🗞️ Did someone say KFC brekky?

Good morning. KFC is trialling a breakfast menu on the Gold Coast and pushing closing times to midnight, betting that Gen Z wants fried chicken at both ends of the day.

Collins Foods reckons breakfast is 27% of all fast food spend although we’d love to meet anyone who has ever woken up craving a Zinger burger.

The launch comes on the back of a successful trial at Sydney Airport and franchisees are the ones who'll be buying the coffee machines and finding a barista to run them.

All the headlines and more below…

KFC TRIALS BREAKFAST AT 16 GOLD COAST STORES AND EXTENDS HOURS TO MIDNIGHT

Collins Foods, KFC's largest Australian franchisee with nearly 300 stores, will pilot a breakfast menu on the Gold Coast and extend closing times to midnight to target Gen Z and shift workers. The move follows a year driven by menu hits like Zinger Banh Mi and a viral sauce that lifted sales while rivals struggled.

The breakfast push mirrors Guzman y Gomez's success with its Brekkie Burrito. Collins posted record group sales of $1.59B for the 12 months to May, up 8.6%, with net profit jumping 281% to $47.1M.

Marketing professor Gary Mortimer warned franchisees face extra costs for longer hours, new stock, staff retraining and potentially coffee machines to crack a market already dominated by McDonald's and independent cafes.

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

• Australia’s living standards have stagnated as GDP per person has grown just 0.7% a year since 2020, driven by a long productivity slump. LINK

• The Fair Work Commission has proposed a landmark minimum standards order that will give tens of thousands of Uber and DoorDash delivery workers a 25% pay rise to at least $31.30 an hour from 10 August, along with pay transparency, union representation rights and personal accident insurance. LINK

• Australia’s net overseas migration has bolstered aggregate economic growth by adding workers and consumers while exposing structural weaknesses as productivity stalls, inflation persists and real household incomes are squeezed. LINK

• The Grattan Institute has accused the Pharmacy Guild of Australia of using opaque backdoor pricing deals and restrictive rules to double profits for 6,000 community pharmacists and inflate US$3B in annual dispensing charges. LINK

• Wholesale power prices in Victoria spiked to more than US$19,000 per megawatt hour as unexpectedly low output from AGL and Alinta coal plants coincided with poor wind generation. LINK

• Australia has introduced new laws to prevent manipulation in its Murray-Darling Basin water markets as a predicted strong El Niño threatens hotter, drier conditions and water security. LINK

BUNNINGS RELAUNCH TARGETS 1.1M TRADIE MEMBERS AS COMMERCIAL REVENUE HITS 40% OF TOTAL

Bunnings is replacing PowerPass with a six-tiered loyalty program that adds spend-based vouchers, Qantas Business Rewards points and Shell fuel discounts. Members earn a $100 voucher at $2,000 annual spend, then $50 per additional $1,000. The top 3 tiers deliver 15,000, 40,000 and 125,000 Qantas points respectively.

PowerPass launched in 2011 as a transactional discount account and now has over 1.1M members across Australia and New Zealand. Commercial customers asked for tiered benefits tied to ongoing loyalty, not just point-of-sale savings, as Bunnings became more data-capable.

National auction clearance rates have fallen after changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing, but Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland are still recording strong housing construction.

COMPANY NEWS

• Telstra has blamed a bungled software upgrade on an outdated time server for a nationwide outage that blocked more than 600 Triple Zero calls, as a Senate inquiry and ACMA investigations probe possible underinvestment and could trigger civil penalties of up to $30M. LINK

• WiseTech Global rejected media reports of a rift with DSV as it confirms DSV’s transactions grew about 20% in 6 months and their contract runs to September 2028. LINK

• Apple has sued OpenAI for trade secret theft, alleging a coordinated effort led by former Apple executives to solicit confidential product data to develop rival hardware devices. LINK

• Jarden reported a record $281.5M in revenue and a 26.9% profit rise to $54.5M, paying over $70M in staff bonuses and advancing majority employee ownership plans. LINK

• OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Work, a new GPT-5.6-powered AI agent that connects to workplace apps to automate multi-step tasks like information gathering, analysis and content creation. LINK

• Coles is close to agreeing a roughly $4B acquisition of Greencross, owner of Petbarn, which would be one of Australia's largest retail deals and expand beyond supermarkets. LINK

• IAG has invested in AI-powered start-up Adaptive Insurance through its Firemark Ventures arm as it seeks early exposure to trigger-based payout models and future-shaping technologies. LINK

• Meta scrapped its newly launched Muse Image AI feature that used public Instagram content for image generation after widespread privacy backlash. LINK

• Judo Bank has shifted from cautious small business lending to rapid expansion into riskier property and construction loans, as it warns of US$116M to US$122M in potential 2025-26 bad debts. LINK

• Glamour has launched Glamour Australia as a social-first, video-led platform targeting Gen Z and Millennials on TikTok and Instagram, leveraging its 48M-reader global beauty authority. LINK

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CHART OF THE DAY

How global population growth is slowing

ONE MORE SCROLL

Editor’s Pick: How a $400K job exposed conflicts of interest at University of Wollongong.

Draft Pick: England fans revel in World Cup win over Norway.

Doctor’s Pick: Do different body types affect our training needs?

TRIVIA

Here are four True or False questions to get you started for your Monday:

1. Shaving makes your hair grow back thicker and darker.

2. Vomiting is the primary way vultures defend themselves from predators.

3. Chameleons change colour primarily to camouflage themselves and blend into their surroundings.

4. Glass is a highly viscous liquid that flows slowly over centuries.

Answers below

OUR SOCIALS

ANSWERS

1. False. Shaving cuts the hair at the surface, giving it a blunt tip that feels coarse as it grows out, but it doesn't change the thickness or colour.
2. True. When threatened, vultures will projectile-vomit their stomach acid and half-digested food to foul up, blind, or scare off predators.
3. False. Chameleons change colour mainly to regulate their body temperature or to communicate their mood and social status to other chameleons.
4. False. Glass is an amorphous solid. The uneven thickness in old cathedral windows is due to how the glass was manufactured back then, not because it flowed down.

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