Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sometimes franchisers launch a company simply by making an old product better. In 1982 Ted Rice, a Kansas City TV cameraman, brought home a cinnamon roll he had bought from a vendor and asked his wife Joyce, a schoolteacher, if she could make a tastier one. After she came up with a delicious specimen topped with streusel and a thin layer of vanilla icing, they tried selling her rolls at state fairs and arts-and-crafts shows. When long lines started to form, they knew they had a hit. The Rices opened their first T.J. Cinnamons shop in Kansas City...
...future are being nurtured in a rapidly growing nationwide network of comedy clubs. A few big-city night spots, like New York's Improvisation (sister club of the Los Angeles version) and Los Angeles' Comedy Store, have for years served as a proving ground for young comics, helping launch the careers of Robin Williams, Joe Piscopo, David Letterman and dozens more. Now clubs with names like the Punch Line, Laff Stop and Funny Bone are spreading the yuks everywhere from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Ozark, Ala. At least 260 full-time comedy clubs -- ranging from posh nighteries like New York...
...weaponry, including .50- cal. machine guns, AK-47 assault rifles and homemade mortars. But the arms dump was also salted with rusty rifles and shells the Tigers would probably never use. The final turn-in rate might be as low as 40%. In that case, the Indian army may launch operations to ferret out hidden weapons...
...managers thought they had stopped up the source of the malicious tale last month, when they settled a suit against a Reno-based distributor of Miller and Heineken whose employees were charged with spreading the story. But the rumor kept foaming up, which prompted Barton last week to launch a campaign to reassure customers in its 25-state sales region that no such contamination has ever been found...
...Clive Davis was ready for Whitney. Earlier, he had helped launch the careers of Janis Joplin, Barry Manilow and Billy Joel. Now he would steer Whitney Houston to middle-of-the-road music. Gerry Griffith, then Arista's A.- and-R. chief, had recommended Whitney to Davis and set up an audition. "Clive sat there poker-faced," recalls Flics. "He said thank you and left. The next day we got an enthusiastic offer." In 1983 Arista signed her, with a "key man" clause: if Davis leaves the company, Whitney can go with...