The 90-hour weeks part?
The fact that he was doing it for a fossil fuel company?
The fact that he’s worth fucking $9.5 billion?
Also, not in the headline, but-
The fact that he did it back in the 90s when you could actually successfully open a small business and make money from it as if it’s relevant today?
The business is a franchise called Raising Caine’s Chicken, which I’ve never had, but if you go by Yelp reviews, it’s either the best restaurant that has ever existed or pretty mediocre.
Also, Wikipedia says very little about his early life, but apparently his parents could afford to send him to a private catholic school, so he didn’t exactly grow up improverished.
The fact that he was doing it for a fossil fuel company?
Well the oil field is one of Louisiana major industries that pays well and depending on your job doesn’t require a college education to get into.
The 90-hour weeks part?
Sounds horrible if you aren’t used to the oil field but he was probably working a rotation like 2 weeks on/1weeks off or 2 on/2off, 4on/4off etc.
The business is a franchise called Raising Cane’s Chicken, which I’ve never had, but if you go by Yelp reviews, it’s either the best restaurant that has ever existed or pretty mediocre.
It’s pretty decent fried chicken, even though the chicken fingers have shrunk over the years and price increased. Fries and texas toast are okay, Cane’s sauce (basically crawfish dipping sauce) is what kicks it up a notch.
Finally tried it last week on my trip to Vegas. I was underwhelmed to say the least. Chick fil A nuggets/ tenders are better.
3/4 cup real mayonnaise
3 Tablespoons ketchup
5 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce* (1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons)
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Pinch celery salt
Shit’s good on burgers and chicken sandwiches as well.
i mean i guess it depends which hot sauce
Personally I use Louisiana Hot Sauce, cause he started in Louisiana and they put that shit and Worcestershire sauce in practically everything.
I will check my wall I am embarrassed to say I don’t think I have that one.
Raising Caine’s chicken is like, OK I guess but I never go there because of a few things
- They literally just sell chicken tenders primarily, I’m not kidding
- They refuse to give you BBQ sauce, they only have “caines sauce” which I don’t enjoy.
So I don’t go there even if I want chicken tenders.
I owned my own business with employees twice. I’ve faced decisions where I needed to screw over people to grow my business or make more money. “I owned my own business…”
It is not hard to make a fortune. You just need to be a psychopath in a way that threads all the legal loopholes and only hurt people that are beneath your super secret caste rank we’re never supposed to admit is a thing.
It starts by making your first million in reserve by becoming a slumlord. Then you can afford to use the legal system to bankrupt smaller fish while avoiding larger predators. From then on, you just need to continue to cannibalized as much as possible. Eating big fish is dangerous. Large filter feeders that kill hundreds of thousands of average people are the safest bet. Also, fund the right political party that maintains open loopholes that are easy to exploit and protect their biggest whales, and turn a blind eye to cannibal fish, while selling idiot krill whatever mysticism nonsense they are willing to buy. It is not hard. Just be a terrible human being. I failed when I tried, but my apprentice at the time still has his house to this day.
The fact that it pays to be an awful person shows that there is just something fundamentally wrong with our society. Possibly our species.
I mean the human species is a virus
Terms of service are slavery contracts that presume all persons possess the means to process and competently understand the choices they make. The acceptance of these agreements is the legal forfeiture of citizenship and democracy. This is the simplified core issue of present Western society. Ultimately, people have proven that they will sell democracy and citizenship to anyone willing to create digital novelties. This has normalized and funded exploitation and the US party of open legislative loopholes for criminals.
Seems like a stretch unless you fundamentally understand the implications against the third pillar of democracy—freedom of information required for an informed public. Informational determinism is a cornerstone of democracy. This cornerstone is missing and the house of cards is falling as a result. Most of our present issues boil down to this one problem either directly or indirectly.
I would say society, due to having money being displayed as success and intelligence by a lot of major news sources, regardless of the process by which they make/obtain that money.
Sure, but also think of all the horrible people throughout history that clawed their way to power and ruled both ruthlessly and successfully.
I would blame that on outliers and survivorship bias. We don’t exactly care about the 100,000’s of years of relatively peaceful human history. There’s a reason “may you live in interesting times,” is a curse. We live in interesting times.
My Google news feed thing on my phone constantly has these bullshit side hustle articles. I hate everything about them
Ironically, Citizen Kane has a relevant line: “It’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.”
This dude talks about passing his values on to his kids who are in the business, I shudder to think what his actual values are.
Well, considering the character is said to have been based on William Randolph Hearst, you’re probably quite right to be concerned.
Could you organize your business into a worker co-op instead of following the example of successful psychopaths?
I don’t think so in general.
My personal business was just auto body and a very niche segment within that.
I’ve also worked for mixed ownership. They tend to fail because someone must sign for the credit required to run the business. Eventually this person holds leverage. People change, and nearly all humans are corruptible.
It is hard to run a business, like when I was the buyer for a chain of bike shops. I spent nearly 3 million dollars on preseason orders. If I got that wrong, the business is going under. A lot of that money is credit from the manufacturers. The way it works is that manufacturers have no idea how much of whatever they need to make and warehouse. Buyers know the local market, store demographics, and core customer base. They can make reasonable predictions about what will sell and how. Mind you, I needed to know absolutely every detail about new products and changes in the market with each season, but at the time I rode everywhere by bike, I raced, and I did downhill enduro for fun. I went to interbike and a bunch of demo days for brands. I effectively took over for the owners because I did my homework and backed up every decision with statistical sales history in each store. However, one of the owners had undersigned his house and that turned into leverage and a problem. We were struggling to finance and open a new store when I was nearly killed ten years ago riding to work and got hit by a driver badly. That lead to a cascade of problems that closed all of the stores a few years later.
Personally, I see group dynamics as a potential problem in most cases. The best I ever had it was when I worked completely by myself. Owning a business sucks though unless you have the money to deal with the ups and downs. Only a fool likes at or near paycheck to paycheck when they own a business. I wouldn’t consider anything for a business now unless I can generate more than 15% extra money after paying everyone including myself. If you can’t put money back into the business, you’re going to fail within a few years
Think the problem is you’ll get obliterated from the market by the psychopaths.
ever seen Ocean Spray in the supermarket?
There are quite a few co-ops that compete and not owing a dividend to private equity is actually a pretty big competitive advantage.
Raising Canes - “if you don’t like our 1 sauce flavor tough shit!”
Yeah, I looked at the menu and it seemed surprisingly limited, especially for a fast food chain.
Here it is:
That’s their entire menu.
Culver’s: We have all food ever created for sale right now on our 80-page menu. Have fun at our drive-through.
Raising Cane’s: Fuck you, you have five options and all of them are chicken fingers.
Cane’s is/was being smart here. One of the biggest issues that a startup restaurant can have is attempting to carry “everything.” Do one or two things really really well, and have some extras that require basically no prep. This also helps reduce cleanup later.
It’s not a startup at this point.
No, but when they were a startup, that was certainly a consideration. As for now, well, why change a formula that clearly works?
Aren’t companies generally supposed to diversify in order to grow past a certain size? I mean obviously it worked out, but I thought that was the rule of thumb.
I have yet to see an example of a business diversifying and not getting worse. Find one thing you’re good at and do it well. Leave other things to other businesses.
Diversification can be done on the back end of the business, doesn’t need to be customer facing. I’m certain that the founder has a healthy stock portfolio with his net worth.
I’ll take small menu ordering every time. If we’re all getting the same thing and the choice is quantity, it’ll likely be fresh.
Yeah but it’s literally one thing. Chicken fingers. They better be damn good chicken fingers. And I find that hard to imagine.
Please remember it’s fast food. Are the chicken fingers amazing? No but they are good enough so that they are amazing with the sauce. Everything on the menu is just different textures for shoveling more sauce into your face.
Well you better like their sauce because, as was said above, you only get one choice there too.
Kind of feels like this classic SNL sketch… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJePACBoIo
It’s a pretty good sauce. Here’s the recipe as close as I can tell.
3/4 cup real mayonnaise
3 Tablespoons ketchup
5 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce* (1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons)
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Pinch celery salt
It’s also good on burgers, sandwiches, and fried seafood.
They are not.
Cane’s is pretty dammed good for chicken. Always freshly cooked.
All catholic schools in the USA are private. That doesn’t meant the kids at them are privileged economically. There’s lots of working class families that scrounge and save to afford them and poor people that go tuition-free.
I ate it once out in Phoenix, it was fine. I wouldn’t say it was better than Zaxby’s, and I never think, man I really want that to either.
Orlando got something called PDQ(spelling?), and that I actually would like to try again. Don’t live there though.
I went to catholic school till 8th grade. Its pretty cheap for indocrination purposes till then. Catholic high school get pricey. I certainly would have stopped after 2 mil.
This is the school- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal_School_of_Baton_Rouge
Current tuition is $20,000 a year for high school- and he went in high school- and I doubt (accounting for inflation) that it was so much more affordable when he was a kid that poor kids could go.
But who knows? Maybe he got a scholarship. Considering he got loans from friends according to the article, I doubt it.
