Chick-fil-A widens sales lead over bigger rival KFC

Chick-fil-A widened its lead over rival KFC as the No. 1 chicken chain in the U.S. last year.

Preliminary data from food industry researcher Technomic shows that Atlanta-based Chick-Fil-A held the lead because its locations are much busier, even though there are far fewer of them.

Chick-fil-A first surpassed KFC as the top chicken chain in 2012. KFC is still much bigger globally.

Last year, Chick-fil-A had 1,775 locations and pulled in $5.05 billion in sales, according to Technomic. KFC had 4,438 stores that brought in $4.22 billion in U.S. sales – a decline of 2 percent.

Samsung says Apple suit ploy to stem competition

Samsung Electronics told jurors at the opening of a $2 billion trial that Apple’s patent case is really an attack on Google’s Android operating system and a ploy to stem smartphone competition that has overwhelmed iPhone sales.

Apple resorted to suing Samsung to try to win an infringement verdict and a court order blocking sales of phones that use Android, John Quinn, a lawyer for the Suwon, South Korea-based company told the federal jury on Tuesday.

Both companies presented opening arguments on Tuesday in their second U.S. patent trial over a smartphone market that was valued at $338.2 billion last year

Starbucks learns: Let customers eat cake

Starbucks has found that Americans really like their sliced cake.

The Seattle-based coffee company says it will start bringing back its cake slices in response to customer feedback. It had been eliminating the slices as part of a staggered rollout of its pricier new baked goods. In their place, Starbucks offered what looked like miniature loaves.

The new baked goods have so far been rolled out to roughly half of the company’s 11,500 U.S. locations. That means about half of stores never got rid of the cake slices.

Eurozone jobless rate still high despite recession end

The 18-country eurozone may have emerged from recession last year, but that has done little good to the jobs market, with unemployment stuck near a record high since then.

A new report on Tuesday showed that while the number of jobless in the currency union dipped in February, the unemployment rate remained at 11.9 percent – where it has been since October after peaking at 12.1 percent earlier in the year.

The figures, published by the Eurostat statistical agency, illustrate how long it will take for the continent’s hardest-hit countries to return to economic health.