A news sampler

My cubicle usually makes FEMA's newsletter two or three times a year. Mentions like, "Congratulations to Joe Smith in Dispatch for scaling Mount Everest this summer. What’s next, Joe, cleaning Romeo’s desk???” And there was that discovery of a condor colony during a routine bulldozing of the guest-chair area in ’06.

It’s not that I prefer the post-cyclone look of my workspace, despite its likelihood of being the next “Survivor” setting. I just can’t bring myself to bury news tidbits in files that defy easy labeling. I prefer to maintain a desktop Miscellaneous mound, so I can savor informational details that would otherwise be lost. Consider, for instance, these gold flakes in the recent stream of news.

Wal-Mart wants your pizza business. During primetime Olympics coverage, the retailing bully aired a commercial that should’ve had pizza chains sweating like Chinese gymnasts being asked for proof of age. The spot explains that ordering a pizza from a restaurant usually costs about $14, while bringing home a take-and-bake pie from Wal-Mart will set a family back just $8. “If your family eats pizza once a week, you could save $312 a year,” the voice-over explains. Better push those pastas, Pizza Hut.

Little burgers are now Chili’s biggest. Big Mouth Bites, Chili’s version of the mini-sandwiches that competitors of all stripes seem to be sporting these days, are now the chain’s best selling burgers, according to officials of parent Brinker International.

McCormick & Schmick take a different group-business tack. Everyone targets local businesses for catering and party business. M&S is trying the different path of pursuing companies on a national basis. The high-end seafood chain is reaching out to corporate accounts that are planning road shows to hawk their wares or services. The restaurant company offers those road warriors the ease of setting up the feeding operations of the whole tour with just one call to a centralized sales and support center.

Cheesecake Factory isn’t alone in trying delivery. BJ’s Restaurants, the high-volume chain headed by Cheesecake alumnus Jerry Deitchle, is already offering the service at 71 of its 75 casual-dining restaurants, according to executives. If it’s indeed blazing a path for Cheesecake, the latter may soon be seen walking the aisles at BestBuy. BJ’s is also upgrading its TVs to flat-screen models.

Outback’s parent sells its plane to familiar parties. As it was losing $176 million during the second quarter, OSI Restaurant Partners decided it was time to thin out its fleet of aircraft. It sold one on July 1 for $8.1 million to a company called Billabong Air II Inc., which happened to be owned by two of the company’s founders, co-owners and executives, according to securities documents. That’s not to say other residents of the executive floor will always have to fly commercial. As part of the deal, Billabong agreed to let OSI lease the plane for up to 200 hours a year, at a cost of $2,500 per hour. Blankets and pillows were apparently not part of the deal.

There are probably far more tidbits I could share with you, but there's movement under the pile of papers near my keyboard, and it could be something alive. Unfortunately, that’s also where I left the number of Animal Control.

Where have you gone, Joe Lee?

Casual dining has never needed Joe Lee as much as it has in the last few weeks.

It’s not as if the former Darden Restaurants CEO has some superhero ability to yank the sector, a market he helped to create, out of its current blues jam. But his 40 years or so in the business gave him a perspective, a wise-man-on-the-mountain sagacity, that most of today’s standout executives have yet to cultivate. They stand in front of shareholders, analysts or employees and spout assurances the company’s recovery plan will work. After all, they somberly assert, we have the best concept, the best people, the best food, the best investors, the best corporate mission statement.

Yet they seem more than a little shaken themselves. You expect some to reach inside their suit-jacket pocket, take a quick nip from a flask, and resume with the platitudes.

Joe, as proper a man as ever worked in the industry, would stand up there and draw his share of arrows from financial analysts who wanted better returns for their institutional customers. Yet even during the most blistering times, he would calmly explain that the sector was in a downturn, that it’s been in downturns before, and that it’ll be in downturns again. He’d seen it two or three times in his career, and each time casual dining snapped back to be stronger than ever.

No one in the room could doubt it because most of them hadn’t lived as long as Joe had run the New York Yankees of casual dining. This was the guy who managed the first Red Lobster, back before there was a T.G.I. Friday’s, a Chili’s, an Applebee’s, an Outback or a Ruby Tuesday. And who could challenge a man who’d left the market only once since then, to work at the top of Red Lobster’s then-parent, a little multinational called General Mills.

The footnotes to his message were clear: There’s no need to cash out to a private equity firm, jump to a new market position, clean out your “C”-level officers, fire the ad agency, or even rewrite the mission statement. Instead, execute well, seize the opportunities that may be afforded by the players who fail to executive well, and ride it out.

No doubt the current freefall in casual dining is going to eliminate some weaker brands. But the sector as a whole?

Tell ‘em, Joe.