Buffalo Wild Wings: Serving Up Sizzling Profits

In 1964, so the story goes, Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y., whipped up a late-night snack of deep-fried chicken wings for her son, Dominic, and his friends. She split and deep fried some chicken wings (discarding the “flapper”), glazed them with her own original recipe hot sauce and served them up with blue-cheese dressing and a garnish of fresh celery, and, as they say, the rest is history.

The proprietor-chef unknowingly invented what would become the ultimate bar food and mass-market American snack that remains a hit to this day at bars, wing joints and restaurants throughout the country.

One enterprise born out of the rising popularity of the wing dish is Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. (Nasdaq: BWLD). An instant success since virtually the day it opened its first location in 1982 near The Ohio State University campus, the company went public in 2003 and its seemingly-perfect combination of wings, beer and sports has made it one of the top 10 fastest growing restaurant chains in the country.

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The German Economic Rifle: Shooting Back After 10 Years…

The Small Microeconomic Example

Talk about a come back…  I think it is safe to say that the post-reunification hangover has subsided.  

Here is a good example, on the microeconomic scale -  Frank Lungen runs an employment agency in Rosslau, a town located in East Germany.  At the start of 2006, his company had roughly 500 job openings on the books.  By the end of the year the company had over 1,000 jobs to fill.  It’s a simple example, but it shows that unemployment is low, jobs are coming in, and there just aren’t enough good people to go around.

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Chinese Cry…Google Gaps…Viad Vooms…

The Chinese government raised interest rates for the fifth straight time in 15 months after reporting that the annual growth rate had increased to 11.9% during the second quarter compared to 11.1% during the first quarter.

This turns out to be the fastest growth rate in 11 years for the Chinese. And let me tell you something – they don’t like it.  Hence the 0.27% increase in commercial banks’ benchmark one-year deposit and lending rate.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the Chinese economy is still on a tear of monumental proportions!!  So much so, that the government is having an extremely hard time controlling it. 

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