1 in 5
About 20 percent of consumers hated the KFC commercials that featured Darrell Hammond’s impersonation of Colonel Harland Sanders, which is why the chain’s parent, Yum! Brands, scored the campaign a huge success. Yum CEO Greg Creed said in May that he was delighted the spots drew a negative response from one of five potential customers, explaining that at least the haters were paying attention to KFC again.
Still, Hammond was replaced by Norm MacDonald, whose initial ad spot as the Colonel starts with a condemnation of Hammond’s performance.
$1 billion
That’s the sales benchmark Starbucks has set for its happy-hour-like Evenings service, where patrons can order beer, wine and high-end bar foods along with lattes and Frappucinos. The chain expanded the service to 70 stores this week, mindful that the target date for topping the 10-figure sales mark is 2019. Starbucks has yet to reveal how much of a contribution Evenings is currently delivering to the top line.
70-80, 30-40
The former is the range of hires a typical new McDonald’s restaurant had to make in the 1960s; the latter, the recruitment target for a store opening today, according to the Washington Post. The numbers were cut in half by a greater reliance on pre-processed foods and improvements in technology, the paper reported.
The story appeared as McDonald’s is shifting the order-taking process to kiosks, a labor-cutting strategy also being explored by Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.
479, 692
The word counts, respectively, for the boilerplate disclaimer Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen had to recite before starting its quarterly earnings call with analysts, and the actual review of the financial results by CFO Will Matt. Like every public company, Popeyes has to caution investors about taking any forward-looking statements as a guarantee. What started as a paragraph under SEC requirements has grown longer than the article you’re reading.
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