Bad News for Police

[wills]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/business/3648986

[Bret4207]

In the words of Daffy Duck, "Ha, ha. It is to laugh."

[Buckshot]

...............I had small business management in college and one of the areas covered was franchises. Naturally one of the largest and most successfull at that time (1974) was Mac Donalds. Mac Donalds wouldn't even consider you unless you had a quarter million up front for them to see, and you could NOT pick your location. You also went on a list and they would pick from the list, and not in any order. It could be years before you got one. BTW, at that time Mac D took 10% right off the TOP.

At issue in the article was KK overcharging their franchisees. The same thing happened with Shakey's Pizza. You HAD to buy EVERYTHING from them. From the raw ingredients to the janatorial supplies. Shakey's owners organization took them to court over the situation. The complaint wasn't so much with the food ingredients they had to buy but all the other stuff, like napkins and such.

They could buy these custom printed locally at 2/3rds the price Shakey's was charging. Several said they could hire outside janatorial companies who supplied their own supplies cheaper then they could supply their own labor, buying ONLY the supplies from Shakey's. The franchisee's won their lawsuit.

Shakey's said the stipulation was in the contract, but the judge said that that did not give them the right to defraud their franchisee's who would normally expect to be sold merchandise comparable to that obtained on the open market.

....................Buckshot

[wills]

Yes, it is interesting and complex, the way business torts, trademark/tradename, and antitrust all inter-react, particularly regarding franchises. Things which might otherwise be considered antitrust violations can be legitimate for trademark protection.

Before we moved we got groceries at Kroger®. Didn’t buy doughnuts often, but when I did I got the ones they made in the store, and they also had a variety of sweet rolls and other good stuff. Then they started carrying the Krispy Kreme Dognuts, the variety went away and the price went from three for a dollar to two for a dollar. I refuse to pay half a buck for Dognuts.

[Scrounger]

The Kroger store here goes by the name of Smith's. Half of their products still say Kroger on them. They sell Krispy Kreme (I don't like them) but they also have a full service bakery with lots of variety and the best French Bread I've ever eaten. Oddly enough, both Albersons and WalMart also have full service bakeries and turn out very good bread products at very reasonable prices. And open 24 hours a day. That's a lot of bakery service for a little town of 30,000 or so...

[wills]

We are mad at Albertsons. They cut down a bunch of real nice pecan trees, built a store which proceeded to sell most of its merchandise at about 50% above anyone else’s price and then, (surprise surprise surprise!!!) shut down.

I did pick up some ground meat there one time, called “yesterdays grind” apparently they ground hamburger fresh everyday. Anyway this was twenty nine cents a pound, and I figured it would have be pretty bad not to be worth twenty nine cents. SWMBO cooked and said it was the best ground beef she had ever seen, so lean there was hardly enough grease to fry it.

[Scrounger]

We are mad at Albertsons. They cut down a bunch of real nice pecan trees, built a store which proceeded to sell most of its merchandise at about 50% above anyone else’s price and then, (surprise surprise surprise!!!) shut down.

I did pick up some ground meat there one time, called “yesterdays grind” apparently they ground hamburger fresh everyday. Anyway this was twenty nine cents a pound, and I figured it would have be pretty bad not to be worth twenty nine cents. SWMBO cooked and said it was the best ground beef she had ever seen, so lean there was hardly enough grease to fry it.

Roger that on Albertson's ground beef. It is consistently cheaper than Smith's or WalMart, and a lot leaner and better tasting. My sister gets yesterday's beef for $1 a pound in Vegas but I've never seen it out here. One of the butchers said they pull it every evening about 9 o;clock but someone must be aware of it and doing a late evening sweep to get it, never there in the morning.

[9.3X62AL]

.....is being a cop, and being a diabetic. Most shameful, and graveyard shift loses something when you can't have a maple bar to start the tour with.

[wills]

More bad news

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11413980/?GT1=7756