-
You’d see this brand-spanking-new KFC in the middle of this sea of brown shacks, and people were in there, loving the product,” he says. While there’s little doubt that the continent will be more challenging than China, he thinks it’s ripe for explosive growth: “Nothing shows that we’re more global than if we can build a business in Africa that no one else has.
KFC’s Big Game of Chicken - Businessweek
Fastfood colonialism. KFC sales are sagging in the US but booming overseas in countries such as China.
Posted on April 17, 2012 with 1 note
Source: businessweek.com
-
The McRib was, at least in part, born out of the brute force that McDonald’s is capable of exerting on commodities markets. According to this history of the sandwich, Chef Arend created the McRib because McDonald’s simply could not find enough chickens to turn into the McNuggets for which their franchises were clamoring. Chef Arend invented something so popular that his employer could not even find the raw materials to produce it, because it was so popular. “There wasn’t a system to supply enough chicken,” he told Maxim. Well, Chef Arend had recently been to the Carolinas, and was so inspired by the pulled pork barbecue in the Low Country that he decided to create a pork sandwich for McDonald’s to placate the frustrated franchisees.
But the McRib might not have existed were it not for McDonald’s stunning efficiency at turning animals into products you want to buy.
A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage | The Awl
A singularly brilliant analysis of the McRib as a way McDonald’s exploits commodity market price fluctuations. McRib appears when pork prices go down. Due to the volume handled by McD (and consumed by the world), a few cents fluctuation in price could mean millions of dollars in lost or gained.
Who knew that McRib was the thinking economist or broker’s fastfood sandwich.
Posted on April 11, 2012 with 2 notes
Source: The Awl
I was laid off 2 days before my birthday in 2009, a dismal blessing. I miss health insurance and payroll, but I haven't bought bread since the pink slip because I have time to bake.
Sometimes I'm a serious job hunter, sometimes a serious slacker, but mostly, I'm an underemployed, freelance Jaqueline of many trades including writing and dogsitting. Either way, I scrapbook my finds and activities here for your benefit and amusement.
Follow me on Twitter if tv/movie/pro-cycling spoilers and unplanned live tweets won't hail on your parade. And yes, I do work blue so don't be huffy with me if you don't like cursing or merciless roasting of public figures.
You can look at my other blog Fashion Corpuscle if you like fashion. The ruins of my crumbling Tumblr blog empire awaits internet archaeologists.
Gainful Unemployment is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
