No Patty Melt for SantaIf Santa gets...
No Patty Melt for Santa
If Santa gets hungry on Christmas, he can forget Denny’s.
Sure, Christmas is traditionally one of the La Mirada fast-food chain’s biggest days. And yes, the 24-hour restaurant chain has long boasted in its advertising that it is “Always Open.”
But not this Christmas. At 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve--for the first time since it was founded 35 years ago--Denny’s will close all 1,221 of its restaurants nationwide for the day. “Since management has the day off,” said Jerry Richardson, president of parent TW Services, “we thought our thousands of field employees deserved the same courtesy.”
There is one catch, however. Because the restaurants seldom close, most Denny’s have no locks. So, this week the chain is installing locks at all of its outlets. And developing guidelines on how to close. Said Richardson: “This is all new to us.”
Southland Open for Business
If you ever thought about starting a business, Southern California apparently is the place to be. A story in the January issue of Venture magazine hails the region as the “next entrepreneurial mecca.”
The magazine says the “maturation” of the region’s universities--such as UC Irvine, California Institute of Technology, USC and UCLA--plus the growing number of venture capital firms will result in the creation of many new companies in the biomedical and medical technology fields.
Besides money and research centers, Southern California’s casual life style will also help attract entrepreneurs, the magazine said. But it also warned that new businesses may be increasingly turned off by the region’s overcrowding, traffic congestion and expensive housing.
This Could Pad Their Profits
James D. Easton Inc. wants to become a major player in a bruising business.
The Van Nuys company, the nation’s leader in making aluminum baseball bats, is selling through one of its units a line of protective sports pads like those worn by hockey and football players. The pads, which use foam and air baffles to diffuse shocks, are similar to the “flack jackets” designed in the 1970s to protect the ribs of pro football quarterbacks such as former Houston Oiler Dan Pastorini. So far, Easton has sold its pads to the University of Minnesota hockey team and some members of pro hockey’s Los Angeles Kings.
Easton’s goal is to capture 7% of the protective pad business, which the company estimates to be about $80 million annually, and 20% by 1991. Although pro athletes shouldn’t have difficulty shouldering the cost, some amateurs might. A pair of shoulder pads costs $250.
Hartley Ties LBOs to Disaster
Fred L. Hartley, the outspoken chairman of Unocal Corp., seizes every opportunity to warn of leveraged buyouts, as Unocal’s latest Christmas necktie illustrates. Enclosed with the ties that Hartley sent to company management and colleagues this year is a card with this homey message:
“If Christmas in the year 2000 is to be as prosperous and joyful as those you and I have shared, this country must curtail leveraged buyouts and other destructive business activities. There is no worse gift we could leave our children and grandchildren than to mortgage America’s economic future through this kind of shortsighted activity.”
Hartley sends out a different necktie every Christmas. Some have complex designs with a message based on the year’s events, a company spokesman says. In 1986, the year oil prices collapsed, the Unocal tie had little camels on wheels, signifying what Hartley viewed as the Trojan horse represented by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ low oil prices. This year’s tie has to do with a Unocal breakthrough in toxic waste removal.
