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Monday's Daily Pulse
What you need to know about Florida today
› Are all the Florida Keys’ Kmarts closing for good? Indications suggest most likely
Two venerable Kmart stores in the Florida Keys advertised temporary job openings on Friday. “Temporary” because the listings for customer service reps, cashiers and fixture removal positions on the Transform Holdco website, the parent company of Kmart and Sears, are all marked “*Store Closing.”
› Lake Okeechobee recedes, but not enough. Discharges continue.
Lake Okeechobee discharges will be reduced to the Caloosahatchee River but will continue at the same rate to the St. Lucie River — indefinitely. The Caloosahatchee will get 969 million gallons per day, down from an average 1.3 billion gallons a day since Feb. 13, Col. Andrew Kelly, Florida commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, announced in a news conference call.
› Tampa pet food company aims to increase sales through in-store recommendations
Statistics suggest in the pet food industry, if a company gets a customer to buy three bags of food in three months, the loyalty rate — the likelihood they’ll stick with the brand — is about 80%, says Better Choice Co. CEO Scott Lerner. “It’s pretty rare for people to switch,” Lerner says. “That’s an opportunity. If you gain a consumer, you can keep them a long time. The challenge is to get people when they need to switch.”
› Port Canaveral to host conversion work for five cargo ships to allow use by military
Port Canaveral will be the site this spring and summer of a project that will convert five cargo container ships so they can be used to transport U.S. military supplies. The Hapag-Lloyd ships will undergo various upgrades so they can qualify for inclusion in the federal Maritime Security Program, thus meeting Department of Defense requirements for carrying military supplies.
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