Going global: Raising Cane’s founder and CEO Todd Graves will travel to the Middle East next week to participate in the grand opening ceremonies for the restaurant’s first international location. The restaurant in Kuwait opened this past Saturday in one of the world’s largest shopping malls, The Avenues, but grand opening festivities aren’t scheduled until next week. The Baton Rouge-based chicken finger chain has more than 230 restaurants across the United States. It has partnered with Kuwait-based franchise operator M.H. Alshaya Co. to open its first international restaurant, which will employ 48 and accept currencies from nine countries.
The next venture: Duck Dynasty fans will soon be able to sample family matriarch “Miss Kay” Robertson’s famous recipes for themselves in a bakery she and oldest son, Alan, are opening in West Monroe. “It’s been a dream of mine my whole life,” Miss Kay tells Gannett Louisiana. Miss Kay’s Sweets and Eats will be located next door to son Willie Robertson’s Willie’s Duck Diner on Constitution Drive in a 4,400-square-foot store owned by Monroe developer Eddie Hakim. Among the treats for which Miss Kay is most famous: coconut cream and chocolate pies, and bread and banana puddings. “We’ll probably make miniature versions,” she says. Read the full story.
From boom to bust: A wave of bankruptcies and closures is sweeping across the oil patch, with dozens of hydraulic-fracturing companies at risk, industry experts tell The Wall Street Journal. Most of the companies that help oil-and-gas explorers drill and frack wells are small, privately owned and just a few years old. They are part of a flood of new entrants in the energy business—one that is drying up as oil prices languish below $50 a barrel. At least five frackers have filed for bankruptcy, stopped fracking, or shut their doors altogether, according to consulting firm IHS Energy. Other analysts say that number may be higher, and they expect many more companies to follow suit or consolidate in a merger frenzy. Read the full story (subscription may be required).
