Tag: Pizza Hut

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Yum wants a leaner workforce; KFC’s got more competition as chicken menus swell; and Pizza Hut India celebrates Olympians

A news summary focused on 10 big employers.

YUM wants to trim its workforce in advance of spinning off its China division, and has offered an unspecified number of employees early retirement deals at its Louisville corporate office and its three main divisions: KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Yum employs about 1,000 at its corporate office and KFC domestic division. The fast-food giant would not disclose terms of the offers or a timetable. Overall, the company employs 505,000 workers. Yum agreed to separate its China division in October 2015, and has said it wants to complete the separation by Oct. 31 (WDRB).

KFC: The restaurant industry is awash in chicken, with the top 250 chains adding some 325 new chicken items during the 12 months ended June 30, according to research from Technomic. By comparison, only 73 new beef items were added in the same period as consumers turn to healthier, less fatty meat (CNBC).

P.V. Sindhu
Sindhu

PIZZA HUT is offering free pizzas today to anyone who shares the last name of the country’s Olympic-award winning badminton player P.V. Sindhu, who won a silver on Thursday. The chain had earlier made the same offer to customers with the same last name as Sakshi Malik, who won a bronze in wrestling. The players are the nation’s only medal winners in the Rio games, which end tomorrow (Business Standard).

Latest Headlines

Pizza Hut adding 300-plus restaurants in Central Europe; Yum stock hits 52-week high; and White House in big new Obamacare push as Humana and Aetna flee exchanges

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 6:11 p.m.

Pizza Hut restaurant building
Pizza Hut has more than 14,000 locations worldwide.

PIZZA HUT said it signed a master franchise agreement with AmRest Holdings that gives the Polish company the right to own, develop and sub-franchise more than 300 restaurants in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, and Slovenia over the next five years; AmRest already operates 80 Huts (press release).

Wall Street rallied around the news: YUM shares closed this afternoon at $90.76, after trading earlier at a 52-week high of $90.88.

Greg CreedThe expansion comes as Yum CEO Greg Creed is on the offensive against rival Domino’s on the domestic front, especially in technology such as ordering apps that attracts younger consumers. Pizza Hut, headquartered in Plano outside Dallas, is the world’s biggest pizza chain, more than 14,00 restaurants in more than 100 countries. No. 2 Domino’s has more than 12,500 locations in over 80 markets around the world.

AmRest was launched in 1993 with its first Pizza Hut in Poland’s Wrocław and says it’s now the biggest independent chain restaurant operator in Central and Eastern Europe. It operates more than 1,000 eateries in 13 countries through a portfolio of brands that also includes KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, La Tagliatella, Blue Frog and Kabb.

HUMANA: Facing withdrawals from insurance exchanges by Humana, Aetna and others amid surging premiums, the Obama Administration is preparing a major push to enroll new participants in public online marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act. The administration is considering an ad campaign with testimonials from newly insured consumers, as well as direct appeals to young people hit by tax penalties for failing to enroll (New York Times).

Humana and Aetna logos 250On Monday, Aetna blamed anticipated losses for the Hartford insurer’s decision to exit nearly 70% of the exchange markets it’s been serving; that pullout will come next year. The followed a similar announcement earlier this month from Humana, which said Continue reading “Pizza Hut adding 300-plus restaurants in Central Europe; Yum stock hits 52-week high; and White House in big new Obamacare push as Humana and Aetna flee exchanges” →

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Diese geniale Pizzaschachtel ist gleichzeitig ein DJ-Deck!

Wer braucht schon sein eigenes Mischpult, wenn er Pizza haben kann? Wer in Zukunft in Großbritannien bei Pizza Hut bestellt, könnte in den Genuss eines eigene DJ-Decks aus Karton kommen.*

Pizza Hut playable DJ box 600
Diese box ist wunderbar!

* This post about Pizza Hut U.K.’s new DJ-mixable pizza box is for our German-speaking readers via Musik Express. (Google’s translation here.)

Latest Headlines

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” →

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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” →

Latest Headlines

Religious leader in northeast India bans KFC meals, saying they don’t conform to Islamic law; GE contract talks start today; and Texas Roadhouse treads softly as rivals jack up prices

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:31 a.m.

KFC: The senior mufti in northeastern India’s Bareilly has issued a fatwa, or an Islamic edict, against KFC restaurants in the area, terming it a “sin” to eat there because the chicken sold doesn’t conform to Islamic law. “People at KFC process the meat away from the eyes of Muslims and such meat has been termed haram in Islam,” he said. The mufti said that the halal certificates displayed at the stores are irrelevant if the owners and workers can’t detail the procedures they use. “Halal is not only about killing the animal,” he said, “it is also about the way its meat is processed and cooked” (Hindustan Times).

GE: Contract talks open today between Louisville-based GE Appliances and the union representing about 4,000 workers at Appliance Park, and the saber-rattling is well underway. Management says the factory complex in the south end is losing money, and workers are earning more than typical in the industry. But a union leader says the company is merely trying to intimidate workers ahead of negotiations (Insider Louisville). The employees are covered by a contract reached before GE Appliances was bought in June by China’s Haier for $5.6 billion. In all, the nearly 60-year-old complex has about 6,000 workers. GE Appliances employs another 6,000 workers elsewhere. More about the company’s history in Louisville.

TEXAS ROADHOUSE, despite a second-quarter earnings miss, is a bright spot in the struggling casual dining industry, where rivals have boosted prices to compensate for falling traffic — and paid a price for the misstep. The steakhouse chain increased prices less than peers, and traffic’s improved, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Overall, traffic at casual-dining chains is down almost 30% since 2005. What gives? “Casual-restaurant chains are feeling the heat as loyal baby-boom customers age and millennials take their place,” the business weekly says. “Boomers like big portions and value pricing; their children, who favor organic and gluten-free foods, are pickier and less price-sensitive” (Barron’s).

On Friday, Texas Roadhouse shares ranked No. 1 in weekly performance among big area employers Boulevard tracks. Founded in 1993 with a single restaurant in southern Indiana, it’s grown to nearly 500 outlets in 49 states plus five foreign countries. It employs 48,000 workers, including about 500 in Louisville. More about the chain.

Pizza Hut boxPIZZA HUT: In Albuquerque, a Pizza Hut is seeking delivery drivers in a Craigslist ad posted yesterday that lists the following perks: “The hours are flexible. You’re out and about, listening to tunes and delivering great pizzas. Oh, and people are really, really happy to see you!” (Craigslist).

TACO BELL: In Portland, Ore., a man posted the following in Craigslist’s men-for-men Missed Connections section yesterday: Continue reading “Religious leader in northeast India bans KFC meals, saying they don’t conform to Islamic law; GE contract talks start today; and Texas Roadhouse treads softly as rivals jack up prices” →