Move over Netflix, Chick-fil-A is allegedly coming for your brand. And the internet can't stop talking about it.
The chain is reportedly "moving aggressively" into the entertainment space, working to launch a slate of originals to run on its very own streaming platform, Deadline reported.
Chick-fil-A is currently in talks with major production companies, including studios, "to create family-friendly shows, particularly in the unscripted space," according to Deadline. They also are planning to license and acquire content shortly, Deadline reported.
Multiple outlets have cited Deadline's report, with the news eventually making its way on social media platforms like X, where users have taken the opportunity to poke fun at the possibility of Chick-fil-A following through with the rumored venture.
The conversation on the platform has only just started, with users sharing reactions and creating memes about the rumor.
USA TODAY has reached out to Chick-fil-A for comment.
Here's what we're seeing online.
Internet reacts, shares memes about a Chick-fil-A streaming service
A lot of people were surprised when rumors about the chain's latest venture hit social media, using the opportunity to react, crack jokes, and even make predictions about the hypothetical streaming platform.
Others mocked the headlines while others called the news weird or crazy. Some questioned the fast-food chain's financial choices. And one clever user said what would it even be called? "Flick-fil-a?"
Facing competition from automakers with lower costs, Ford Motor Co. is shifting its electric vehicle strategy and now will focus on making two new electric pickup trucks and a new commercial van. The company says all will cost less, have a longer range, and be profitable before taxes within a year of reaching showrooms.
Ford, which is losing millions on its current EVs, gave few details about the new products. But it said production of its next-generation full-size electric pickup truck in Tennessee will be delayed 18 months, until 2027.
The company also says it won’t build fully electric three-row SUVs due to high battery costs, but instead will focus on making those vehicles as gas-electric hybrids.
The other new pickup will be mid-sized, based on new underpinnings developed by a small team in California. It also will go on sale in 2027. Production of the unspecified van will start at an assembly plant west of Cleveland in 2026.
The changes will force Ford to write down $400 million of its current assets for big electric SUVs, and it also expects to have additional expenses of up to $1.5 billion.
“We’re committed to creating long-term value by building a competitive and profitable business,” Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said in a statement.
The company also said it will cut capital spending on EVs. It now will spend 30% of its annual capital budget to develop them rather than the current 40%.
Ford, which has long been talking about making profitable EVs, lost $2.46 billion on them in the first half of the year, dragging down profits from its gas-powered and commercial units.
The company said in a prepared statement that the global EV market is changing rapidly, and it must evolve to compete with Chinese automakers that have lower production and engineering costs. At the same time, current buyers are more cost-conscious than early adopters, and automakers are introducing more EVs.
“These dynamics underscore the necessity of a globally competitive cost structure while being selective about customer and product segments to ensure profitable growth and capital efficiency,” the company said.
Ford also said it will build more commercial and consumer vehicles off of new, more affordable EV underpinnings. More details will be released at an event in the first half of next year.
Electric vehicle sales in the U.S., Ford’s most profitable market, are still growing but have slowed as more practical consumers worry about range and the ability to recharge while traveling. Market leader Tesla Inc. has cut prices, forcing others to follow.
U.S. electric vehicle sales overall rose about 7% during the first half of the year to 599,134, Motorintelligence.com reported. EVs accounted for 7.6% of the U.S. new vehicle market, about the same as it was for all of last year. Lease deals, which include federal tax credits, helped to boost sales.
Sales of gas-electric hybrids skyrocketed 35.3% from January through June to 715,768, eclipsing electric vehicle sales.
That was part of the reason Ford changed its strategy to go with hybrids on the big SUVs. Hybrids, the company said, have profitability that is similar to gas vehicles, which Ford will continue building.
Shares of Ford rose 2.1% in trading Wednesday.
Chick-fil-A is opening its first elevated drive-thru restaurant in the chain, the company announced Wednesday.
The restaurant, located at 2155 Jodeco Road in McDonough, Georgia, just south of Metro Atlanta, will begin serving customers on Thursday, Aug. 22, and is a first-of-its-kind restaurant for the popular fast food chain.
According to the company, the drive-thru-only restaurant features four drive-thru lanes and an elevated kitchen with a "unique meal transport system" described by the company as a "sophisticated conveyer belt" that streamlines food delivery by "quickly moving the meal from the elevated kitchen above to a Team Member on the ground below."
The kitchen is double the size of a typical Chick-fil-A restaurant kitchen and the conveyor belt allows for a meal to be delivered to a Team Member every six seconds, according to Chick-fil-A. There is no dining room or dine-in services at this restaurant, Chick-fil-A noted, but the four-lane drive-thru can support "two to three times more vehicles" than a standard Chick-fil-A restaurant drive-thru.
Two ways to get your meal
Chick-fil-A says the restaurant will provide two options for customers to get their meal:
They can order ahead on the Chick-fil-A app and pick up using the dedicated Mobile Thru lines
They can place their order with a Team Member in the traditional drive-thru lanes
"Our Guests lead busy lives, and we’re focused on designing our restaurants to best serve their needs,” said Jonathan Reed, Executive Director of Design for Chick-fil-A, Inc., in the news release.
"With the new Elevated Drive-Thru design, featuring our first four-lane drive-thru, we're aiming to deliver quality food and genuine hospitality in a way that’s uniquely Chick-fil-A, and gives our Guests time back in their day,” Reed added.
'Elevated drive-thru' is the second new type of restaurant to open this year for Chick-fil-A
The new drive-thru restaurant concept comes just a few months after Chick-fil-A opened its first-ever mobile pickup restaurant in New York City in March.
The mobile pickup restaurant, according to the company, aims to "cater to busy New Yorkers by focusing solely on delivery and mobile app ordering for a quick and easy pickup experience." It is located at 79th Street and 2nd Ave on the Upper East Side.
According to Chick-fil-A, the new restaurant concept begins when customers order ahead for delivery or carryout via the Chick-fil-A app or online. The restaurant will be alerted by geofencing when customers are on their way to expedite the process and ensure each meal is timed with the customer's arrival.
Inside the restaurant, there are active status board screens designated for delivery or mobile pickup, so customers and delivery drivers can see when their orders are ready in real-time.
Once the orders are ready, guests and delivery drivers receive their orders. While the restaurant will not offer a seating area or dine-in services, Chick-fil-A says the company's "signature hospitality is prominent in every step of this digital-focused experience."
In the first few days of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, experts told MarketWatch that her stances on taxes probably would closely resemble those of President Joe Biden.
One month into her campaign, it looks like that is indeed the case. Multiple published reports this week have said the Democratic presidential nominee supports the tax increases put forth in Biden’s most recent budget proposal, which came out in March.
The Biden budget called for new taxes on wealthy Americans, corporations, and business owners — including a controversial idea to tax unrealized capital gains as income for those with more than $100 million. An unrealized capital gain, also called a paper profit, refers to an increase in value for an asset that a person hasn’t sold yet, whether it’s a share in a business or a property.
Biden’s Treasury Department said it’s proposing “a minimum tax of 25 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million.”
Treasury officials offered their rationale for the proposed change, saying the country’s current approach with unrealized capital gains “disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle-income taxpayers.” They also said the current approach “exacerbates income and wealth disparities” and “produces an incentive for taxpayers to inefficiently lock in portfolios of assets and hold them primarily to avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation, rather than reinvest the capital in more economically productive investments.”
However, the proposed change that targets unrealized capital gains has drawn considerable criticism.
It’s “among the worst ideas in the Biden administration’s proposed budget,” said Siri Terjesen, a professor and associate dean at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business.
It would serve as a “kill switch” for entrepreneurship because it would end up “discouraging investment & draining capital,” she wrote. Terjesen’s comments came in social media posts last month and in an opinion column for the Daily Signal, a conservative website.
Republican politicians have blasted taxing unrealized capital gains, with Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake saying in a social-media post that it “would cripple innovation & economic growth.” Lake is a prominent ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, is among the organizations that support taxing paper profits.“By not taxing unrealized capital gains, our tax code is more lenient on extremely wealthy people who are more likely to have this type of income than most of us who pay taxes on income from work as we earn it,” ITEP said in a blog post last year.
Biden’s most recent budget proposal features other ideas related to capital gains. Other plans would “increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent,” the Treasury Department said.
The Harris campaign didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
But a Harris campaign official told MarketWatch earlier this month that investors should look to the recent budget, and not stances taken by Harris before her time as vice president, as a guide for her policy preferences.
Harris is due to give her much-anticipated acceptance speech at her party’s convention in Chicago on Thursday night. Biden withdrew from the White House race on July 21 and quickly endorsed his vice president, who then formally secured the Democratic nomination in early August.
Biden’s various budget proposals, released in March, were not expected to find much traction in the Republican-run House of Representatives.
Similarly, if Harris is elected president but Republicans control one or both chambers of Congress, many of her proposals would face a tough path to becoming law. And even with Democratic control of both chambers in 2021 and 2022, the Biden-Harris administration struggled to get sufficient support for some of its priorities.
In the first few days of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, experts told MarketWatch that her stances on taxes probably would closely resemble those of President Joe Biden.
One month into her campaign, it looks like that is indeed the case. Multiple published reports this week have said the Democratic presidential nominee supports the tax increases put forth in Biden’s most recent budget proposal, which came out in March.
The Biden budget called for new taxes on wealthy Americans, corporations and business owners — including a controversial idea to tax unrealized capital gains as income for those with more than $100 million. An unrealized capital gain, also called a paper profit, refers to an increase in value for an asset that a person hasn’t sold yet, whether it’s a share in a business or a property.
Biden’s Treasury Department said it’s proposing “a minimum tax of 25 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million.”
Treasury officials offered their rationale for the proposed change, saying the country’s current approach with unrealized capital gains “disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle-income taxpayers.” They also said the current approach “exacerbates income and wealth disparities” and “produces an incentive for taxpayers to inefficiently lock in portfolios of assets and hold them primarily to avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation, rather than reinvest the capital in more economically productive investments.”
However, the proposed change that targets unrealized capital gains has drawn considerable criticism.
It’s “among the worst ideas in the Biden administration’s proposed budget,” said Siri Terjesen, a professor and associate dean at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business.
It would serve as a “kill switch” for entrepreneurship because it would end up “discouraging investment & draining capital,” she wrote. Terjesen’s comments came in social media posts last month and in an opinion column for the Daily Signal, a conservative website.
Republican politicians have blasted taxing unrealized capital gains, with Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake saying in a social-media post that it “would cripple innovation & economic growth.” Lake is a prominent ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, is among the organizations that support taxing paper profits.“By not taxing unrealized capital gains, our tax code is more lenient on extremely wealthy people who are more likely to have this type of income than most of us who pay taxes on income from work as we earn it,” ITEP said in a blog post last year.
Biden’s most recent budget proposal features other ideas related to capital gains. Other plans would “increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent,” the Treasury Department said.
The Harris campaign didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
But a Harris campaign official told MarketWatch earlier this month that investors should look to the recent budget, and not stances taken by Harris before her time as vice president, as a guide for her policy preferences.
Harris is due to give her much-anticipated acceptance speech at her party’s convention in Chicago on Thursday night. Biden withdrew from the White House race on July 21 and quickly endorsed his vice president, who then formally secured the Democratic nomination in early August.
Biden’s various budget proposals, released in March, were not expected to find much traction in the Republican-run House of Representatives.
Similarly, if Harris is elected president but Republicans control one or both chambers of Congress, many of her proposals would face a tough path to becoming law. And even with Democratic control of both chambers in 2021 and 2022, the Biden-Harris administration struggled to get sufficient support for some of its priorities.
