March 28, 2024

Thursday's Daily Pulse

What You Need to Know About Florida Today

Will Short Gorham | 12/9/2010

› Ikea Employees Get Bonus -- Assembly Required
Ikea this week gave all 12,400 American employees a holiday gift, a free mountain bike, partly to say thank you, and partly to encourage bike commuting. And in true Ikea fashion, the bike comes in a big cardboard box and employees have to put it together themselves from black-and-white instructions — celebrating the same do-it-yourself ethos that customers encounter with most Ikea furniture. "This year, Ikea wanted to do something a bit more special to say thank you to coworkers for their hard work, while supporting each coworker in living a healthy, sustainable life," said Ikea spokeswoman Debra Faulk. "And talk about sustainable transport!" Last year, Ikea gave Tampa workers $50 gift card to Darden-brand restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Ikea had these bikes custom made and decorated with the company colors of blue and yellow. As of Wednesday, several hundred Tampa Ikea workers had picked up their bikes, though about 40 unassembled bikes lay stacked in boxes in a storage area at the store.

› Orange-Juice Futures Jump to Three-Year High on Florida Freeze
Orange-juice futures rose to a three- year high in New York as freezing weather increased the prospect of crop damage in Florida, the world’s biggest citrus grower after Brazil. “The early part of next week is what we need to focus on,” when temperatures may dip below freezing after frigid weather this week, said Donald Keeney, a senior agricultural meteorologist at MDA Information Systems Inc. in Rockville, Maryland. Futures have risen 29 percent this year, partly on concern that dry conditions and frost may harm U.S. crops. “You’re still seeing continued weather concerns,” said Jodi Timmons, a vice president at Global Commodity Futures LLC in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Next week’s forecast is “right on the border line where it could be a problem,” she said.

› Port Authority Board Selects Engineering Firm for Hanjin Terminal
The year-long freeze on designing a cargo terminal for Hanjin thawed today when the Jacksonville Port Authority board picked an engineering firm and said the terminal could be completed by the end of 2014. The board selected Halcrow Inc. to design the terminal, which will be built just west of the Dames Point bridge on land used now for the cruise ship terminal. A year ago, JaxPort put selection of an engineering firm on hold after Hanjin said it would not continue to invest time and money in the planned terminal because Hanjin wasn't making progress toward a labor agreement with the International Longshoremen's Association. But Hanjin and the union have since reached agreement.

› State Licensing Agency Fires 3 over Barbershop Raids
A state licensing agency confirmed that three members of its staff, including regional and statewide program administrators, have been fired based on the agency's internal review of a series of unorthodox inspections of Orange County barbershops with sheriff's deputies. A spokeswoman for the Department of Business and Professional Regulation confirmed that Regional Program Administrator Dan Hogan, Statewide Unlicensed Activity Program Administrator Michael Green and Investigation Specialist Derick Fontanez were let go on Friday. Spokeswoman Alexis Antonacci Lambert said the firings were "based on the findings of the [DBPR] Inspector General's report" on a series of sweeps of Orange County barbers conducted by the state licensing agency with sheriff's deputies this summer and fall. The sweeps of the minority-run Orange County barbershops, including major operations Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 and a smaller operation Oct. 8, resulted in 35 arrests on "barbering without an active license" charge — which is nearly unheard of in Florida.

› Fundraiser Site Helps Troubled Charities, Deal Hunters
Care to donate to a charity and get a good deal from a local restaurant or dance studio at the same time? GoodTwo, which allows individuals and non-profits to raise money by offering deals from local and national brands, is launching this week in South Florida and other select cities. It's geared to be a fundraising tool for charities facing tough economic times, while taking advantage of the popularity of group buying sites like Groupon, said Bill Yucatonis, chief executive of GoodTwo's parent, Needham, Mass.-based CoupMe Worldwide. `It's really taking the craze of group buying and putting it in the hands of fundraisers,'' Yucatonis said. "Everyone wins -- the merchant gets customers, the fundraiser gets incremental fundraising dollars without fatiguing the donors, and the donors get a great deal while supporting a cause they really care about."

› New TV Show Set in '50s Miami Beach
Atlantic City has HBO's Prohibition-era Boardwalk Empire. 1960's Manhattan has Mad Men on AMC. Now Miami Beach will have its own starring role in a period drama. Magic City, a series set in a fictional Miami Beach hotel in the late 1950s -- when the Rat Pack played and Fidel Castro took power in Cuba -- got the green light this week for 10 episodes from Starz Entertainment. Casting is set to start soon, and production will begin in 2011, though it's still unclear how much, if any, of the series will be filmed in Miami. The show is set to air on the Starz cable channel in 2012. Writer and producer Mitch Glazer is intimately familiar with the subject matter: Growing up in Miami Beach in the 1950s and 60s, he accompanied his engineer father to work at the area's most glamorous hotels, including the Fontainebleau, Eden Roc, Deauville and Carillon.

› Fewer British Travelers Coming to Pinellas County
Amid signs that Pinellas tourism is pulling out of a two-year slump, one important part of the business remains in decline. The British aren't coming. Or at least not in the numbers they did before. An estimated 50,000 fewer Europeans stayed overnight in Pinellas for the first 10 months of 2010, a drop of 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to Research Data Services in Tampa. Tourists from the United Kingdom traditionally make up about 70 percent of European visitors to Pinellas, with Germans accounting for most of the rest. "Europe will come back (next year)," said Walter Klages, president of Research Data, which conducts visitor surveys for the county's tourism agency. "The British market, no. The German market very definitely will."

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Bitter-to-swallow cocoa costs force chocolate shops to raise prices
Bitter-to-swallow cocoa costs force chocolate shops to raise prices

Central Floirda chocolate shops are left with a bitter taste as cocoa prices hit an all-time high earlier this week.

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