Category: Business Service

For many years, the homeless in our community and others have used Shopping Carts to store, transport and hold their personal effects. Recently, I have been privy to a number of discussions regarding a renewed push to recover Carts for local businesses, from whom they were taken.This is not a new conversation, in fact over […]

I’m working on a two day workshop program for a local non-profit and recently, when we met to discuss the curriculum, the conversation turned to “Brand Value versus Price Value”.   Brand is a concept we have explored quite often in this column space in recent months. As you know, I think of Brand as […]

The Technical Stuff A BIA is a Business Improvement Association. It is formed under authority of the community charter (sections 210-219, you can read it here). Its primary purpose (defined in section 215 (1)) is: Carrying out studies or developing reports Improving, beautifying or maintaining streets, sidewalks or municipally-owned land, buildings or other structures Removing […]

I recently invested some of my very scarce dollars in the purchase of a service that I thought would be really impactful in the long run. The person who sold it to me was well known in the community, seemed to be a community champion, and was generally a bright happy person. When the sales […]

Recently, I went to breakfast at a smaller café in my city. It seated about forty. When I arrived, there was only one waitress on duty. She was trying her hardest but couldn’t keep up with the flow of customers. Orders took 15 – 20 minutes to take, tables were not cleared for new customers, […]