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Mondays with Rick: Vaccine Mandate

Editor’s Note: Litigation is pending all over the country to stop the mandates to force Americans to get vaccinated. Proving health or religious reasons to be excluded has not proved to be an easy bar to reach. In the CSRA, many companies like Cardinal Health and Beasley Broadcasting have vax mandates in place from their home offices and they have both lost key employees, who’ve refused. At University System of Georgia academic/educational institutions, the only schools impacted by the mandate are those that have contracts with the federal government.  In

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Neil Gordon November 29, 2021 1 Comment
Consumer Stories

“Nutty” retailer ready for big move to Washington Road

Brian and Kam Kyzer plan to relocate their gourmet nut business to a much larger space early next year. Watanut, currently located at 3604 Verandah Drive, Suite A in Augusta, is moving to 3311 Washington Road near Infiniti of Augusta. “It’s 10,000 square feet, so at least four times larger” than their current location, says Brian. “We’ve outgrown our current space.” He states they look forward to having more retail and storage space, as well as a larger kitchen. The business sells a variety of items, such as nuts, cookies,

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Josh Heath November 24, 2021 No Comments
Consumer Stories

Exclusive U.S. Equine Business in Aiken

Maxine Maxine Emerich has established herself and earned credibility for her Engineered Equine Performance (EEP) business in a short period of time as Aiken’s “Horse Business” continues to spread out and diversify. Aiken was never a “one horse town.” For most of the past 130 years, it was primarily a three-horse town: Thoroughbred racehorses, fox hunters and polo “ponies.” Of course, several other horse disciplines began to train here over the years, but it has been in the past 20 years or so that it seems the whole equestrian world

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Stephen Delaney Hale November 23, 2021 No Comments
Top Story

Aiken/Augusta BizBitz

Guitar Pull Business, Community Service and Fun! Congrats to Kicks 99 for another great Guitar Pull concert—after a one year hiatus due to Covid-19. Yours truly was amongst hundreds of Beasley Broadcasting advertising clients that got complimentary tickets to the show. Rather than take a business client of mine, I took my eight year-old daughter Lyndee (pictured above) to her first concert! Business-wise we both noticed the care local companies took to offer giveaways in the “swag-bags” and the quality of the commercials on the concert screen. Associated Credit Union

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Neil Gordon November 22, 2021 No Comments
Consumer Stories

Faith Friday: Business owner credits faith and family values for industry staying power

Trust in God. Treat people right. Help the community. These three core principles propel Augusta native and wholesale retailer Keith Brown as much now as they did almost 40 years ago. Support from others helps, too. “There are a lot of people who pray for my success,” Brown says. “I’m deeply rooted in my faith.”  Brown’s roots have kept him grounded in the screen printing and embroidery business over the years. ZZ’s Best Tees began as a retail venture he wasn’t sure would last. But, after returning home from Howard

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Monique Williams November 19, 2021 No Comments
B2B Stories

Amazon regional director speaks about investing in employees

For Robert Packett, much of Amazon’s success is due to the hard work of its more than 1 million employees worldwide. While the company utilizes state-of-the-art technology, that doesn’t reduce the need for workers to fulfill customer orders and ship billions of packages each year. Packett – Amazon’s Southeastern Regional Director of Operations – was the keynote speaker at the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Luncheon Series on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at Savannah Rapids Pavilion. In this role, he oversees a team of more than 36,000 employees. “As we

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Josh Heath November 18, 2021 No Comments
B2B Stories

Two businessmen purchase the Boy Scouts a $1.7 Million headquarters

After a unique sealed bidding process with a deadline that came and went several months ago— a creative, near $1.7 Million deal was struck by Sherman and Hemstreet Real Estate, the Augusta Jewish Community Center—the property owner and Georgia-Carolina Nature and Adventure Center, LLC—the private group that bought the 26 acre facility and blessed the Boy Scouts with a long-term charitable lease. It will be called the GCC Adventure Center. The two businessmen grew up in the scouting program and asked to remain anonymous. “We will lease it for $1

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Neil Gordon November 17, 2021 No Comments
Consumer Stories

Simon Says: Augusta’s unemployment picture

The headline unemployment rate for the Augusta MSA fell to a record low of 2.8% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis unemployment has been at 3.1% for the last three months.  Other labor market data for Augusta also barely moved in September. Employment fell by 400 jobs, average weekly earnings rose by $3, hours worked fell by about 12 minutes and the labor force contained 373 fewer people. Putting all these variables into the Augusta Labor Market Index suggest there has been little improvement locally, with the LMI is

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Dr. Simon Medcalfe, AU Economics Professor November 16, 2021 1 Comment
B2B Stories

Augusta BizBitz

More to the story of the German manufacturer coming to Augusta. It’s ironic on my 58th birthday today, I am peeling the layers of the onion off of this story in which Richmond County and State leaders outbid 100 other communities for the right to bring Aurubis to South Augusta with the promise of 125 high-paying jobs. One of my favorite roles in local TV news was that of “Troubleshooter” for NBC 26 in the 1990’s. I thrived on taking a story EVERY outlet had (the Aurubis Press Release dropped

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Neil Gordon November 15, 2021 No Comments
Closings

Long-time car audio business closes its doors

After 33 years in business, a local car audio installation company has closed its doors permanently. Founded in 1988, Anything Audio was located at 3906 Washington Road in Augusta. The business’s owner, Richard Hurt, says he decided to close for a combination of reasons. At 63, Hurt figured it was time to retire and enjoy spending time with his first grandchild. “I wanted to retire at 60 and then thought I could hold on until 66,” he states. “I made it halfway.” Hurt say he faced significant supply-chain issues. “Right

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Josh Heath November 12, 2021 No Comments
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