In a letter to Applebee’s International employees filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, chief executive Dave Goebel said the $2.1 billion sale to IHOP Inc. would result in job cuts at the Overland Park, Kansas company.
In a letter, Goebel apologized to employees for not delivering the message in person before the announcement Monday of a deal to combine the nation’s largest casual dining chain with a major pancake house. If approved by Applebee’s shareholders and federal regulators, the deal would create a combined company with 3,250 restaurants and $6.8 billion in annual sales.
IHOP chief executive Julia Stewart said she intends to finance the deal in part by selling Applebee’s 508 company-owned restaurants. Goebel said in the letter that the move would result in cuts in support staff.
Applebee’s has about 680 employees at its headquarters in Overland Park. It is also building a new headquarters in Lenexa.
“What does this mean for our associates? Well, typically, when costs are significantly reduced, there are headcount reductions, too,” he said. “It’s expected that, over time, as company-owned restaurants are re-franchised, there will be reductions in positions directly associated with support for those re-franchised stores. That won’t happen overnight — in fact, we expect the re-franchising process could extend to 2010.”
McDonald’s CEO has rejected cutting back on advertising to children, saying on Monday that a new program of promoting physical activity was the right thing to do.
McDonalds, who has been criticized for contributing to an increase in childhood obesity by selling food high in fat and calories, has in recent years focused less of its children’s marketing dollars on selling Big Macs and french fries and more on advocating for kids to be physically active.
Many food and restaurant companies have been pressured to cut back on marketing to children.
“The idea that some people would have us go dark on communications to kids is a mistake because the communication needs to be positive,” McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner said in a telephone interview, adding that he was “very happy” with where his company’s marketing is today.
Skinner said he also takes issue with critics of the company’s mascot, Ronald McDonald. Some have compared McDonald’s clown to Joe Camel, the Camel cigarette mascot pulled from ads after drawing the ire of regulators for appealing to children.
“Ronald McDonald has never sold food to kids in the history of his existence,” Skinner said.
Sourece: [Reuters]
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey posted numerous, company-boosting entries on Yahoo Finance message boards under an assumed name during a period of eight years.
Documents recently made public by the Federal Trade Commission revealed that Mackey used the forum to routinely cheer the company’s financial results and insult potential merger partner Wild Oats Markets, which Whole Foods ultimately agreed to buy. In his posts, Mackey used the name “Rahodeb” — an anagram of his wife’s name, Deborah.
Mackey’s postings came to light as part of the discovery process in the FTC’s lawsuit seeking to block the $565 million merger between Whole Foods and Wild Oats.
On Mackey’s official blog on Whole Foods’ Web site, he confirms his actions, but remains unrepentant: “I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.”
“The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t,” he added. “Sometimes I simply played “devil’s advocate” for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.”
Coca-Cola Co. is evaluating whether to make a bid for Snapple, the iced tea division owned by Cadbury Schweppes Plc, as part of Coke’s push into tea-based drinks, Coke Chief Executive E. Neville Isdell told Reuters.
“That is a valuation that we undertake — whether it (Snapple) is of interest to us or whether we can do it on our own,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. Coke also aims to expand its palette of tea-based drinks using a revived pact with Nestle and recently met with officials from the Coke-Nestle joint venture, Beverage Partners Worldwide, to advance their plans, Isdell said.
At funeral services this weekend for Johnsonville Sausage founder Ralph F. Stayer, mourners remembered the man - and his bratwurst.
His wife, Alice Stayer, insisted that her late husband’s services be a positive affair, a celebration of life. So about 650 family, friends and co-workers held a brat-fest yesterday in his memory. Stayer died in his sleep last week in Florida at the age of 92.
Stayer is informally credited with popularizing bratwurst across the country. His company’s brats are sold seasonally at some 4,000 McDonald’s nationwide and in 16 NFL stadiums.
