Taco Bell on Its Own in Irvine?; $3M for ‘Popcorn’ at Westin

Thanksgiving is in the books and you can see the year-end holidays from here. How about an early farewell and a bit of conjecture about Greg Creed? He has another month at Irvine-based Taco Bell and will start 2015 with a move into the corner office at Louisville, Ky.-based parent Yum! Brands Inc., which also owns fast-food behemoths KFC and Pizza Hut. Will Creed put his stamp on the top job by spinning off Taco Bell? One prominent restaurant industry analyst— Mark Kalinowski of Janney Montgomery Scott—thinks that’s a distinct possibility, given the Mexican-style chain’s status as the junior member of the portfolio, even with 6,000 locations and nearly $8 billion a year in annual revenue. Taco Bell’s near-exclusive focus on the domestic market adds weight to the spinoff theory—it’s hardly reached beyond U.S. borders while KFC and Pizza Hut are longtime denizens of the global food court. Our Paul Hughes adds to that side of the scale, noting that it’s been a hot time for fast-food chains to hit the public markets lately, with a couple of notable OC examples in the recent takeoffs for shares of Costa Mesa-based El Pollo Loco Holdings Inc. and Habit Restaurants Inc. in Irvine … Hughes covers hotels and tourism, too—and sometimes the terminology crosses over with his restaurants beat. Take his story on the Westin South Coast Plaza’s $20 million interior makeover (this page), a job that includes a line item of $3 million to scrape, smooth and repaint the “popcorn ceilings” and add crown molding in all 393 guestrooms … Put UCLA down for another win over its cross-town rival—even if this one didn’t draw nearly the attention its football team got for its recent 38-20 conquest of USC on the gridiron. The schools went head-to-head with redevelopment plans for the erstwhile L.A. Times printing plant, a 21-acre site near the 405 in Costa Mesa, as part of the 2014 NAIOP SoCal Real Estate Challenge. A multidisciplinary squad of grad students from UCLA bested their Trojan counterparts with a plan that included 400 apartments … Congratulations to UCI’s men’s soccer team, which had NCAA tournament wins over UNLV and Stanford to its credit and a Nov. 30 Sweet 16 road game against Providence on its schedule as the Insider went to press … Every business should figure out a way to make its very presence a part of its marketing in the way that Industrial Metal Supply at 2481 Alton Parkway in Irvine has managed. You’ve got the name—now drive by and take a look at the cold-rolled steel sheets that greet visitors, with their patina of industrial chic set off nicely by plain steel grating overhead. No wonder the place counts artists and accessories designers as well as machine shops and fabricators among its customers … It looks as though Capital Noodle Bar at the Crossroads shopping center at Barranca and Culver is off to a strong start and prompting neighbors to up their games. Sushi specialist Sagami has added cuisine from Nagoya, the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan, while Ha Long is reminding customers that is has a catering service in addition to the sandwiches it serves up on just-right baguettes. And, yes, Capital Noodle is a spinoff of Capital Seafood, which has locations at the Diamond Jamboree Center and Irvine Spectrum.