New York SBDC Research Network

Tom Morley (from the Westchester SBDC) recently forwarded me an email that began like this: "Whole Foods Market, a national grocery chain with seven stores in New York, recently started a new program to provide low-interest, long-term loans to small producers around the country. We would very much like to let small producers of food products in New York know about the program." Part of this company's mission is that their produce be as fresh as possible, and make these loans available to farmers of "locally grown" produce (for reasons best explained here ). Of Whole Foods Market's seven locations in New York State , none are farther north than White Plains. However, they define "locally grown" as "produce that has traveled less than a day (7 or fewer hours) from the farm to our facility." Eligible products include agricultural crops, value-added food products, and other all-natural grocery items. This definition, then, makes most of the

Commissioned by Capital One and conducted by BusinessWeek Research Services , the survey looks at confidence, expectations and hopes of small business owners. The survey asks small business owners where they seek business advice, in this order: colleague, family or friends, CPA or accountant, business association followed by consultant, lawyer, commercial lender and other. “In their own words” are sections given to hearing actual comments from business owners on these topics: How Would You use $50,000 to Improve Your Business? How Did You Start and Then Grow Your Business to its Current Level?

Today's New York Times features the article "At Netflix, Victory for Voices Over Keystrokes" . It discusses how the online movie rental business is trying a new tack (actually, they're returning to an old tack) vis a vis customer service: the telephone. The company has de-emphasized its email address on its website, and has heightened the presence of a toll-free number that is available 24/7. In addition, the call center is located just outside of Portland, OR, and not in India or Singapore. I find this interesting on a few levels. Netflix believes, in the face of increased competition from Blockbuster's new online service, that they should promote the actual voices of friendly customer service reps as a distinguishing characteristic not found at Blockbuster. This kind of emphasis is something that the business literature has recommended to small businesses in the face of big-box competition, but Netflix still is the market leader in this industry. So - does locat

I tend to write “thanks” a lot. And not just because I’m a grateful person (although I am). It’s just my usual email sign-off , probably because I tend to be asking for things, or thanking you all for asking us great questions. Maybe I should start expanding my repertoire. This recent article from Entrepreneur.com discusses a variety of email closers, and what they say about you. “ What your sign-off is really saying .” Here’s an older USA Today article on the subject. Another good source of email etiquette info: Online Writing Lab at Purdue University

Ofttimes, I see someone send a URL via e-mail and it spreads onto the second line of the posting. The first line of the address is hyperlinked, but the second is not. This becomes cumbersome for the end user. Two suggestions: See if the address can be manually shortened. I've noticed that in some newspaper and magazine databases, an address is created to indicate not only the story, but the section and the date. If removing that information still gets you to the story, shorten it. An example: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=613944&category=FRONTPG&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=8/14/2007 can be shortened to http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=613944 , and is actually more likely to work over time, for some arcane reasons. The other method is a website TinyURL!™ . Put in even that shortened, 57-character, version of the URL above and you'll end up with http://tinyurl.com/yrwmgk , a more manageable 25-character URL.

A big part of how successful we are at finding information is having the correct terms. We generally hope that the client will be knowledgeable enough in their field to provide some good key words but of course this isn't always possible. We hear of business incubators often enough but kitchen incubators are becoming more prevalent. I worked on a request yesterday for a a list of commercial rental kitchens in the NYC metro area. The examples I came across were not all in NYC area and there were a few good pieces on a kitchen incubator in San Francisco that I thought were interesting. I thought I'd share what I found here. WHEDCo Urban Horizons Kitchen rents a "4,000 sq ft state-of-the-art, commercial kitchen space." They serve the New York City metropolitan area especially aimed at women and minority businesses. They also state that "tenants are required to incorporate in order to secure insurance covering product liability. Some of their clients have been Curr

Can you walk from your home to a grocery store, library or movie theater? How about from your office? Check out Walk Score to determine just how pedestrian-friendly a location might be. You simply enter an address into the search field, and the site offers a "walk score" based on the proximity of parks, shops, restaurants, schools and all those other necessities. The site's mission: "We help homebuyers , renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment." I'd think it would also be useful to a business interested in attracting foot traffic, and wanting to know about nearby facilities. The site recognizes that it's algorithms can't account for features like highways or bodies of water that might make a route impassable on foot. But