Apr 2013 Financial News

KFC, Subway need 450 workers

Apr 09, 2013

THE fast food industry in TT has been hit by a shortage of workers, lamented Christian Mouttet, chairman of Prestige Holdings Limited which operates KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut and TGI Fridays restaurants.

His complaint came in the Chairman’s Report to Shareholders for the Statement of the Consolidated Unaudited Results for the Three Months Ending February 28, 2013, dated April 3 and recently published in the press.

“Labour remains the single largest challenge facing our business and the industry,” said Mouttet. He said many other industries in Trinidad and Tobago such as security, construction and manufacturing are faced with the same challenges. “We struggle to find sufficient employees at all levels for our restaurants and are plagued with chronic absenteeism,” he bemoaned. “Numerous initiatives over the last few years to combat these two problems have amounted to naught.”

He said the company’s labour woes are worse today than six years ago.

“To be more direct we have available positions for 450 permanent employees for our KFC and Subway brands alone,” Mouttet said. He called for State help.

“While we continue to seek ways to address this ongoing problem, ultimately a truly effective and lasting solution can only be achieved if there is recognition by the State of the crisis that our industry and other industries are in (and the debilitating effect it is having on economic growth and investment activity) and a collaborative effort by both public and private sectors to find a solution, quickly,” he said.

Mouttet praised those workers who continue to show up daily “with pride in their voices and smiles of their faces” ready to serve customers despite challenges especially under-staffing. “I would like to recognise and thank them for their dedication, loyalty and hard work,” he said. Mouttet also thanked customers for their patience and loyalty despite sometime facing long-lines and delayed deliveries.

Despite these woes, Prestige presented a healthy balance sheet for last year and the first three months of this year.

Last year, Prestige’s restaurants — KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut and TGI Fridays — together sold food and drink worth some $856 million. After costs, this gave a net profit last year of $41 million.

The first three months of this year has seen the Prestige restaurants increase their net profit by a quarter compared to the same period last year. This year so far, Prestige Holdings has made a net profit of $9.6 million earned from a revenue of $216 million in sales, up from a net profit for the same three months last year of $7.7 million earned from a revenue of $215 million. The firm has a share capital of $21 million, and assets of $448 million (equal to its equity and liabilities).

In his report Mouttet said the first three months of this year had seen a one percent rise in group revenue, with profit to shareholders rising by 25 percent.

A quick reading of the report shows that the big jump in shareholder profit was probably due to cuts in the operating costs, such as slashing $2.3 million from the cost of sales, and cutting $1.5 million from administrative costs. “Earnings per share were 16 cents compared with 13 cents for the same period in 2012. These results were generated from an average number of 108 restaurants,” Mouttet said. He noted that a KFC restaurant was recently opened in El Dorado.

While saying all Prestige’s brands had done well in TT, the same was not true for elsewhere. “Our two TGI Fridays restaurants in Jamaica and Barbados continue to struggle in those economically depressed markets and performed below our expectations and prior year.”


Source:
By SEAN DOUGLAS
Newsday
Tuesday April 9 2013

http://www.newsday.co.tt/business/0,176004.html