Openers

Bubba Gets Wired
Been to a truck stop recently? The bigger ones have become mini-malls that offer everything from fast food, showers and haircuts to leather jackets and custom auto parts. And the level of services keeps growing: A Fort Lauderdale firm, Park 'N View Inc., is providing cable TV and phone services to truck drivers in the privacy of their cabs. Drivers who pull in for the night just plug into jacks that the company installs at berths in participating truck stops.

Park 'N View, run by CEO Ian Williams, has attracted more than 10,000 trucker-subscribers in a little more than a year and is growing by several hundred a week. The company has 40 installations at truck stops in about 15 states including California, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio, and expects to be operating in 35 states by the summer, with capacity for more than 100,000 truckers by the end of 1998.

Park 'N View is also attracting investors' attention: A group of venture capital firms including Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc., an international private equity firm, recently gave Park 'N View $15 million to rev up its expansion. Will the company go public? "That's the company's game plan - at the right time," says Stephen Conkling, Park 'N View's chief financial officer.

Conkling also says the company will expand its services beyond cable TV and phone: A small but growing number of truckers want Internet service, he says. "Some use it to keep contact with family; some use it as a vehicle to pick up loads; and for others it's pure entertainment.''

TALK OF FLORIDA

Return of The Grapefruit League
The crack of the bat signals the annual time of renewal for baseball fans everywhere. For Florida, the rite of spring has important economic implications, but exactly how important remains something of a mystery. The last study dates back to 1991. Called "Economic and Fiscal Impacts Associated with Major League Baseball Spring Training Operations in the State of Florida," it was done by Van Horn Associates, a sports marketing firm in Allentown, Pa., and pegged money generated from various sources at about $300 million during the six weeks of spring training. That figure has been rolled out ever since by teams to justify new baseball complexes and other demands on local communities, even though much has changed since then. For example, the 1994-1995 strike sharply cut attendance, which failed to recover to pre-strike levels in 1996. There are also 20 teams now training in Florida, up from 18 in 1991.

This year brings other significant changes to the Grapefruit League. A number of teams will move after this spring, including the Atlanta Braves, who are leaving West Palm Beach for a highly touted, new training facility at Disney World. And the St. Louis Cardinals, after 57 years in St. Petersburg, will move to a new facility in Jupiter, which they will share with the Montreal Expos. The move is to make room at Al Lang Field for the new American League team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which will play the regular season at Tropicana Field - the domed stadium in St. Petersburg.

CONSULTING ON ETIQUETTE

Welcome Back, Emily Post
Which one's the salad fork? Is that your bread plate or your neighbor's? Quick, your promotion may depend on it. A cottage industry has sprung up recently that caters to present and future executives who weren't to the manor born.

"People are really insecure," says Christine Kurtz-White, who runs Miami's Manners and More with her daughter, Virginia Kurtz Schrader. They charge $250 to $300 an hour to train corporate types in everything from using the correct forks and goblets to mingling properly (wear your name tag on your right lapel; it will help you establish eye contact when you shake hands).

Clearwater-based etiquette and image consultant Sidney Bayne specializes in international protocol and dining: Your napkin is to the left of your fork or in the water goblet on the right side of your plate. "Someone picks up the wrong napkin and it throws the whole table off," she points out.

A few other tips from Bayne:
• At a cocktail party, keep your drink in your left hand so that when you shake hands you aren't offering a cold, wet hand.

• When passing rolls, butter and so forth around the table, don't change directions. All items should go counterclockwise.

• Your bread plate is to your left.

- Barbara Miracle

Etiquette Alert!
Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?

1. Plate and flatware don't line up one inch from the bottom of the place mat.

2. Spoons should not be left in bowls.

3. Napkin should be on the lefthand side of the plate.

4. Blade of dinner knife should be facing toward the plate.

5. Butter knife should be at top of bread plate with blade facing toward the dinner plate.

6. Butter plate should be on the lefthand side of dinner plate, and water goblet, cup and saucer should be on the right. All solids go to the left of the dinner plate; all liquids to the right.

7. Soup bowl should be placed on the plate.

Halfbacks, Sharks And Grants
Dun & Bradstreet says Florida was ninth among the 50 states in competing for the more than 56,000 firms - and 1 million jobs - that relocated between 1991 and 1995; the state is doing less well at attracting in-migration, however; according to the U.S. Census Bureau - Georgia is growing faster. Meanwhile, some have dubbed the retirees who flee Florida for Georgia or the Carolinas "halfbacks" ... halfway back from where they came. Some reports out of Georgia indicate they don't want to pay for municipal services there, either. ... The National Marine Fisheries Service wants more stringent limits on some of the 39 protected species of sharks in the state's waters. ... Florida TaxWatch says the state is doing better, but is still not getting its fair share of federal grant money - $650.62 per Floridian compared to $866.47 per capita nationally.

Tags: Florida Small Business, Politics & Law, Business Florida