Where the Rubber Meets the Road

A new Popeyes fried chicken fast food restaurant has opened on Route 16.

This is not so surprising. Route 16 is lined with fast food outlets, Dunkin Donuts and a wide variety of smaller businesses.

What is easy to ignore about Route 16 is that if you added up all the commercial businesses big and small, you’d find that hundreds and hundreds of jobs are at stake when Route 16 businesses awaken for another business day.

The vibrant nature of business on Route 16, we believe, shows the extent to which Massachusetts in Greater Boston, has escaped the worst of the recession that has changed the nation’s economic life.

Many will say the jobs available at the various fast food outlets, coffee shops, et cetera on Route 16 don’t mean anything – but every job available there is important, especially to the man or woman holding the job.

The opening of Popeyes in perhaps 4,000 square feet of space signifies a big investment. Everything had to be built by craftsmen – plumbers, electricians, carpenters finish workers and that alone was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When that was finished, then all the stainless steel appliances had to be bought at great expense, installed and on and on until opening day about a month ago. It is impossible to know the exact cost of the new Popeyes to open the door and to pay the rent except to say, all those costs turned into money for everyone who worked to finish the place.

Then came the hiring bit or what we now refer to as job creation.

In order to run as simple a business as Popeyes required hiring 54 men and women – managers, assistant managers, food clerks, cashiers clean-up staff and on and on.

The owner of the Everett Popeyes has four others and in total, he pays 200 employees from week to week.

What we are getting at is that it doesn’t take rocket science to make Route 16 available to business and to new businesses like Popeyes to bring a sense of growing prosperity to the area.

Our city development should be looking for every possible opportunity to welcome companies such as Popeyes to locate on Route 16.

Its worth it.

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