While IKEA products are intended by the company to only be assembled in the way their designers prescribe, that hasn’t stopped countless individuals from modifying and repurposing IKEA furniture to create something more useful, attractive, or idiosyncratic. Finally realizing that its designs aren’t sacrosanct — and that there is a lot of money to be made in their customization — IKEA is working on official “Hack” kits so that millions of customers can all make the same company-approved tweaks to their fiberboard furniture.
But rather than have you go online — perhaps to a website that IKEA tried to shut down — and get these ideas or dream one up yourself, IKEA wants to sell you a Hack kit that includes some extra parts for you to modify the FROSTA into a FROSTA with a canvas seat back.
It’s a good idea, from a business standpoint, as much of what the company would put into these kits are just going to be parts that it already has made. In addition to advertising on the showroom floor which products have Hack kits, IKEA will have a website featuring Hack concepts — and of course selling kits — in the hopes of getting people with IKEA furniture already in their homes to spend a little more to change things up.
But is this kit really a “hack”? To us, the idea of a furniture hack is to see new possibilities in a pile of laminate wood pieces and plastic-baggied bolts. While it’s nice to see IKEA encouraging customers to go beyond the drawing on the side of the box, the kit idea may just be giving them another set of diagrams and instructions to follow to assemble an IKEA-approved product.
If you’re one of the largest social media networks in the world and happen to have $1 billion burning a hole in your pocket, what do you do? If you’re Twitter, you apparently start talks to buy article-sharing app Flipboard.
Talks between the two social media networks reportedly began back in January, but are currently in a stalemate, Re/code reports, citing sources close to the situation.
Twitter CFO Antony Noto allegedly initiated the talks after the company began facing pressure from investors to grow its audience and create new products.
Re/code reports that despite the apparently stalled nature of the talks, even entertaining an acquisition shows Twitter’s desire to continue evolving. The two companies are already in a partnership in which Twitter’s prmoted Tweets are syndicated to the article-sharing network.
While Twitter likely won’t see a significant jump in users if the deal goes through – mainly because there seems to be a large overlap in the networks’ users – it could benefit from Flipboard’s product team, including well-known entrepreneur and Flipboard co-founder Mike McCue.
According to Re/code, McCue was previously a Twitter board member but stepped down after growing competition between that network and Flipboard.
Still, Flipboard brings its own growing set of issues. While the company previously boasted 100 million “activated” users, Re/code reports those numbers have leveled off since the company’s app no longer comes automatically downloaded to Samsung phones.
Additionally, the company has failed to find a foothold when it comes to selling ads, instead engaging in a number of experiments such as video ads and “promoted items.”
As many consumers move along with the trend toward products made without additives, preservatives, or genetically modified organisms, the maker of Similac Advance says it’ll be selling a GMO-free version of the product by the end of the month.
Abbott says it’ll first offer the non-GMO in Similac Advance, followed after by a GMO-less version of Similac Sensitive. If those go well, more GMO-free formulas could follow, reports the New York Times. The company already makes a GMO-free formula, as its Similac Organic does not contain any genetically altered ingredients.
Though consumer demand for products without GMOs has been on the rise, advocates say there is nothing harmful in genetically altered ingredients.
But what the people want, the people get.
“We listen to moms and dads, and they’ve told us they want a non-G.M.O. option,” Chris Calamari, general manager of Abbott’s pediatric nutrition business told the NYT. “We want to make sure we meet the desires of parents.”
This will be the first mainstream formula offered without GMOs. Most versions on the market contain corn and soy derivatives, more than 90% of which are grown from genetically altered seeds, reports the NYT.
Though consumers have launched campaigns to urge baby formula makers to sell products without GMOs in the past, the company says the new product has nothing to do with that push. Instead, the company made that decision for itself by doing research.
“Over one-third of consumers say it would have appeal to them and give them peace of mind,” Calamari told the NYT.
Abbott joins a growing list of companies who’ve made shifts toward GMO-free products or those made without artificial flavors and preservatives, including Chipotle, Panera Bread and just today, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.
Last year, we began to question reality when we learned that Burger King was offering hot dogs and hamburgers for breakfast. We came to accept this over time: after all, what makes a valid breakfast varies by culture and from one person to another. Yet Burger King is now testing non-breakfast hot dogs here in the United States for some reason.
Here at Consumerist, we respect the humble hot dog, but the addition of hot dogs to the Burger King menu is an interesting experiment.
They’re currently being tested in Michigan and Maryland, though we can’t tell you exactly which towns you can find them in. The corn dogs cost $1.49 each, and the grilled hot dogs (which apparently “grilled” in the same way as Burger King’s burgers) topped with ketchup, mustard, onions, and relish cost $1.99 each. You can probably ask to have any of these elements left off, because ketchup on hot dogs is an abomination.
One Twitter user pulls all of these themes of breakfast and hot dogs together:
Just tried a hot dog on my break. Idk what's worst– Eating a hot dog at 9am or the fact Burger King has hot dogs🙊
It’s always admirable when someone accomplishes a feat that to the average person appears well, a bit dizzying, and an 82-year-old roller coaster devotee’s recent accomplishment is no different: He celebrated his 5,000th ride on a historic wooden roller coaster in Pennsylvania, completing 95 of those trips in one day over the weekend.
Sitting for more than eight hours straight, the man hit the big milestone on the Jack Rabbit at Kennywood in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Mifflin, reports the Associated Press. He chose to ride 95 times to honor the coaster’s 95th birthday this season.
“I feel great!” said the man, who’s retired from the wholesale grocery business but is a local actor. “I made sure to move my legs throughout the day to keep from getting stiff after sitting so long.”
He’s been riding the world’s fifth-oldest coaster — built in 1920 — since he moved to Pittsburgh in 1959.
To prepare for his dippy day, he drank and ate very little ahead of time since he didn’t want to take a bathroom break. Fans and friends offered him water in between trips, and a paramedic was on hand, just in case. At the end of the day, he walked off unassisted except by his cane, a rep for the park said.
His best tip for others who love riding the twisty, turny rails? Pick the fifth seat in the train, as he says it provides a smoother ride, in the middle away from the wheels.
“If you’re gonna ride over the wheels for a length of time, you’re gonna hurt,” he said.
Does a fast food chain by any other name smell as… burger-like? Even though Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s now share (almost) the same menu, the same graphic design elements in their branding, and the same parent company, they still retain their original names and there is virtually no geographic overlap of the two brands. While the only significant difference between Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s might be their names, for more than 30 years the two companies were worlds apart.
Before CKE Restaurants Inc. brought the companies together in the late ’90s, Carl Karcher and Wilber Hardee dreamed and cultivated their respectives fast food dynasties in different eras for varying reasons and on separate coasts.
Carl’s Jr.: From A Hot Dog Cart To Dotting The West Coast
Starting on the Pacific coast in 1941 – nearly 20 years before future brother-company Hardee’s – Carl and Margaret Karcher borrowed $311 against their car. Together with the $15 they had in savings, the couple spent $325 to enter the fast food business with the purchase of a hot dog cart.
Soon after, business began to outpace the capacity of the single cart operating in Anaheim, CA, and the Karcher’s opened three additional carts.
Not quite five years after the cart first opened for business, in 1945, the first stand-alone restaurant – called Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque – opened in Anaheim.
Business soared at Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque following World War II, but a new hamburger joint was booming not far away. With the rise of McDonald’s, Karcher knew he needed to revamp his business plans to keep up with the competition.
By 1956, Karcher had opened the first two Carl’s Jr. restaurants, a smaller version of the company’s original drive-in. Starting in the 1960s, the new restaurants featured quick serve hamburgers, table service, music and the now iconic bright yellow five-pointed Happy Star.
The new Carl’s Jr. also featured a first, according to CKE: a drive-thru window.
In 1964, Carl incorporated into Carl Karcher Enterprises (CKE Restaurants) and continued to build his brand. But with other fast food brands in Southern California, like McDonald’s and Taco Bell, gaining popularity, Karcher began looking to new ventures.
According to Fast Food Nation, Karcher opened several Carl’s Whistle Stops, a railway-themed restaurant, featuring employees dressed as railroad workers, and electric trains shuttling orders to the kitchen. By 1966, the three restaurants were converted to Carl’s Jr. locations.
Another brand from Karcher failed to catch on, the Scot’s coffee shops, where servers wore plaid skirts.
While those ventures couldn’t find an audience, Carl’s Jr. restaurants continued popping up along the coast of California, and by 1976 Karcher Enterprises owned one of the largest fast food chains in the U.S., employing more than 5,000 employees.
The 1980s brought much change to the chain, with higher priced meals and expansions into new states, a move made possible by the company’s first franchisees.
Not long after, Carl’s Jr. began duel branding restaurants with quick-service Mexican food company Green Burrito. But the company’s biggest expansion wouldn’t come until the late ’90s.
Hardee’s: Charring The Competition On The East Coast
While Carl Karcher was in the midst of building his empire in California, Wilber Hardee’s dream of a fast food empire was just beginning in Greenville, NC, in 1960.
Hardee had already opened and operated a series of restaurants and inns, including the Do Drop Inn and Silo Restaurant, in the Greenville area, when he got the idea for a quick-serve burger joint after visiting the state’s first McDonald’s.
“What impressed me was, I set out in front there and saw they took in $168 in one hour,” Hardee told author Jerry Bledsoe. “That was big money then… on 15-cent hamburgers.”
Soon he was able to construct a smaller version of the McDonald’s restaurant that he called Hardee’s Drive-In. The new stores were identifiable by their hexagonal designs.
To further set himself apart from the competition, Hardee used char-grills to give his burgers more flavor, and soon the “charco-broiled” burgers became the hottest item was the restaurant’s quick service menu.
Months after the first location opened, two entrepreneurs, Leonard Rawls and Jim Gardner, approached Hardee about a partnership to create Hardee’s Drive-Ins, Inc., according to the North Carolina History Project.
While the new concept quickly caught on and the partners looked to expand from their first location, Wilber Hardee made the decision to leave the partnership, and sold his half of the company to Rawls and Gardner.
While there are varying stories about why Hardee stepped away from his growing fast food empire, he told Our State magazine that ““I was stupid. That’s what I was. You know how it is — you make mistakes.”
Hardee went on to try his hand at a few other food industry ventures, while the company that bore his name continued to gain popularity.
At the end of the ’60s, the company incorporated into Hardee’s Food Systems and successfully began franchising the restaurant. In all, the corporation operated nearly 200 restaurants in the Midwest and Southwestern U.S., as well as its first international locations in Germany.
The ’70s brought more change for the chain, with the introduction of “made from scratch” biscuits and the opening of the 1,000th restaurant.
With more than 2,500 locations in the Midwest, South and East Coast regions, Hardee’s was a prime target for purchase, and that’s what happened in 1997 when CKE Restaurants came knocking.
According to a WRLA-TV report from 1997, CKE Restaurants paid $327 million for Hardee’s — by then the fourth-largest fast food chain in the nation.
The combination, which made Hardee’s a subsidiary of CKE, was a mutually beneficial deal, giving Carl’s Jr. a better breakfast menu, while strengthening Hardee’s lunch and dinner fare.
In all, the merger crated a chain with 3,828 restaurants, of which 3,152 were Hardee’s and 676 were Carl’s Jr locations, mostly located in California.
Over the next several years, many Hardee’s restaurants were converted to Carl’s Jr., while some other locations were closed for an array of reasons including dwindling sales.
The evolution of the chains continued into the 2000s. Hardee’s added Thickburgers and all the stores adopted what is now known as Star Hardee’s, a take on Happy Star.
A map shows the locations of Hardee’s (red) and Carl’s Jr. (yellow) locations around the country. wikipedia user Gage
While the two fast food joints are clearly related in their branding, their menus continue to showcase their differences. For example, Hardee’s doesn’t serve salads, while Carl’s Jr. has the leafy greens on its menu.
But maybe the biggest difference between the chains is their location.
Carl’s Jr. continues to be located on the West Coast and Southwest states, serving more urban areas, while Hardee’s maintains residency in the Midwest, Southeast and now the Mid-Atlantic, focused on serving less densely populated areas in those regions.
According to the Tumblr maysbynik, the two brands generally keep a fair amount of distance between their locations. The closest they come is about 30 miles apart in the area around Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Today, CKE reports that the Carls Jr./Hardee’s brands employ more than 30,000 workers at 3,036 locations in 43 states an in 13 countries. Of those locations Hardee’s continues to have the upper hand with nearly 1,915 locations, while Carl’s Jr. operates 1,121 stores.
General Motors might be able to wriggle out of class action fraud lawsuits over the long-ignored ignition defect in multiple vehicles that ultimately killed more than 100 people, but the company could still face criminal charges from federal prosecutors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Dept. of Justice is looking to bring criminal charges against the car company for allegedly making misstatements about the ignition switches in the Chevy Cobalt, Saturn Ion and other vehicles.
The exact charges that might be filed are still up in the air, as is the issue of whether GM will go along with a guilty plea, or perhaps a deferred-prosecution deal. Either result would also result in a sizable settlement payment, which is another issue to be sorted out, but would likely be north of $1 billion.
There is also the issue of whether to bring charges against individual employees of GM. Some at the company knew before the affected cars even went into production that there was a problem with the ignition switch. It could be inadvertently turned into the “Off” position by a heavy keychain or if the driver’s knee came into contact with the switch.
If the switch is turned off, the driver loses control of the power steering and braking, making it difficult to operate the vehicle. Additionally, the airbags will not deploy.
Engineers at GM eventually fixed the issue with a revised switch. However, no recall was initiated so all the old cars on the road continued to be operated with the defective ignition. Additionally, the new switch had the identical part number to the faulty one, so the inventory of replacement ignition switches contained both the old and new switches.
In early 2014 — more than a decade after the problem came to light and around 7 years after the fix to the switch’s design was implemented — GM finally got around to initiating recalls totaling around 2.6 million vehicles.
Initially, the company only acknowledged 13 fatalities tied to the defect. However, GM was limiting this figure by only counting deaths that had occurred in the front seats of recalled vehicles where the airbags didn’t deploy and the ignition had been switched off. The car maker did not include rear seat passengers in these cars; victims in other cars who were killed as a result of a crash caused by an affected GM vehicles; or pedestrians struck by a recalled GM car.
GM eventually set up a compensation fund that received thousands of injury and death claims believed to be related to this recall. While the fund has not finished reviewing all claims, it has already acknowledged more than 100 fatalities as a result.
The auto industry had long avoided criminal prosecutions related to defects, but federal prosecutors recently began making it clear that industry is not immune from criminal charges.
