Sbarro

Sbarro is a chain of pizza restaurants that specializes in traditional Italian cuisine, including its most popular menu item "pizza by the slice." Its headquarters is located in Melville, Huntington, New York.

Sbarro was founded by Gennaro and Carmela Sbarro. The couple and their three sons, Joseph, Mario, and Anthony immigrated to America from Naples, Italy, in 1956 with help from the Padovani family, who took them in. They gave Gennaro employment in their deli. The same year, the Sbarro family opened their first Salumeria (an Italian grocery store) at 1701 65th Street and 17th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, which became popular for its fresh food and genuine Italian fare. Their Sbarro Italian Delicatessen in Brooklyn was well received by the local community and was the first of a successful chain.
The success of the Sbarro Salumeria led to the opening of additional locations throughout the New York City area. In 1970, Sbarro opened its first mall-based restaurant in Brooklyn's Kings Plaza Shopping Center, marking the beginning of the modern Sbarro concept: Italian food in an open kitchen that allowed for fast self-service. One of their busiest outlets was located in the World Trade Center mall.
Since 1970, the Kings Plaza business model has expanded throughout the U.S. and over 44 countries around the world. In early 2007, Sbarro was acquired by MidOcean Partners, a private equity firm with offices in New York and London. In 2008, Sbarro was rated the #1 Quick Service Restaurant in the Italian segment by Entrepreneur magazine. It has held this title multiple times over the years.
On August 9, 2001, the Sbarro pizza restaurant in downtown Jerusalem, Israel, suffered a Palestinian suicide attack that killed 15 people and wounded 130.
Sbarro restaurants are located in department stores, shopping malls, airports, service areas, cinemas and college campuses. Sbarro has over 1,000 locations in 44 countries.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 4, 2011, listing assets of $471 million and debt of $486.6 million. At the time it was ranked by Pizza Today as the country's fifth largest pizza chain. It was the third large pizza chain to declare bankruptcy in less than a year. Earlier Round Table Pizza (ranked #10) and Uno Chicago Grill (ranked #11) through its parent Uno Restaurant Holdings filed bankruptcy. Uno has reemerged. In November 2011, it was reported that Sbarro had been granted court approval to emerge from bankruptcy under a plan requiring restructuring and ceding ownership to lenders.

Ice Cream Orange Kate Kandt

Ovalteen

Ovaltine is a brand of milk flavoring product made with malt extract (except the blue packaging in the US), sugar (except in Switzerland), and whey. Some flavors also have cocoa. Ovaltine, a registered trademark of Associated British Foods, is made by Wander AG, a subsidiary of Twinings which acquired the brand from Novartis in 2003, except in the United States, where Nestlé acquired the rights separately from Novartis later on.

Ovaltine was developed in Berne, Switzerland, where it is known by its original name, Ovomaltine (from ovum, Latin for "egg", and malt, originally its main ingredients). Soon after invention the factory moved out to the village of Neuenegg a few kilometres west of Berne, where it is still produced.
Ovomaltine was exported to Britain in 1909; it was a misspelling in the trademark registration that led to the name being shortened to Ovaltine in English-speaking markets. A factory was built in Kings Langley which exported to the United States as well. By 1915 Ovaltine was being manufactured in Villa Park, Illinois, for the US market. Originally advertised as consisting solely of "malt, milk, eggs, flavored with cocoa", the formulation has changed over the decades, and today several formulations are sold in different parts of the world. In the US, after purchasing the US rights, Nestlé changed the formulation bringing its flavor profile very close to that of another Nestlé chocolate milk flavoring product, Nesquik.
The popular chocolate malt version is a powder which is mixed with hot or cold milk as a beverage. Malt Ovaltine (a version without cocoa) and Rich Chocolate Ovaltine (a version without malt) are also available in some markets. Ovaltine has also been available in the form of chocolate bars, chocolate Easter eggs, parfait, cookies, and breakfast cereals, where it is only the brand name that connects the cereals with the chocolate drink.
Ovaltine also manufactured PDQ Chocolate Flavor Beads, PDQ Choco Chips and Egg Nog Flavored PDQ, which are no longer available. These drink mixes were very popular from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ovaltine discontinued the PDQ products about 1995 or 1996.
The US children's radio series Little Orphan Annie (1931–1940) and Captain Midnight (1938–1949), and the subsequent Captain Midnight TV series (1954–1956), were sponsored by Ovaltine. They had promotions in which listeners could save proofs-of-purchase from Ovaltine jars to obtain radio premiums, like "secret decoder ring" badges or pins that could be used to decode messages in the program. Children from the time may remember that "Ovaltine" is an anagram for "Vital One". Villa Park, Illinois, was home to the Ovaltine factory until the company's purchase and withdrawal in 1988. The Villa Park Historical Society maintains a permanent exhibit of Ovaltine advertising and memorabilia. The old factory was converted to loft apartments keeping the original floors and wall exposed.
A radio program aimed at five- to fourteen-year-olds, The League of Ovaltineys, was broadcast to Great Britain by Radio Luxembourg on Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM. Beginning in 1934, it was broadcast until 1940 and the German occupation of Luxembourg and again after World War II ended into the 1950s. Like the US programme, listeners could obtain badges, pins, and secret codes. The Ovaltineys' advertising jingle was regarded as one of the most successful jingles of the era.
In 1992 Himmel Group obtained right to make and sell Ovaltine in the US from Sandoz Nutrition Corporation. In 2007 Himmel sold their rights to Novartis. Presently Nestle has those rights.

Starbucks Manila

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 18,887 stores in 55 countries, including over 12,500 in the United States, over 1,200 in Canada and over 700 in the United Kingdom.
Starbucks sells drip brewed coffee, espresso-based hot drinks, other hot and cold drinks, coffee beans, salads, hot and cold sandwiches and panini, pastries, snacks, and items such as mugs and tumblers. Through the Starbucks Entertainment division and Hear Music brand, the company also markets books, music, and film. Many of the company's products are seasonal or specific to the locality of the store. Starbucks-brand ice cream and coffee are also offered at grocery stores.
From Starbucks' founding in later forms in Seattle as a local coffee bean roaster and retailer, the company has expanded rapidly. In the 1990s, Starbucks was opening a new store every workday, a pace that continued into the 2000s. The first store outside the United States or Canada opened in the mid-1990s, and overseas stores now constitute almost one third of Starbucks' stores.The company planned to open a net of 900 new stores outside of the United States in 2009, but has announced 900 store closures in the United States since 2008.

The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 30, 1971 by three partners: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired by entrepreneur Alfred Peet (whom they knew personally) to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment. The name is taken from Moby-Dick; after Pequod was rejected by one of the co-founders, the company was named after the chief mate on the Pequod, Starbuck.
From 1971–1976, the first Starbucks was at 2000 Western Avenue; it then was relocated to 1912 Pike Place, where it remains to this day. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet's, then began buying directly from growers.

The Starbucks Center, Seattle. The company HQ, in the old Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog distribution center building
Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 as Director of Retail Operations and Marketing, and after a trip to Milan, advised that the company should sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. Seattle had become home to a thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene since the opening of the Last Exit on Brooklyn in 1967, the owners rejected this idea, believing that getting into the beverage business would distract the company from its primary focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home, but they did give away free samples of pre-made drinks. Certain that there was money to be made selling pre-made drinks, Schultz started the Il Giornale coffee bar chain in April 1986.

A Visit to the North Pole Mug

Santa Claus, or Santa, is a figure in North American culture who reflects an amalgamation of the Dutch Sinterklaas, the English Father Christmas, and Christmas gift-bringers in other traditions. Santa Claus is said to bring gifts to the homes of good children during the late evening and overnight hours of Christmas Eve, December 24. Santa Claus in this contemporary understanding echoes aspects of hagiographical tales concerning the historical figure of gift-giver Saint Nicholas, the man from whom the name of Santa Claus derives and in whose honor Santa Claus may be referred to as Saint Nicholas or Saint Nick.

Santa Claus is generally depicted as a plump, jolly, white-bearded man wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots (images of him rarely have a beard with no moustache). This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast. This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, children's books and films. The North American depiction of Santa Claus as it developed in the 19th and 20th century in turn influenced the modern perceptions of Father Christmas, Sinterklaas and Saint Nicholas in European culture.

According to a tradition which can be traced to the 1820s, Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, with a large number of magical elves, and nine (originally eight) flying reindeer. Since the 20th century, in an idea popularized by the 1934 song "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", Santa Claus has been believed to make a list of children throughout the world, categorizing them according to their behavior ("naughty" or "nice") and to deliver presents, including toys, and candy to all of the good boys and girls in the world, and sometimes coal to the naughty children, on the single night of Christmas Eve. He accomplishes this feat with the aid of the elves who make the toys in the workshop and the reindeer who pull his sleigh.

Santa's up on the Chimney Mug

L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a 1902 children's book, further popularized Santa Claus. Much of Santa Claus’s mythos was not set in stone at the time, leaving Baum to give his "Neclaus" (Necile’s Little One) a wide variety of immortal support, a home in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho, and ten reindeer—who could not fly, but leapt in enormous, flight-like bounds. Claus's immortality was earned, much like his title ("Santa"), decided by a vote of those naturally immortal. This work also established Claus’s motives: a happy childhood among immortals. When Ak, Master Woodsman of the World, exposes him to the misery and poverty of children in the outside world, Santa strives to find a way to bring joy into the lives of all children, and eventually invents toys as a principal means.

Images of Santa Claus were further popularized through Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising in the 1930s. The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was invented by The Coca-Cola Company or that Santa wears red and white because they are the colors used to promote the Coca-Cola brand. Historically, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising – White Rock Beverages had already used a red and white Santa to sell mineral water in 1915 and then in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923. In fact, Santa Claus had already appeared in red and white on the cover of Puck magazine at the start of the century.
A man dressed up as Santa Claus fundraising for Volunteers of America on the sidewalk of street in Chicago, Illinois, in 1902. He is wearing a mask with a beard attached.

The image of Santa Claus as a benevolent character became reinforced with its association with charity and philanthropy, particularly by organizations such as the Salvation Army. Volunteers dressed as Santa Claus typically became part of fundraising drives to aid needy families at Christmas time.

In some images from the early 20th century, Santa was depicted as personally making his toys by hand in a small workshop like a craftsman. Eventually, the idea emerged that he had numerous elves responsible for making the toys, but the toys were still handmade by each individual elf working in the traditional manner.

The 1956 popular song by George Melachrino, "Mrs. Santa Claus", and the 1963 children's book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley, helped standardize and establish the character and role of Mrs. Claus in the popular imagination.

Seabury Quinn’s 1948 novel Roads draws from historical legends to tell the story of Santa and the origins of Christmas. Other modern additions to the "story" of Santa include Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the 9th and lead reindeer immortalized in a Gene Autry song, written by a Montgomery Ward copywriter.

LifeSavers Five Flavor Mug

Life Savers is an American brand of ring-shaped mints and artificially fruit-flavored hard candy. The candy is known for its distinctive packaging, coming in aluminum foil rolls.

In 1912, candy manufacturer Clarence Crane of Cleveland, Ohio, invented Life Savers as a "summer candy" that could withstand heat better than chocolate. The candy's name is derived from its similarity to the shape of lifebuoys used for saving people who have fallen from boats. The name has also inspired an urban legend that Crane invented the candy to prevent children from choking, due to his own child having choked on a hard candy.

After registering the trademark, Crane sold the rights to the peppermint candy to Edward John Noble for $2,900. Instead of using cardboard rolls, which were not very successful, Noble created tin-foil wrappers to keep the mints fresh. Pep-O-Mint was the first Life Savers flavor. Noble founded the Life Savers Candy Company in 1913 and significantly expanded the market for the candy by installing Life Savers displays next to the cash registers of restaurants and grocery stores. He also trained the owners of the establishments to always give customers a nickel in their change as doing so would increase sales of Life Savers.[citation needed] Since then, many different flavors of Life Savers have been produced. The five-flavor roll first appeared in 1935.

Life Savers was a subsidiary of Kraft Foods before being purchased by the Wrigley Company in 2004. In recent years, the brand has expanded to include Gummi Savers (currently known as Life Savers Gummies) in 1992, Life Saver Minis in 1996, Creme Savers in 1998, and Life Saver Fusions in 2001. Discontinued varieties include: Fruit Juicers, Holes, Life Saver Lollipops (still sold in carnival wheel games in Seaside Heights, New Jersey) and Squeezit.