The new Black Friday: Small businesses rely on Saturday promotion to boost sales
Small businesses throughout the Tri-Counties will offer their own promotional events and discounts as part of the most recent addition to the holiday shopping calendar, Small Business Saturday.
Read More →Study: Skilled workers priced out of San Luis Obispo
The findings highlight a pervasive mismatch between the high price of even starter homes and the number of jobs that pay wages high enough to support those prices. Experts say the gap is a significant roadblock to the state’s economic growth.
Read More →Refinery rail project would ease crude oil supply concerns
A Phillips 66 refinery on the Nipomo Mesa is hoping to supplement its dwindling inflow of California crude by extending a rail spur that will allow it to import oil from out of state.
The refinery — tucked away off of Highway 1 in South San Luis Obispo County — is a little-known yet critical part of the Golden State’s petroleum infrastructure. It processes the state’s heavy, sour crude into semi-refined products that flow through 200 miles of pipeline to Conoco’s 128,000-barrel-a-day facility in Rodeo in the Bay Area, where it is turned into gasoline.
Read More →Ratings agencies unfazed as county pension costs rise
Despite dire warnings that future pension costs could cause a fiscal meltdown for tri-county governments, credit ratings for Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo county bonds remain mostly unaffected by looming gaps in their retirement obligation funding.
Standard & Poor’s, a leading rating agency, ranks all three counties near the top of a scale that spans from its highest AAA to C, the lowest rating a bond can have without defaulting. Santa Barbara County carries the agency’s second highest AA-plus designation. Ventura County is assigned a slightly lower AA-rating this year and SLO County is ranked AA-minus.
Read More →First coffee, then the world: Teeccino breaks into breakfast market
After spending the past 18 years growing the leading coffee alternative product in the country, Carpinteria-based Teeccino is expanding into the fast-growing health foods market.
Read More →Soda space race: Rocket Fizz goes national with franchising
Rocket Fizz founders Robert Powells and Ryan Morgan have built a nationwide soda-pop enterprise out of quirky novelty creations such as their best-selling bacon-flavored soda and glow-in-the-dark “Martian Poop” soda.
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