, Victoria, the former Spice Girl singer, wasn’t spotted with him at the KFC Yum Center, where the number of mourners at the afternoon event ran as high as 20,000, according to Britain’s Mirror.

Whoopi Goldberg
Goldberg

Other celebrities whose attendance wasn’t previously reported included View talk show host Whoopi Goldberg; filmmaker Spike Lee; actor and former pro-football player Carl Weathers, and triple-platinum former singer Yusuf (Cat Stevens) Islam, says Britain’s Daily Mail and one of Boulevard’s Facebook friends.

They joined already known attendees, including comedian Billy Crystal, who gave one of the eulogies; actor and pallbearer Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith; Today show host Matt Lauer and former host Bryant Gumbel; retired pro boxer Mike Tyson — and the realest of royalty: King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Trump sends regrets

Rumors GOP White House hopeful Donald Trump would attend were quashed during the morning when Ali family spokesman Bob Gunnell said the reality TV star called Ali’s wife, Lonnie, to say he was unable to come, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Ali was one of the world’s most high-profile Muslims, so it’s hard to imagine Trump would have been welcome, given his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

The KFC Center service capped a week that drew tens of thousands of spectators earlier yesterday to a 23-mile funeral procession that snaked through the city — all broadcast live to millions online and on television the day he was buried. Chanting “Ali, Ali!” fans waved to celebrities riding with other Ali family guests in the 17-car motorcade. Security, which included the U.S. Secret Service, was tight; an estimated 500 Louisville police officers were there.

Ali and close family and advisors planned the funeral in secret during the final years of his decades-long battle against Parkinson’s disease. Born in Louisville’s West End in 1942, he died at 74 on June 3 in Phoenix, his primary home. He was buried yesterday at a so-far undisclosed gravesite at Cave Hill Cemetery, joining a Kentucky who’s-who of governors, business titans and other luminaries — the most famous being KFC founder Harland Sanders.

The motorcade entered Cave Hill’s iconic main entrance on a carpet of flower petals fans laid earlier in the day:
Embed from Getty Images

Entrepreneurs

Texas Roadhouse is the biggest Louisville-based restaurant chain you’ve never heard of
Texas Roadhouse
Founded in 1993, the company now has nearly 500 restaurants and 48,000 employees.

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

Put your books away; it’s time for a pop quiz!

Ever heard of a Louisville-based restaurant chain called KFC? Of course you have. Papa John’s? Certainly.

Now, what about that other big Louisville-based chain: Texas Roadhouse. Not so much?

KFC (15,000 restaurants in more than 125 countries) and Papa John’s (4,700 stores, 37 nations) are better known in Louisville at least partly because they’re older, and promote themselves more locally. There’s the KFC Yum Center downtown, and Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. And who hasn’t seen Papa John’s founder John Schnatter in one of his ubiquitous TV commercials?

Kent Taylor
Taylor

But Texas Roadhouse has come a long way, too — and in a relatively short time. Chairman and CEO Kent Taylor started the steakhouse chain in 1993 with a single restaurant in southern Indiana. Some 23 years later, it’s grown to nearly 500 company-owned and franchised restaurants in 49 states plus five foreign countries, and 48,000 employees.

That three big restaurant companies are all based in Louisville isn’t a huge surprise given an economic principle with an unwieldy name: agglomeration. That’s where companies beget other companies in the same industry nearby, all benefiting from the increasingly specialized labor pool and economies of scale: for example, intellectual property attorneys experienced in the fast-food trade.

Peanut shells
Western theme peanut shells.

Taylor, for one, started out as a KFC manager in 1990, when he returned to his Louisville hometown. Three years later, he opened the first Texas Roadhouse, in Clarksville, Ind. The restaurants are known for their western themes, line-dancing servers, peanut shell-strewn floors, and Texas Red Chili and ribs.

The company went public in 2004. Its headquarters is at 6040 Dutchman’s Lane.

Now 60, Taylor is the biggest individual stockholder, with 4.4 million shares, or 6.2% of all, according to the 2016 shareholders’ proxy report. His stake was worth more than $200 million in June 2016, when shares were trading at a record high of $46 each.