|
|
| Lifestyles
of the Rich and Shameless |
| The chef's table at Claridges, a London eatery that caters to the royalty of the UK financial services industry, is now charging a minimum of £550, or $1,075, for a meal. Want a reservation? You may have to wait until the fall for a table. The swells who dine at places like Claridges don't, of course, make their own reservations. That's where global concierge services like Quintessentially come in. Pay your annual fee – at Quintessentially, the going rate starts at over $45,000 per year – and these services will help you experience your dearest desire. One example: A Quintessentially concierge recently fulfilled a client's request to have 12 albino peacocks brought to a party. On three hours notice. January 1, 2007 |
| Don’t pick up that menu. You might get sticker shock. Upscale restaurants the nation over, a news report noted last week, are now routinely charging over $40 for single entrees. Add extra, on top of that, if you want vegetables with your hunk of steak or fish. Overall, prices at San Francisco’s top 200 restaurants have slid up 14 percent over the past two years, with the same boost evident in New York, where an “ostrich scramble” at davidburke & donatella currently goes for $44. That’s still a bargain, of course, compared to a meal at the Guy Savoy in Las Vegas, “where desserts alone are $22 each and a meal for two can easily run $500.” October 31, 2006 |
 Is
there any label more obsolete than “fat cat”?
Today's super-rich spend big bucks to stay fashionably thin,
and now a doctor from New York's Park Avenue, Jana Klauer, has authored a
new book to share the secrets of the eternally svelte. Among
the tips in How the Rich Get Thin: Park Avenue's Top Diet Doctor
Reveals the Secrets to Losing Weight and Feeling Great: order
San Pellegrino mineral water by the case. February 20, 2006 |
| Fourteen-to-one. That's
the ratio between average worker and top executive pay at the Austin-based
Whole Foods supermarket empire. The company regularly trots out
that modest ratio to burnish its image as a sustainable, new-agey
enterprise. But the Whole Foods 14-to-1 pay cap, the Austin
American-Statesman reveals,
excludes bonuses and stock options — and at Whole Foods,
as elsewhere in corporate America, these flow overwhelmingly to
the top. In fiscal 2005, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey took in a
$126,000 bonus, above and beyond his regular salary, plus stock
options valued at $767,771. Early in December, Mackey cleared another
$1.8 million after he cashed out part of his previously granted
option stash. January
2, 2006 |
| |
|
|
|
|
