Applebee's, Welcome to Paramount!
 
As we already know, Paramount is a business friendly city and promotes economic development. Downtown area is being upgraded and new businesses are coming to town, with one of these key businesses coming to Paramount is an Applebee's Restaurant.
 
Today, we had Davis Marcum, General Manager of AAG (Apple America Group LLC) talk to us about Applebee's and their plans for this Paramount restaurant. Apple American Group LLC already owns and operates over 480 Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar restaurants all over USA. With $1.2 billion in sales and directly employing over 31,000 people, Apple American is the largest Applebee’s franchisee, and is one of the two largest franchisees of any concept in the United States. Davis is now taking care of the LaHabra restaurant. He mentioned that he is already training his replacement at LaHabra and is looking forward to this startup in Paramount!
 
As they continue to grow, they remain dedicated to making every location a truly neighborhood restaurant. The Paramount restaurant will open on Monday Oct 31st, Halloween Day 2016. Davis expects to create about 100 jobs (Hosts, Servers,Bartenders, Cooks and others) initially and maintain 50 to 75 jobs on an ongoing basis and do about $3 M per year. The restaurant will be open 7 days a week from 11 am to midnight.
 
In addition, the restaurant is available to any organization on weekend mornings for successful Pancake Breakfast fund raising events. They make it very easy for an organization to plan and hold such events and raise money for any worthy cause. They also have special programs for Teachers and Libraries, as well as their "Dining to Donate" program.
 
Applebee's is known for good value for money. They are constantly making even more improvements to their menu and offering. As an example, Davis mentioned that their Steaks are now  hand-cut in-house by trained meat cutters and grilled to perfection over American oak.
Wood fired grill.
 
Applebee's website sates "Applebee's strives to make a positive impact in the neighborhoods we serve because we believe we have a responsibility to do so. We have seen firsthand that embracing our responsibility to our neighborhoods builds value for our guests, associates and franchisees."
 

We are happy to welcome Davis Marcum and his new Applebee's to Paramount! 
 
 
 
 
 
News and more news . . . 
 
Greg Buckner brought Martina Abraham and her teacher Maggie Greggory.  She spoke about thee JSA Summer Program.
 
This is a Pre-College Summer Programs for High School Students where the students focus on developing civic engagement  and leadership qualities which build  deep understanding of how to engage and express within our American, democratic system. This is a 3 week program offered at Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown and Beijing, China. 
 
She has been selected to go to Stanford. She  seemed excited and is looking forward to this. She wants to focus on Counter Terrorism within Criminal Justice System and eventually become an FBI agent. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, is bilingual in Arabic and English and believes this will be a good asset for her. She had prepared the presentation for us, which was well received. It was so well received that our Rotary members each pitched in $50 to contribute to her funding needed to attend this Summer School but was still left $150 short of what she needs.  Maybe someone reading this could also help her reach her goal of $7000.  She has worked hard to raise the funds and is so close, but time is running out.
 
  Martina (R) with her teacher Ms. Greggory (L) and presentation of JSA.