Posted on 06/30/2011 1:45:17 PM PDT by TSgt
Following bankruptcy filings by Sbarro, Perkins and Marie Callenders this year, new data suggests that other popular restaurant chains are in danger of following suit.
TheStreet.com recently looked at restaurants based on their Altman Z-Score. The website says the score is based on several aspects of a company's financial health -- including working capital, total assets, total liabilities, market capitalization, sales, retained earnings and earnings before interest & taxes (EBIT) -- to forecast the probability of it going bankrupt within two years.
Since it began the scoring system in 1968, TheStreet says the formula has been 72 percent accurate in predicting corporate bankruptcies two years prior to the filing.
The list of restaurant in order of most at risk to file for bankruptcy (limited to those with a market capitalization of $100 million):
1. Dennys 2. Wendys/Arbys 3. Mortons Restaurant Group 4. DineEquity (IHOP, Applebees) 5. Dominos Pizza 6. Bravo Brio Restaurant Group 7. McCormick & Schmicks 8. Ruths Hospitality Group (Ruths Chris Steak House, Mitchells Fish Market) 9. OCharleys 10. Einstein Noah Restaurant Group
We got a family-owned place where I live [Continental Pizza] that serves 12” x 9” rectangular 6 topping pizza for about $13.
Makes a meal for 2 people with 4 pieces left over for a snack the next day ...
And it is Waaaaay better [and cheaper] than Dominos ...
Also, large subs [12”], the mostly costly of which is $6 ...
Travel safe. I’ll wave back!
The Dairy Queen in my town serves consistently good fast food. That’s where we head when we want fast food.
Love their hotdog and chicken baskets.
Now, I’m sad to hear about Marie, probably Denny’s also....I quit Wendy’s when they quit the “hot’n’juicy” adds a couple of decades ago (all their crap is dry as cardboard now). Sbarro’s ? That cardboard airport pizza? No big loss there.
Roast Beef....yeah.....roasted beef pieces compressed into one big rear-quarter looking mass by a couple thousand tons pressure....I dunno about you but I get a hint of hydraulic oil after taste whenever I have an ARBY’s..
Another thing that might be hurting fast-food places here is a recent law that requires fast-food chains to post the calorie content of their meals. When you see that the double bacon-cheeseburger with fries and a Coke has 1,800 or 2,000 calories, you think twice. I’m a Type II diabetic and I simply can’t eat that stuff anymore. There’s absolutely nothing at a Burger King that I could eat and not double my recommended calorie and fat intake. I don’t understand why these fast food places keep coming up with these mega-calorie monstrosities (pizza with stuffed crust, for example, and triple bacon burgers) when there’s been so much talk about healthy diets in the last 20 years.
I know what your husband means.
Our Golden Corral seems to attrack the fattest most obese people in town.
To see them loading up their trays with enough food to feed me for a week is disgusting.
People also load up their trays with food in amounts they can’t posssibly eat and it goes in the trash.
Tariffs: Ya always lose a tariff war if you're weak in the area you want to "protect".
Tax breaks: Are crony capitalism (Fascism), unless across the board tax reductions. Ya always lose with Fascism.
Prevent companies from lobbying Congress if they act like an international company and hire foreign workers over Americans: This is almost identical to allowing unions to raise campaign funds and lobby Congress and outlawing corporations from doing the same. Likely unconstitutional, and we know it drives corporations and jobs overseas faster.
Put extra taxes on foreign profits whether brought back to this country or not: And the foreign corporations simply close their American offices and never pay another dime in US taxes again, always a net loss for revenue.
Nope, MORE government interference and regulations will always fail at this point. The only hope is less government.
Are you near the Red Robin near the mall? I've heard they still offer a free meal for your birthday. Juliano's used to make the best pizzas, but we haven't been there since we moved away almost a decade ago.
Back then there was work at the aluminum mill, which was packed up and shipped to China and points east across the ocean. A multitude of jobs went bye-bye. Ditto the aluminum mills in Goldendale and The Dalles. Things got rocky at Oregon Steel Mills and there were layoffs there as well. Portland is now a haven for homeless people who travel up and down the west coast. Selling our house and moving far away was a Godsend then and remains so now.
“at the point of a gun?”
About what is happening to Boeing right now.
I live in Longview, WA.
The Reynolds Aluminum mill here shut down because they no longer could afford the electricity bills. So far, no one has established any kind of business to replace Reynolds.
I’ve been to a Red Robin restaurant once, never again.
Right, and Boeing will go overseas instead of South Carolina. One way.
“Simple solution, allow restaurant meals to be purchased with EBT cards, 45 million potential new customers. “
10:1 we see that soon. The welfare class has been excluded from enjoying the same luxuries as middle America for too long.
Normally, I don’t eat out but I was tired and made the mistake of going to Sonic to get their brown bag special for our lunch today. Well, they don’t have brown bag specials (2 burgers/2 sides/2 drinks) anymore so you have to order everything separately which costs more. So, I got two regular burgers and two large choc shakes. Not only are they charging more but their large shakes are now smaller than their medium sized ones were. Two burgers that looked like someone sat on them and two shakes came to $13! Because it was cheaper, I came home and put some cheese and jalapenos on the burgers just to perk them up and make us feel like we were getting more for the buck (not, whatever).
Bobcat moved its manufacturing plants to China BECAUSE that is where they sell most of their products. The shipping cost were becoming astronomical.
It makes sense to me and I hold no grudge against them for that.
Looks like California is already there:
“The Restaurant Meals Program allows homeless, elderly (age 60 or over), and disabled CalFresh individuals to use CalFresh benefits to purchase prepared meals using Golden State Advantage (EBT) card at participating restaurants.”
http://www.ladpss.org/dpss/restaurant_meals/RMP_FAQ.cfm
Olive Garden near where I live was great when it first opened. They had a bunch of really nice college kids working there and it had good food and service.
The next time I went there, it had a new Hispanic manager who only had Hispanic wait staff, hostesses, bar tenders and don’t know who cooked the food, but it was bad. We have not been back since and we eat out at least twice a week.
The restaurant biz is pretty ruthless. Over time, lousy ones generally fail, both franchises and local one-offs.
Yes....a salami sandwich and Gatoraide....total cost like 3 bucks.
Wendys is great, but who can afford to go there. Dennys wait-staff is like a methodone clinic work release.
There is a little diner I go to for breakfast. Four scrambled eggs, 8 strips of bacon, homefries and english muffin. Cost: 8 bucks plus tip. Fills me up for the rest of the day.
Yep, that's true - but Ruth's has always had high prices. It used to be that the business lunch crowd was their primary clientele, but now they've got to depend on dinner guests as well to turn a profit... and the dinner guests are voting with their wallets.
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