La Madeleine signs franchise agreement for three locations in Texas
This expansion highlights the growing appeal of the brand, which blends French tradition with American tastes, according to a statement from La Madeleine.
SM Franchise, owned by Sultan Mahmood, a multi-unit operator with 25 years of experience in restaurant franchising, will lead this expansion.
Mahmood began his career with Denny's in 2003, building a portfolio of six Texas locations and a team of more than 200 employees.
"I wanted to expand my portfolio with La Madeleine because I'm inspired by how the brand blends French tradition with American tastes in such a creative and inviting way," Mahmood stated.
He plans to open the first La Madeleine location by the end of 2025 in College Station, followed by a café in College Station and one in the Houston Designated Market Area in 2026.
La Madeleine CEO John Dillon expressed confidence in the brand's growth potential, stating: "Our unit economics, unique positioning and proven systems have been successful in attracting restaurateurs who bring significant experience to the La Madeleine brand."
La Madeleine, a brand of Groupe Le Duff, operates almost 100 corporate and franchise locations in multiple US states and one international café.
The menu includes all-day breakfast, brunch, soups, salads, sandwiches, pastas, coffees and entrées, along with a traditional French bakery display featuring fresh bread and pastries.
Groupe Le Duff, established in 1976, operates in more than 100 countries and on five continents.
Its portfolio of restaurant chains includes Brioche Dorée, Del Arte, Le Fournil de Pierre, La Madeleine (US) and Kamps (Germany), as well as its brands Bridor and Cité Gourmande, which manufacture products for 45,000 four and five-star hotel restaurants.
"La Madeleine signs franchise agreement for three locations in Texas" was originally created and published by Verdict Food Service, a GlobalData owned brand.
The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
a minute ago
- Newsweek
Insider Puts Cadillac F1 Team Under The Spotlight Amid Driver Uncertainty
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Former Formula One champion Jacques Villeneuve has opened up on the uncertainty surrounding the Cadillac F1 team's driver lineup and its approach to racing in 2026. Cadillac F1's initial bid, which was led by Andretti Global, was rejected on financial grounds. However, with an increased participation of General Motors and a new management owned and operated by TWG Global, the bid was approved for Cadillac F1 to become the sport's eleventh team in 2026. However, with just ten rounds remaining for the conclusion of the 2025 season, the American outfit has yet to announce its driver lineup. Cadillac F1 reportedly prefers experienced drivers and is said to have shortlisted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas. But with an announcement yet to be made, the picture seems uncertain. Cadillac F1 has partnered with Ferrari to procure its power units from 2026 until it fields its own power units in 2029. However, Villeneuve has raised questions, especially with Michael Andretti having moved out of the way, since the team is yet to establish itself. This is unlike Audi, which concluded its takeover of the Sauber F1 team, and the results are already showing in Sauber's performance. Speaking to RacingNews365, he said: People attend an event to unveil the colors for the 2026 Cadillac debut in Formula One racing, ahead of the 2025 Miami Formula One Grand Prix, in Miami Beach, Florida, on May 3, 2025. People attend an event to unveil the colors for the 2026 Cadillac debut in Formula One racing, ahead of the 2025 Miami Formula One Grand Prix, in Miami Beach, Florida, on May 3, 2025. Giorgio VIERA / AFP/Getty Images "Who knows what's going on there. It's not the same team as a year ago. The whole project has changed, and the way it came in, forcefully, is not the best way either, but at least now they're in, fine. "The question is, what will they do? What drivers will they choose? Who do they put in place?" Highlighting the improvements in Sauber's pace this season, Villeneuve added: "When you look at what Sauber has done, with Audi coming in, [with] Jonathan Wheatley, you already see the results now, even though it's the same car. Just the way the energy, the working... So you can expect great things there. "We don't know with Cadillac yet. They say they want experienced drivers, right? But you want good, experienced other thing, we have no idea which engine will be good, that's a big... Well, okay, we'll find out." The 1997 F1 champion emphasized that Cadillac F1 will have to sign a big paycheck if it wants to hire a good racing driver. He said: "Depends on how much money they put on the table. Because you want to get one of those drivers [a pure racer], you're a new team, you need to put [down] a big cheque. "But with the value of F1 now, the big cheque is nothing. It's peanuts compared to what it used to be."
NBC News
a minute ago
- NBC News
Tariffs and deportations are contributing to rising prices and fewer immigrant workers
After projections that President Donald Trump's mass deportations would negatively impact the American economy, the nation is seeing a jump in wholesale vegetable prices and slowdowns in industries that rely on immigrant workers. Economic measures that are trickling out are leading some to point to the administration's immigration crackdown, along with tariffs, as at least partly responsible for the slump in some economic sectors and for rising prices. The latest comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported Thursday a whopping 38.9% increase in wholesale dry and fresh vegetable prices from June to July, the biggest since March 2022. Phil Kafarakis, president of IMFA The Food Away From Home Association, which represents food producers, suppliers, services and industries outside of grocery stores, said the warning signs should be taken seriously. Because of deportation efforts, 'you are now going to be left with not enough laborers in the fields to pick up and collect product as its coming to harvest,' he said, adding that it is contributing to the current 'horribly, incredibly impactful' effect of tariffs. Combined with drought, excessive flooding and wildfires, the deportations are coming to bear and will become a bigger problem in the late summer and early fall harvests, he said. 'I don't think people realize' there will be a surge in vegetable costs in restaurants, at grocery stores and other places, Kafarakis said. While the administration has not yet hit the deportation levels Trump promised in his campaign, the number of people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June was its highest monthly arrests in at least five years. This week, the Dallas Federal Reserve issued a report stating Texas' economy has softened amid uncertainty. Business owners told the Dallas Federal Reserve that uncertainty about tariffs and immigration policy were posing investment and hiring challenges. 'Immigration enforcement actions are also affecting the ability of some firms to recruit and retain workers,' the agency stated in its report. The federal bank surveys Texas businesses regularly. In its July survey, the inability to hire qualified workers because they lacked permits or legal status 'was the most widespread impact noted among firms experiencing workforce disruption," the reserve bank said. The report quoted a machine manufacturer who said in response to survey questions, 'Foreign-born laborers get the job done. We need them, we use them, and we like them.' Immigrant workers are a big part of Texas' workforce. In an April report, the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank said the share of Texas firms reporting on its survey that they rely on workers who moved to Texas from a different country increased from 15% in 2023 to 25% in 2024. "The increase has been across all sectors, with about one-third of manufacturing respondents relying on immigrant workers," the bank stated then. In a report released Thursday by the immigrant advocacy group America's Voice, the authors noted that the cycling of immigrant workers in and out of the country has stopped, mostly because of border restrictions reducing the inflow of immigrants. 'The country is losing workers without them being replaced, with adverse economic consequences,' the report by Robert Lynch, Michael Ettlinger and Emma Sifre states. Lynch is an economics professor at Washington College. Ettlinger is a founding director of University of New Hampshire Carsey School of Public Policy, and Sifre is a data analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Lynch said that the number of workers in agriculture and related industries increased from March to July in 2023 and in 2024. But employment in the industries those same months this year dropped by 155,000 workers, down 6.5%. In construction, the 10 states with the highest concentrations of unauthorized workers saw employment drop .1% from June 2024 to June 2025, while other states saw it increase 1.9%, according to the report. Additionally, the growth in the states not in the top 10 was lower than a year ago, down from 2.3% growth. About 7% of the leisure and hospitality workers are undocumented and are mostly focused in restaurant and hotel sectors, Lynch said. States with higher concentrations of unauthorized workers are experiencing slower growth in this area, he said. Food service employment grew .2% in high immigrant states over the past year compared to 1.5% in other states, the report states. 'A loss of a significant portion of this workforce is likely to be particularly damaging as there were nearly 1 million unfilled jobs in leisure and hospitality in as recently as April of this year,' Lynch said. The numbers of foreign-born workers in the country fell from 33.3 million in January to about 32.1 million in July, a loss of about 1.2 million workers, according to analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers by the National Foundation for American Policy, a trade and immigration research group. Stuart Anderson, the foundation's executive director, said thus far there has not been a corresponding increase in U.S. workers' labor participation. 'The reason why you see slowdowns is because when employers can't find enough workers, they are going to invest less,' he said. Antonio De Loera-Burst, United Farm Workers spokesman, questioned whether there are truly labor shortages in agriculture. He said workers are frightened and acknowledged raids have occurred in some fields and agricultural related worksites. But 'a lot of workers I talk to are desperate for work. There's not enough work,' De Loera-Burst said. Hours are being cut and workers are being told to do in six hours what they used to do in eight, he said. 'We are dead set against deportations,' he said, referring to UFW. He said that what appears to be happening is that growers are using the disruptions of immigration raids on their businesses 'as their latest argument for why Congress should give them their long-standing priority, which is to bring more guest workers and pay them less.' Trump has been under pressure from businesses that rely on immigrant workers, particularly the agricultural industry, to ensure they have a secure and reliable workforce.
USA Today
30 minutes ago
- USA Today
Here's why an alarming number of workers cash out 401(k) plans
A 401(k) retirement account is supposed to be hands-off. It's not your money, in theory, but savings for the future you. And yet, when Americans leave jobs, one-third of them cash out their 401(k) accounts. That's called 401(k) 'leakage,' and it costs workers untold billions of dollars in lost retirement savings. In a recent paper, Vanguard ponders why so many Americans liquidate retirement accounts when they exit jobs – about 33%, by their estimate -- and what employers and employees can do about it. The 401(k) was designed to help American workers build retirement savings, using tax breaks as an incentive. Nearly $9 trillion sits in 401(k) accounts nationwide, according to the Investment Company Institute. Half of all private-sector workers now participate in the plans, a record high. But 401(k) dollars don't always end up funding someone's retirement. At least $1.7 trillion sits in lost or forgotten 401(k) accounts, according to research by Capitalize, a financial services firm. A new Vanguard research note focuses on another problem: Workers cashing out retirement accounts when they leave jobs. Cashing out a 401(k) is often the worst option When you depart a job, you have several options with a 401(k). You can do nothing, keeping the money in the account. You can execute a 'rollover,' transferring the funds to another 401(k) or Individual Retirement Account. Or, you can cash out. And if you're exiting a job, a cashout might sound alluring. You may not have another job lined up. Perhaps you're planning a move. Maybe a new child has arrived. 'It can be very tempting. You're having this big decision in your life,' said Rob Williams, managing director of financial planning at Charles Schwab. 'Especially if it's not a large amount, your first instinct is to take the money.' But cashing out a 401(k) is generally the worst option, at least in financial terms. If you liquidate a 401(k) before age 59 ½, you generally pay income taxes on the amount, plus a 10% penalty for early withdrawal. Moreover, you miss out on the chance to collect years of compounded returns on your 401(k) investments. If you cash out a $7,000 retirement account at age 40, you may net as little as $4,270 in actual cash to spend, after penalties and taxes, Fidelity estimates. But if you leave the same $7,000 invested for 20 more years, and the investments increase at an annual rate of 8%, the sum will grow to nearly $35,000, according to a NerdWallet calculator. 'You think it's a small amount of money. You take it out. But if it stayed invested, it could have grown to a much larger sum,' said Anqi Chen, associate director of savings and household finance at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Why do departing workers cash out their 401(k)s? Exiting workers cash out 401(k) accounts for several reasons, retirement experts say. Vanguard researchers theorize that financial need, more than anything else, drives workers to liquidate retirement accounts. Hourly workers are more likely than salaried employees to cash out 401(k)s. The reason, Vanguard says, may be that hourly workers have more income fluctuations. Those ups and downs can leave them short of cash. Workers with lower incomes are more likely to cash out than those with higher incomes. That data point, too, suggests financial need. 'It's really short-term cashflow liquidity challenges that are explaining a lot of these early withdrawals,' said Aaron Goodman, an economist at Vanguard. Vanguard found that workers with emergency savings were much less likely to cash out a 401(k) when leaving a job. Thus, Vanguard urges workers to save for emergencies. Even $2,000 in rainy-day funds, researchers found, allowed workers to leave jobs without raiding retirement funds. Employees are also much more likely to cash out a 401(k) account with a small balance. The typical cashout involves 'a few thousand dollars,' Goodman said. Some workers, especially younger workers, cash out retirement accounts because the sum seems too small to bother with. 'It's easy for them to fall into this mindset, 'It's not a lot of money,'' said Mike Shamrell, vice president of thought leadership at Fidelity Investments. 'If you do that every other year in your 20s, that starts to add up.' Rolling over a 401(k) can be 'incredibly hard' Cashing out a 401(k) is relatively easy. Rolling it over into another retirement account, by contrast, can be 'incredibly hard,' said Chen of Boston College. That's another reason why many workers cash out retirement plans. In a rollover, you move your retirement savings to another 401(k) account at your new company, or into an IRA, a personal retirement savings account. Rollovers can get complicated, especially when the funds are going into a new 401(k) account managed by a different firm. Research by Capitalize, a retirement savings platform, found rollovers 'outdated and painful': Only 22% of savers managed to roll over an account without help, and 42% said the process took them at least two months to complete. In many cases, rollovers involve laborious forms and old-fashioned paper checks. Some employers encourage departing workers to cash out low-balance retirement accounts, "just because it's easier for them," said David John, a senior strategic policy advisor at the AARP Public Policy Institute. The ability to move a 401(k) from one employer to the next is called 'portability,' and the lack of it has thwarted workers from preserving retirements savings, according to Chen and others. When exiting employees contemplate rolling over a 401(k) account, 'they're just a little bit overwhelmed by the process,' said Shamrell of Fidelity. 'They feel it's going to be time-consuming and complex.' A recent initiative in the retirement-savings industry aims to solve the portability problem. In 2022, a consortium of private retirement-plan providers announced a collaboration to boost the portability of small retirement accounts. When someone leaves a job, the network of providers will make sure that retirement funds 'move seamlessly from one job to another,' said John of AARP. The auto-portability program applies to accounts valued at $7,000 or less, which are more likely to be cashed out or forgotten. Most big retirement-plan providers participate in the effort. 'I do think there's an evolution, as there should be, in terms of making this more of a point-and-click exercise,' said Williams of Schwab.
