Tag: KFC

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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).

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Doth Yum protest too much about latest report of possibly leaked ultra-secret KFC recipe? More questions surface!

KFC’s corporate parent has insisted once more that a Chicago newspaper story last week purportedly revealing founder Colonel Harland Sanders‘ closely-guarded recipe of 11 herbs and spices got it wrong.

But Yum’s latest pushback raises new and vital questions about what it really knows!

KFC bucket of chickenThe story gained renewed traction when The New York Times picked it up yesterday, prompting Yum to issue a statement to the nation’s newspaper of record and its 77 million readers:

“Many people have made these claims over the years and no one has been accurate — this one isn’t either.” That was essentially the same thing Louisville-based Yum told the Chicago Tribune.

Last week, a Tribune freelance writer said Sanders’ nephew had revealed the recipe after discovering it in his aunt’s scrapbook; she was Sanders’ second wife. In a follow-up interview, the nephew, Joe Ledington, a 67-year-old retired school teacher outside Corbin, Ky., tried to walk back his claim, apparently worried he’d let the chicken out of the bag.

But Yum’s insistence raises so many questions, including:

  • How far off is the Tribune recipe — a grain or two of salt, or a whole lot more? A merely teeny-tiny variation in the published recipe and the one held in a Yum vault may be a distinction without a difference.
  • How does Yum’s public relations department verify these recurring claims, given how difficult it must be to access the original recipe, said to be on a yellowing piece of paper moved to a more secure location with great fanfare eight years ago? Must Yum CEO Greg Creed personally unearth the company’s version of a launch code to open the vault, then make the comparison himself? Does accessing the vault require two — or more! — executives to combine codes they carry separately? Is Creed followed around by an aide bearing Yum’s own gold codes football?
  • Is it true the promotional KFC-scented suntan lotion released this week can be reverse-engineered to uncover the real recipe’s ingredients?
  • What was really buried in Sanders’s grave in Cave Hill Cemetery after he died at Jewish Hospital in 1980 at age 90? Is that where the recipe is actually stored?!
harland-sanders-grave question mark
Question marks the spot of Sanders’ alleged Louisville grave.
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KFC’s new extra-crispy marketing recipe revealed! Big name + bizarre thing = smell of success

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 9:43 a.m.

KFC‘s latest publicity stunt — fried chicken-scented sunscreen — zigged in the U.S. from People magazine, then zagged to the U.K.’s Marie Claire, rolling up untold millions of dollars in free PR over the past 48 hours since its brief Monday launch. And it all involved just 3,000 bottles of a fake product never meant to get into consumer’s hands, according to trade site DigiDay.

KFC sunscreen 75Google News counted nearly 100 websites mentioning KFC Extra Crispy Sunscreen. Huffington Post’s story had 3,100 shares. The retro promotional infomercial video got nearly 280,000 views since it was posted on YouTube. And it won 11,000 mentions on social media, said Brandwatch analyst Kellan Terry.

The campaign was by the W+K agency in Portland, Ore., and followed the same formula W+K used for another client: Old Spice. “Its irreverent and unconventional,” Terry said, “and people love to laugh and watch the ad as it unfolds. These types of spots are tailored for multiple platform success.” And it paired perfectly with fake Colonel Harland “Extra Crispy” Sanders, played by actor-turned-pro tanner George Hamilton (photo, top).

The sunblock gimmick followed KFC’s two edible nail varnishes — flavored Original and Hot and Spicy — released in Hong Kong back in May.

TACO BELL is once more in the very unwelcome spotlight after reports employees refused to serve law enforcement officers. The latest incident, involving five Louisville Metro Police officers, comes amid a summer of rising tensions between police and the public.

The one in Louisville happened last week at the Taco Bell at Preston Highway and Phillips Lane, when the officers were taking a work break from duty at the Kentucky State Fair. One employee told co-workers he wouldn’t take the officers’ order, though another worker did eventually take the order, according to Sgt. Dave Mutchler, president of the River City FOP union representing officers.

“However, in the meantime,” Mutchler wrote in an e-mail, “another employee stated to a co-worker ‘I want to mess with them. I want to mess with them. I’m going to mess with them. I’m going to mess with them.'” Seeing no manager, the officers left.

Both Taco Bell and the Louisville franchise owner apologized to Louisville Metro Police and directly to the officers. The franchise owner says police made it clear they didn’t want any of the employees fired, and said he would retrain staff (Courier-Journal and WKYT).

The incident echoed one last month in Phenix City, Ala., where a Taco Bell clerk wouldn’t serve two sheriff’s deputies after another customer complained about the officers being there. The employee was fired and the chain apologized to the deputies and to the sheriff’s office. But there have been others involving cops:

  • In Toledo, Ohio, last week, a sheriff’s deputy was fired after making inappropriate Facebook posts about Taco Bell employees he said made vulgar remarks about him. One post said a black employee and a co-worker inside the restaurant yelled “Black lives matter,” and laughed at him while he was in his car in the drive-thru. The deputy was in uniform at the time.
  • A KFC employee in Missouri was fired early this month after reportedly threatening to spit in a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy’s order.

UPS: In Richmond, Va., the shipper says it plans to lay off 160 workers from its UPS Freight unit there within the next 12 months in a cost-cutting move. News reports didn’t give a total headcount there, however (Times-Dispatch).

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Brown-Forman’s BenRiach launches new whiskeys; KFC’s PR stunt smells like success; and Papa John’s pitchman Manning is fumbling in the kitchen

A news summary focused on 10 big employers.

BROWN-FORMAN‘s BenRiach Distillery Co. has launched 15 new whiskies, including a dozen single cask releases, its first since Brown-Forman bought the Scottish distillery in June for $405 million (Scotch Whiskey).

KFC sunscreen 75KFC‘s newest limited-time marketing gimmick is (was!) a natural followup to its current fake Colonel Harland Sanders pitchman: sun screen that smells like fried chicken. And the Yum division wasn’t kidding about availability; introduced today, the chain’s inventory was already exhausted by day’s end. Col. Sanders Extra Crispy Sunscreen followed the late-June introduction of the extra-crispy colonel played by perpetually suntanned actor George Hamilton. And it recalled the chain’s brief experiment last spring with nail polish that tasted like chicken.

PAPA JOHN’S today launched its latest TV commercial starring retired Denver Broncos quarterback — and franchise owner — Peyton Manning, casting him in an exceptionally unlikely new career:

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KFC calamity? Chicago newspaper claims to have seen culinary world’s Loch Ness Monster

It’s the original recipe Colonel Harland Sanders developed in 1939 for his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Ky., the one with 11 herbs and spices that launched today’s 20,000-location KFC. The Chicago Tribune has published what it says is the top-secret recipe, which a freelance writer got during a visit with Sanders’ nephew, Joe Ledington, a 67-year-old retired school teacher outside Corbin.

Harland Sanders
Sanders

Ledington told writer Jay Jones he’d found the recipe, handwritten in blue ink, tucked inside a photo album he inherited from his aunt, Sanders’ second wife. The newspaper included a photo of it with a story today about the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum in Corbin.

But as even the daily points out, many others have claimed to have seen what KFC calls one of America’s most valuable trade secrets. “But no one’s ever been right,” the company told the Tribune.

KFC keeps the original recipe, on a yellowing piece of paper, in a Continue reading “KFC calamity? Chicago newspaper claims to have seen culinary world’s Loch Ness Monster” →

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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” →