Businesses based on a basic requirement of life: last update: January 2007 | view other industries
	Food and Food processing Meet Dr. Alvin Phelps, his wife, Ann and son Al of Angell & Phelps in Daytona Beach, Florida. 1407: Meet Anne Beiler; she makes soft, hand-rolled Auntie Anne's Pretzels from the hamlet of Gap, PA. 1503: Meet Wanda and Glenn Walser of Automated Food, the corn dog people. Meet Heliodoro Valadez, the founder of Best Buy Tortilla Factory in El Paso, Texas. 1507: Meet the three Calise brothers, Calise & Sons Bakery of Providence, Rhode Island. Meet Debra St. Claire, founder of EcoNatural in Boulder, Colorado with breath mints for vegetarians. Meet Chef Thomas Keller who makes evo from The French Laundry, a sideline of olive oils and vinegars. 1005: Meet Hope Lancarte and the four generations in Joe T. Garcia's family business selling salsa on the web. 1412: Meet Bill Sugars & Pat Elmquest; Mickey Finn's Brewery & Pub transformed Libertyville, Illinois. 1008: Meet Cindy McEntee, the keeper of a legacy at Mo's Chowder in Newport, Oregon. 1502: Meet Vicki and Paul Scharfman of Specialty Cheese in Lowell, Wisconsin. A legacy in the industry, Gary Walls, was the founder of Trailblazer Foods of Portland, Oregon. Your Business: Your Name, Your City or Town, and Your State. You write the script! Your Key Idea as a title Consider food and eating and health Introducing soul food Prime Resources Food Products Association (FPA): In January 2007 FPA and Grocery Manufacturers Association merged to become the world's largest trade association representing the food, beverage, and consumer products industry). For a somewhat comprehensive listing of food-related associations - allfoodbusiness.com ( National Food Industry Associations). Small businesses are often associated with specialty foods and there is a huge National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. If you are into the mechanics of processing food, also turn to the Food Processing Suppliers Association and the Food Processing and Machinery Supply Association. These are large and long-standing associations. But, check out your regional and state associations as well. For example, in New York there is the Small Scale Food Processors Association and another just for British Columbia and Alberta. We always turn to the national and regional trade associations as the last step in the process of selecting a business owner to appear on the show. We simply ask, "Do you know this business? Would they be a good representative for your industry?" Television to make a difference Key pages: Each episode has its own home page, an overview with links to that business, the complete transcript, a case study guide prepared for business schools, and streaming video. Today, these case study guides are part of the curriculum of most business schools in the USA and around the world. Also, more links are coming here: Del's Leomnade, Rowland Roasters (coffee), SiloCaf (coffee), Sakata Farms, and Solid Gold Health Products (Pet Food).   We will work with every national trade association to select a business: First, we turn to the PBS-station manager and get permission to do an episode of the show in their neighborhood. Next we contact every local Chamber of Commerce within reach of the station's signal. Usually there are 40 to 70 local chambers. We invite each to nominate four or five businesses that have the qualities outlined within our selection process. Usually there are over 200 businesses nominated. We invite their local small business advocates (Economic Development, Better Business Bureau, the mayors, the Governor, Workforce Initiative, people among the SBA-SBDC-SCORE, the business press, business professors, CPAs, and others) to vote. These are the people who know the hearts and minds of these business owners. They vote and we emerge with a list of the top ten. We then re-engage the station manager, the CPAs of each company, and each of their national trade associations. Nobody can pay or has ever paid to be on this show. We are looking for the finest roles models for each of us, our industries, and our children. Today, everybody is a producer: We believe that the rotten heart of television can be replaced with the vibrant heart of creativity, value-laden work, and hope for the future. We have invited our loyal stations and our legacy sponsors of the show to take over SmallBusinessSchool for the future. We also invite all the Chambers and National Trade Associations to join them. By working together the productions can be increased from 26 per year to as many as 4000 where 3948 are local episodes. There are 210 Designated Market Areas in the USA. Within each DMA there should be at least local 10 episodes per year. In several DMAs there should be as many as 26 new episodes per year. Also, the show is broadcast in over 100 other countries via the Voice of America. We wll work with every station and every country to produce local episodes and to be part of the new management of SmallBusinessSchool. The only hope to cure the madness within the world is to lift up the best role models that we can find knowing, of course, that we all have clay feet. None of us are perfect.

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