Jillian’s is FUN! Community Blog

Measuring your P-Mix

Working on a side project for Jake on how the new menu is working for us, I have been using our P-Mix to find out and this what I have found out for using our new menu for a year….

In one year, we have used 13,388 lbs. of ground beef we sold in burgers that is an equivalent of 2 school buses.

In one year, we have created 196 gallons of chili that is 20 full tanks of gas for an average car.

For the amount of burgers sold, we have sold 52,170 that is 26,085 feet of burgers if you were to line the burgers up side by side, which is almost the size of 3 golden gate bridges, 72 Rose Bowl Football fields and is the distance of 4.94 miles.
 

Jaime

Manchester’s Newest Addition

Manchester FINALLY has it’s newest additon!!  After being a week over due, Wendy finally sent me the word this morning that she was in labor….after many hours, I have finally heard from her.  She has a bouncing baby boy.  At this time, I don’t have any stats, and at the time of her text, they hadn’t chosen his name yet.  As soon as I know more, I’ll let everyone know.

CONGRATUALTIONS to Wendy and her husband!!

Melissa

1993 - Champaign IL

1993. Seems like a lifetime ago. In 1993 a young guy out of Arkansas named Bill Clinton assumed the presidency.  In 1993, the internet was only known to a few folks at universities and in government labs. In 1993 CDs were the rage. In 1993, gas was LESS than $2.00 per gallon. In 1993, VCRs were the only means to record and re-watch movies and TV shows. And in 1993 we opened a Jillian’s in Champaign ,IL. Many things have changed over the 15 years. CDs are no longer the primary way we get our music. VCRS are obsolete. Bill Clinton is an old guy now, and unfortunately -as of today - we have exited the Champaign market.

We had a great run of it over the 15 years. In fact, we pretty much owned the Southern end of town for most of this time. We served the entertainment needs of the University of Illinois, local residents, and many in the business community. In 1993 and for most of these past 15 years, the dowtown area of Champaign (about 1.5 miles north of us) was a blighted afterthought. A relic from the 50’s. Old storefronts sat vacant as retail had moved out to the suburbs to the north. Downtown Champaign had no reason to exist. But that changed about 2-3 years ago as local operators discovered that these old storefronts were perfect for bars, restaurants, nightclubs. During this time downtown Champaign experienced a resurgence. A new life. It’s actually a cool, hip fun place that people want to hang out in. And as this area exploded it slowly but surely sapped the life out of our business.

 The decision to close is never an easy one for us. Especially when we have so much history in a town. We evaluate all of our options. Should we re-invest. Should we re-locate. Should we change our entertainment offerings. But in this case every option we considered ran into the same issues. This is a very small market, and there have been a plethora of new competitors that have come in, splitting the market in ways that makes it too difficult to compete. Simply put the market isn’t big enough for all the players. And unfortunately for us, we are outpositioned geographically. We’re not easy to get to, and we don’t have enough parking. So we decided to close.

15 years is something to be proud of. Think about each of the markets we operate in and how many competitors have come and gone in the time we’ve been there. 15 years in our business is a lifetime. We are proud of what we brought to the Champaign market and we are grateful to the teammates who brough us the years of success in Champaign. We wish them all well. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. GS

Congratulations….

Team Seattle would like to congratulate our house pro - Joel Pritsch - the proud new father of Nolan John Pritsch. Nolan weighed in at 6 pounds, 14 ounces and is 20 inches tall. Mother and baby are both doing well.

Pictures to follow….

Akron

Sad news..yesterday we closed our Akron location.

I am enroute back to Louisville driving a truck filled with equipment but wanted to take a moment to touch on this decision.
I want to extend my sincere appreciation to team Akron. The mgmt team and the staff certainly were not happy with the decision, but they handled it exceedingly well, and many stuck around helping us wind down the location. This is a very good team, and the closing is not a reflection of them at all, rather, we are unfortunately located in a part of Akron that has slipped backwards over the 10 years we have been there. There simply is not enough business in the area for us to make a go of it any longer.
We have prolonged this decision for some time hoping that there were some things we could do to drive traffic, Kevin and his team worked very hard at this, but no matter what we tried it just didn’t work. This location has lost in excess of $100,000 so far this year, and was projected to lose over $30,000 per period for the next couple of periods…all with no obvious solution to turning this around….thus, we decided to close. Never an easy decision, but for the health of the entire company a very necessary decision.

I will touch on this more over the next few days when I return to my office, but wanted you all to hear it from me. I welcome any and all comments on this, feel free to post here on the blog, or if you care to discuss offline from our community you may either call me in the office, or email me at gstevens@jbchq.com.

Team Akron, Thank you for a wonderful run in your town. We will miss you as part of our family, and we wish all of you our best. GS

STARBRIDGE

To all JBC Team Members:

April is the month for STARBRIDGE open enrollment of benefits.  This is the one time per year you may elect to participate in this benefit regardless of your date of hire.  Simply call the Toll Free # 1-800-220-3635.  Benefits will go into effect in May.  Your General Manager has a STARBRIDGE flyer to explain the different levels.  The ’07 rates are as follows:

Continue reading STARBRIDGE…

401 (k) is on its WAY!

Hi folks! Well, it’s taken me longer than I wanted, but we finally have a 401 (k) plan. For those of you that are not aware what this is, it is a retirement plan. You can use PRE-TAX dollars (basically this lowers the amount of tax you have to pay to the government) to invest and your investment returns are TAX-FREE until you retire.

This plan will be open to all employees, and I strongly encourage everyone to find a way to put a little something into it. Even if you are in your teens or early 20’s you should find a way to put something in this plan. (for example, if you put only $500 per year ($10 per week) into the plan, you could have over $7,000 waiting for you years later.) This adds up really quick, and if you are diligent about it, you could have a lot of money available to you in your later years. 

Any time that the governement lets you use pre-tax dollars for stuff like this, you should take advantage of it. (I think of it this way, do I want to give it to the government, or do I want to use it for myself…I give the government more than enough, so I jump on opportunities like this)

 The plan will be managed for us by Merrill Lynch, and I’ve been working with them to select the investment options. They’ve come up with some really good mutual funds for us.

 Stay tuned for further details. I anticipate a formal rollout in May, with enrollment date of June 1.

Indy has joined the blog

Indy is looking forward to exploring the new world of blog!

Congrats to Jakes!

Core Media Group’s readers have voted Jake’s Billiards as the best place to play pool.. Core Media Groups represent 5 local newspapers that encompass all of San Gabriel Valley. This is the second year in a row that Jake’s has been honored.