While doing my work-a-day news surfing I noticed a few articles about new non-traditional  services  and tactics being used at big companies.  Burger King is opening a bar in south beach. Air France KLM is denying that they are forcing fat people to purchase extra seats , while Southwest and United already have such a policy in place. Most interestingly though a Holiday Inn in London is offering human bed warmers. For a modest fee a holiday in employees dressed in footie pajamas will warm customers beds.

These business plans shed light on the quest for profits in the overdeveloped western economy.  Burger King is exploiting its relatively successful youthful advertising campaign. In its attempt to be the edgy fast food place of choice adding booze to the menu only makes sense. The only problem is to ask whether the novelty of a fast food bar is enough to draw customers regularly to the new restaurants.  The problem the King faces is that we have too much damn fast food places in the first place. The market is saturated so the branding and delivery needs to be unique. Burger Kings attempt to differentiate itself is no surprise considering the abundance of cheap burgers and french fries.  It will be interesting to see if the Whopper Bar catches on, or if it can’t compete with other cheap food and drink fair.

The struggling air-line industry is also facing a profit squeeze apparent from all sorts of different charges for things once included with air-fare. Soon I’ll be mistaking flight attendants for some good fellas. Extra peanuts- fuck you pay me. Check your bags- fuck you pay me.  Your ass is too fat too sit in the seat?  That’s right, fuck you pay me. However, if you have ever spent more than twenty minutes sitting next to a corpulent frequent flier, you probably don’t mind this development in the aviation businessmen.

However, most revealing is this bed-warming service.  Most developed economies are in the final transitions from an industry based economy to a service based economy.  I’m surprised this scheme hasn’t been tried before.  I love it when I grab that warm seat on the subway after the harrowing wait out in the cold.  The warm seat phenomenon indeed has led to way more than the “seat-back” game. Fifty years ago who would have thought that there would be a feature in cars commonly refereed to as butt-warmers.  It will be interesting to see how this scheme plays out.  I bet other hotels will follow suit but with electric blankets, as opposed to human heaters.  Though the human-heaters are good for the unemployment rate, electric blankets are better for business.  You don’t have to pay electric blankets.

So what have we learned from all this? If you want to really help the economy go stuff yourself  at Burger King. You may have to get drunk first, the food isn’t that good.  Once you’re fat enough, buy two tickets to London and then pay some one to warm up your bed for you.