Tag: Papa John’s

Latest Headlines

Papa John’s franchisee in NYC agrees to $500K deal on wage and labor violations; Kindred closing second Houston hospital

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated at 8:24 a.m.

PAPA JOHN’S: The owner of three Papa John’s restaurants in New York City has agreed to pay $500,000 in back wages to more than 200 workers under a deal with state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the U.S. Labor Department; it’s the eighth case brought against Papa John’s franchisees by the state’s top law enforcer in the past two years. In addition to paying $500,000, franchisee Sultan Ali Lakhani must add procedures to handle employee complaints, post a statement of employees’ rights, and designate a compliance officer to submit quarterly reports to Schneiderman’s office (New York Daily News).

Kindred Holcombe hospitalKINDRED is closing another hospital in Houston, the second such closing the Louisville-based hospital and nursing giant has announced there this month as it consolidates operations in the city. The Kindred Holcombe facility near Texas Medical Center will shutter in October and all 204 jobs will be eliminated; local news accounts did not say how many beds the hospital has. With the earlier planned closing of 37-bed Kindred Hospital Baytown, the company will still operate nine hospitals in the Houston area (Houston Chronicle).

Latest Headlines

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:

Money in Politics

Pizza king Schnatter leads 10 Kentuckians kicking $100K into state Republican party’s coffers

The Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter and his wife Annette headlined a group of well-heeled donors to the state Republican Party last month, boosting its treasury by $151,000 and possibly pushing it even further ahead of the Democratics, according to its monthly Federal Election Commission report filed yesterday.

The party had $1.6 million on hand at the end of the month, after spending $188,000, the report said.

The Democrats have not filed their July report yet. But in June, they raised just $48,000 to the Republicans’ $155,000. That left the Democrats with only $48,000 in the bank.

The Schnatters and just eight other $10,000 donors accounted for 66% of all the party’s receipts during in July, underscoring the role of a handful of wealthy residents in this year’s elections. Among them, Schnatter especially can afford do be generous: His stake in the pizza chain he founded in 1984 soared above $800 million less than two weeks ago after a run-up in the stock’s price.

The others $10,000 Republican donors were:

  • John W. Landrum of Harrodsburg, retired.
  • Henry R. Saufley III, owner, Builders Supply.
  • Pam Stephens of Russell Springs, bookkeeper and accountant at Stephens Pipe and Steele.
  • James Stuckert of Prospect, partner at investment firm Hilliard Lyons, Diane Stuckert, retired.
  • E. Duncan Taylor of Lexington, horse breeder, Taylor Made Farms.
  • William Wilburn of Eubank, president, Cumberland Security Bank, and Sherry Wilburn, a homemaker.
Latest Headlines

Humana leverages tech-savvy employees to build network of 3,000 advocates on Twitter and other social media — in just one year

A year ago, the Louisville-based insurance giant had already signed up 90% of its 50,000 employees to an internal social network, and 40-45% logged in at least once a month. That’s when it decided to encourage the most motivated ones to share approved articles about the company, plus other health-care news on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks outside the company, AdAge reports today.

Employees use the hashtag #HumEmployee to make clear they work for the company. To launch the program, called Humana Advocates, the insurer hired Dynamic Signal, a Silicon Valley company that builds employee advocacy systems. The pilot program started with a couple hundred staffers, rising to 500 by January. Since then, the number has jumped to 3,000.

Dan Gingiss
Gingiss

The system shows a list of approved articles for users to share. But most of it “isn’t directly Humana-related, because we don’t want employees to look like shills for the company,” Dan Gingiss, Humana’s head of digital marketing, told AdAge. Most of the content is about health and wellness, some of which is created by Humana itself, with the rest from third parties.

Humana’s effort is only the latest example of how companies are fiercely competing for market share by harnessing free social media technology, where hundreds of millions of current and potential consumers spend more and more time. Twitter says some 313 million people use the short-message platform each month. The figures on Facebook are even higher: 1.7 billion, including 1.1 billion every day.

KFC bucket of chickenAmong Louisville companies, the battle is especially strong among restaurant giants that compete for young customers who practically live online: Yum’s troika of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell; pizza colossus Papa John’s, and steakhouse chain Texas Roadhouse. On the public-relations front, companies also need all the help they can get from employees to burnish their image when bad news spreads online.

The chains have recently pushed back against headline-grabbing behavior from employees themselves. Last month, Continue reading “Humana leverages tech-savvy employees to build network of 3,000 advocates on Twitter and other social media — in just one year” →

Executive Pay

Papa John’s COO Ritchie nets $625K in share trade

Steve Ritchie made the trade Aug. 12 with options he exercised that day at a so-called strike price of $26 a share, according to a just-filed Securities and Exchange Commission document. That means he netted about $625,000 after selling the 12,836 shares at prices ranging from $74.37 to $75.08.

John Ritchie
Ritchie

The options vest in three equal annual installments beginning one year from the grant date of Feb. 28, 2013. The company’s PZZA shares closed today at $75, up 35 cents.

Just last week, Ritchie told the SEC he’d sold 988 shares for about $75,000; there were no options involved in that trade.

Ritchie has been the pizza chain’s president and chief operating officer since July 2015. He started at the company as a customer service representative making $5 an hour in 1996.

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” →