Word: plastic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fancy restaurant. No longer. In major cities from San Francisco to New Orleans to New York City, home-delivery services are springing up to rush gourmet fare from restaurants to the couch-bound affluent. In addition, many top-of-the-line restaurants are delivering their own plastic-packaged food, largely to combat the still lingering drop in business since the 1987 market crash. As a result, according to the Lempert Report, a food-industry newsletter, U.S. restaurants expect to sell more than $10 billion worth of home-delivered food in 1990, up from $2.6 billion...
Typical of the trend is New York City's Dial-A-Dinner. Its clients order by telephone from the menu of one of the 30 restaurants on its list. About an hour later, a tuxedo-clad waiter appears, bearing large shopping bags full of plastic containers and a bill -- usually well over $100 -- payable by credit card. "I'm known as the doctor of delivery," declares David Blum, 31, the entrepreneur who started Dial-A-Dinner 18 months ago. Now he has 22 people, 15 cars and six vans, all radio equipped, hurtling about 200 dinners a night across Manhattan...
...Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove, Fla., makes its own deliveries by limousine. Its dishes -- ranging from lobster to souffle -- arrive in plastic containers, although a full china service and other accessories are sent on request. The average bill for two, including tip: $100. Why are so many prepared to pay so much for the thrill of eating in their own homes? "People want convenience," says Jack Kellman of Chicago, who last year launched a company called Room Service Delivery. "There's no baby sitter, no parking and no coat check...
Rose will almost surely never earn a living in baseball again, but he is likely to continue to make a living off baseball by merchandising his relics. In 1985, the year he broke Cobb's record, he arranged to collect royalties on T shirts, beer mugs, pennants and plastic figurines of himself. On the lucrative baseball-card show circuit, where one show promoter has clocked him signing his short name 600 times an hour, Rose earns as much as $20,000 an appearance. He was broke or unsentimental enough to sell the bat from his record 4,192nd...
...cutting edge of shoe science, Nike and Reebok are engaged in a battle that is based on thin air. The Air Nike line of basketball shoes, which contain pockets of compressed gas in the soles to provide cushioning, became an instant hit two years ago when transparent plastic windows were added to show off the air cells. The most popular model is the Air Jordan (price: $110), named for Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, who receives an undisclosed royalty for each pair of shoes sold. This year Reebok is fighting back with its Energy Return System, found...