USHG Acquisition Corp. (HUGS), a blank-check company with Shake Shack creator Danny Meyer at the helm, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday in a deal valued at $250 million.
Perhaps surprisingly — given Meyer's pedigree as the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group that operates more than 20 restaurants and bars — the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is looking beyond the restaurant industry for possible mergers.
"It would be intuitive for people to say, 'Oh, obviously Danny Meyer and his group are going to be focusing on bringing public a restaurant company,'" Meyer told Cheddar. "It's likely that that's not going to be the case."
Instead, the SPAC is seeking out companies with what Meyer called a "stakeholder approach" to doing business.
"We believe that the most compelling differentiator for long-term business success is when a company believes that the first input has to be the people working there, and the second input has to be the people who do business with them, the customers, and then the community in which they do business," he said.
Outside of this criteria, the SPAC is casting a wide net, with technology, e-commerce, food and beverage, and health and wellness companies all on the table.
A component of USHG's culture-driven acquisition strategy is a charitable partnership with Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit seeking to end childhood hunger, of which Meyer sits on the board.
As part of the public offering, Meyer said USHG will "gift a meaningful number of shares" to the nonprofit that will provide a long-term funding source for its programming.
"The resources that are generated from this are so important because at the end of the day charity is so important, but it's not enough. We've got to find ways to create new wealth," said Share Our Strength CEO Billy Shore.
Shore added that he would like to see more companies go public with a charitable partner.
"It can't be just the nonprofit sector. It can't be just the government sector. It's got to be the business sector as well. When all three come together, we can actually solve this problem."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
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