Jiffy Lube
The new owner of Jiffy Lube franchises in Mankato and Rochester, Tony Chahine (pronounced Shuh-HEE-nee), was raised in a close-knit, middle-class family in Los Angeles where dad had a security-related job and mom stayed at home.
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Month: January 2012
Rise to The Highest
Several Connect Business Magazine readers have inquired about sursum ad summum, the phrase I have been placing atop my signature below. Translated, this Latin means, “Rise to the Highest,” and was the official motto of my Ohio high school, Walnut Hills.
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Before starting my editorial yarn, I first have to thank our panel of Minnesota State College of Business professors for choosing our 2012 Business Person of the Year, an honor shared this year by North Mankato kettle corn moguls Dan and Angie Bastian.
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Brian Maciej
Brian Maciej and his business, Lime Valley Advertising, are a study in contrasts. The company 47-year-old Maciej owns is located in a two-story French Second Empire home in Mankato. The 3,700 square feet of space provide an elegant setting for the 16 offices from which a staff of eleven provides integrated marketing for clients.
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Dan & Angie Bastian
Dan and Angie Bastian of Angie’s Artisan Treats—the parent company of Angie’s Kettle Corn—are pop artists. They have turned ordinary, slightly sweet and salty kettle corn into an artistic subject, a 180-employee North Mankato manufacturing facility into a painter’s palette, and grocery store shelves into a consumer canvas. And a ravenous public devours this pop art.
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Bill Eckles
In 2003, Bill Eckles felt undeserving and unworthy after his father named him chief executive officer of Blue Earth-based BEVCOMM. In 2012, he feels undeserving and unworthy after being named a Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year finalist. In both cases, the evaluators—the first, his father, and the second, our panel of Minnesota State College of Business judges—saw something in Eckles he didn’t.
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Little Giant Fudge
Little Giant Fudge, which operates inside Shell Food Mart at I-90 and US 169, has fast become a regional magnet for attracting I-90 travelers, said 45-year-old Kitchen Manager Patti Arends in a Connect Business Magazine telephone interview.
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