Greg Flynn still has faith in Applebee’s. The owner of Flynn Group, a mega-franchisee of the casual-dining chain as well as several other concepts, still believes there is demand for full-service chain restaurants. He said the sector has been overbuilt with concepts that weren’t well differentiated.

California’s $20 fast-food wage has indeed hurt traffic. Fast-food restaurants in the state have raised their prices at twice the national average, according to Revenue Management Solutions.

Cracker Barrel’s performance is looking up. The casual-dining chain reported two quarters in a row of same-store sales and revenue growth, according to its preliminary Q1 results. Cracker Barrel’s same-store sales were up 2.9% while its revenues were up 2.6%.

TGI Fridays is facing a lawsuit over its recent mass layoffs. Two former employees allege that they were fired without proper notice when the chain closed about 50 restaurants last month.

Get all the headlines in today’s Restaurant Daily podcast.

More than a week after Election Day, Rep. Michelle Steel is still holding onto her razor-thin lead over Derek Tran in the race for California’s 45th congressional district, as of the latest vote tally posted by the secretary of state Thursday, Nov. 14.

But Tran has further cut into her lead in the nailbiter race. Wednesday’s tally had Steel up by 349 votes. On Thursday, her lead shrunk to just 236.

The Southern California race is currently the closest in the state that has yet to be called.

Of the votes tallied Thursday, Tran, a Democrat, clinched 62% of the results from Los Angeles County, which makes up a small part of the district, while 53% of those results on Thursday from Orange County swung in his favor.

Steel, the Republican incumbent seeking a third term, was leading by more than 11,000 votes the day after Election Day, but a steady stream of blue ballots counted since that earlier tally has allowed Tran to slash away at her lead.

As of Thursday evening, the Orange County registrar of voters said it had counted more than 1.3 million ballots and estimated that there were more than 74,000 ballots left to process countywide. In Los Angeles County, an estimated 99,400 ballots need to be processed still, according to its elections official.

The race has been trending in Tran’s favor, and it’s likely he could flip the district by a narrow margin, said Christian Grose, a pollster and professor of political science at USC.

However, the margin is tight enough that Steel could still pull off a win, he added.

Both campaigns have prepared for the possibility of a recount in the race, soliciting donations to legal funds from their supporters in recent days. Secretary of State Shirley Weber said if there is a recount — and it yields a different outcome — then local elections officials in both Orange and Los Angeles counties would be required to recertify their results.

Tran is in Washington, D.C., this week for new member orientation, despite not clinching a congressional victory as of yet. If elected, he would become the first Vietnamese American to represent Orange County’s Little Saigon in Congress.

Neither Steel’s nor Tran’s campaigns commented on the latest vote tallies Thursday evening.

All of the other five congressional races that touch Orange County have already been called. If Tran does unseat Steel, Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim Hills, would be the only Republican House member to represent an Orange County district.

Originally Published: November 14, 2024 at 5:38 PM PST

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