Subject: Manufacturing Sector

• Pickleball Intramurals

  August 21, 2008

• Jilted Contractor Sues KCMO

  May 12, 2008

• Junkie Jukebox: Adult Swim Jams

  June 6, 2008

• Hip-hop & high style

  May 25, 2000

• Breakfast Buffet: 12/30

  Wait? Is this blog post even about food? It starts off on the subject but quickly veers to Twitter. You've been warned. [Hip Suburban White Guy]New Years' Resolutions are coming quick and often now. Dan Regan from KC Irish Fest has a good list of what he hopes to accomplish including, "I will get a full 8 hours of sleep a night Irish Fest weekend and will eat three square, healthful and nutritious meals each day, while limiting myself to one small glass of light beer." I wish him the best of luc

  December 30, 2008

• One less recycling center in 2009

                                    The drop-off center at 80th and MetcalfThanks to the tanking economy, the growing stream of recycled materials snapped up by hungry manufacturers in early 2008 has turned into a mountain of worthless trash entering 2009. Waste haulers, like Deffenbaugh Industries, have seen the market for recovered materials plunge to unprecedented lows. So it's no surprise that, in the New

  December 31, 2008

• Quiz of the day

  What can you make with the following:applesbutterhotdogcoffeepeanutchickenbananaGive up?

  January 12, 2009

• Three Dog's treats are safe

  Barf Blog has a post about an elderly Georgian dog (Ozzie) being one of the salmonella outbreak's casualties. While the owner believes the bacteria was passed from peanut butter crackers meant for humans, plenty of doggie treats use peanut butter as an ingredient. The FDA says throw this dog food away. "Product recalls now include some pet food products that contain peanut paste that was made by [Peanut Corporation of America] PCA. While the risk of animals contracting salmonellosis is minimal,

  January 28, 2009

• Best Candy Innovation

  October 9, 2003

• MAD's toys get primetime play on Heroes

  I stopped watching Heroes midway through last season. I couldn't take any more annoying story lines. It's like the writers were trying to drive people away. I know, let's make Hiro even more annoying! Let's make him 10-years-old! But then I heard that the guy who created the short-lived but amazing Pushing Daisies was writing Heroes again, I gave the show another chance. It's better. But I kept seeing these commercials.  Look to the left of the geeky shop owner (I'm pretty sure it's sup

  February 23, 2009

• Best Hope for the Planet

  October 7, 2004

• Best Building Named for a Bad Company

  October 7, 2004

• COOL now implemented

  Flickr: Phototram Last month new country's agriculture secretary, former governor of Iowa and friend to some people in the local food movement Tom Vilsack, announced the COOL program would go ahead as planned. COOL stands for "Country of Origin Labeling" and, after a delay of nearly four years, the law finally went into full effect on Wednesday. (Portions of it became law last year.) COOL requires manufacturers to clearly label the country of origin on a wide variety of foods including pork, lam

  March 20, 2009

• Are Big Tobacco and Big Food equals?

  Flickr: Dave KnapikWe've been posting an increasing number of law- and litigation-related items on Fat City. Whether that's simply because legislatures are in session, or due to a busy new administration or several food movements reaching maturity I do not know. The latest comes not from law but from academia, where Kelly Brownell and Kenneth Warner, Yale and Michigan professors respectively, argue that the food industry's -- they call it "Big Food" -- products carry many of the same dangers tha

  March 24, 2009

• Daily Briefs: The deadly seriousness of April Fool's Day.

  The first day of the rest of the month: Happy April Fool's Day, or as we knew it in my family, The Father of Lies. I came from Christian snake handlers, and to them, pretty much everything was either "Satan" or "Sodom and Gomorrah." That was the simple binary through which we lensed the whole world. I eventually lost my faith in both God and snake handling (for spiritual purposes), although I still have kind of a warm, fuzzy spot in my heart for rattlesnakes. But what's bred in the bone is --

  April 1, 2009

• Are we really ready for life without American cars?

  November 27, 2008

• For the makers of Shatto Milk, success is cold and tasty

  September 18, 2008

• City Market Melon Festival

  September 4, 2008

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars

  August 14, 2008

• This One's For the Ladies

  July 10, 2008

• RubberMade: Sculpture by Chakaia Booker

  June 5, 2008

• Missouri biologist Frederick vom Saal and his team exposed the dangers of bisphenol A — and earned the wrath of the plastic industry.

  April 24, 2008

• Ford Free Fridays

  January 3, 2008

• Meet the Maker

  Jeremy Madl left Kansas, started creating some of the coolest stuff in the world, and then came home.

  November 1, 2007

• Devil's Advocates

  April 5, 2007

• A Sugar Binge

  November 9, 2006

• Ethanol Pushers

  September 28, 2006

• Ethanol Pushers

  September 21, 2006

• Next Big Things

  May 25, 2006

• Tommie Sunshine

  December 15, 2005

• Choco-holic

  Steve Almond gets his Candyfreak on.

  May 13, 2004

• Burn and Crash

  For the past few years, some clubgoers got all the free Camels they could smoke. But all good things must come to an end.

  June 5, 2003

• Cash Test

  Ford fights a tax increase by treating Claycomo officials like dummies.

  January 9, 2003

• Tobacco Twist

  Two lawyers say smoking costs an arm and a leg.

  September 5, 2002

• Dolled up for War

  G.I. Joe lovers hold a boot camp in Kansas City.

  June 21, 2001

• There's No Joy In Snackville

  Under Victor Sabatino's leadership, Guy's has faced a downhill slide.

  August 24, 2000

• It's time to close food loopholes

  Even though I spend a good portion of my day writing, reading and talking about food, I'm still as confused as anyone at the grocery store. For every health claim that proves to be false -- vitamin flavored soda better for you than regular soda! -- another claim comes along to replace it.Having worked in bakeries, I've always been wary of grocery store wheat bread. I know what real wheat bread looks and tastes like, and not much supermarket wheat bread actually fits that description. My suspicio

  May 7, 2009

• It's cool, we don't need any more jobs

  Now that the downtown's so new and shiny we're supposed to look much better to big companies and employers, right? Right? I guess not, since we can't even beat out San Antonio. According to this story in the Memphis Business Journal, the world's largest medical device company, Medtronic, will be bringing roughly 1,300 jobs to the Texas site after carefully considering a bunch of other towns that I guess aren't trying too hard. "We had to beat Austin and then we had to beat Kansas City," s

  May 8, 2009

• Cow producing too much milk? Better kill it

  People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to, and the price has fallen. Yet, there are more dairy cows than ever, all eating feed -- and the price of that keeps rising. The result is that $10 of milk can cost $17 to produce. As Bloomberg News writes,In California, the largest milk-producing state, dairies lost $1.07 per 100 pounds in April, compared with profits of $11.23 in July 2007, based on feed costs and milk prices, USDA data show. In January, the state was the most unprofitable in

  June 23, 2009

• Flash of Genius

  June 25, 2009

• Is IBM the future of food safety and management?

  We've heard a lot of debate about free markets in this country lately. And while we're likely to be saturated with government-vs.-market arguments about health-care reform, IBM is quietly starting another free market battle of its own.The company has been running "smarter planet" advertisements for several months, talking about smarter cities, smarter retail, smarter this and smarter that. The oversimplified gist is that IBM has the ability and technology to solve (or help solve) problems normal

  June 29, 2009

• KCK booster offers unique perspective on GM's woes

  Cindy CashGeneral Motors' fight for survival is being watched closely in Kansas City, Kansas. The carmaker's Fairfax Assembly Plant pays millions in property taxes and, along with KU Med Center, is one of the city's largest employers.Fairfax survived a round of plant closures announced in June. The factory is relatively new and produces the popular Chevy Malibu. Fairfax workers are also building the new Buick LaCrosse luxury sedan.Cindy Cash, the president and CEO of the Kansas City, Kansas, Cha

  July 2, 2009

• Got milk money?

  Forget spilled milk -- dairy farmers seem ready to spill blood. They're seeing red because of declining raw milk prices, the result of a decrease in worldwide demand and a glut of milk production that was ramped up in expectation of greater demand that never materialized. Some groups are seeking legislative redress, while others feel that financial subsidies are the only way to keep dairy farms in operations. Farmers donned cowsuits to protest a recent hearing by the Department of Agriculture an

  July 21, 2009

• 175 workers bought out at GM's Fairfax plant

  ​General Motors bought out 175 workers at the automaker's Fairfax plant, KCTV Channel 5 reports. The workers took the deal Monday; they were part of 6,000 buyouts.The New York Times says the struggling auto giant will shed another 7,500 by the end of the year. And the bleeding continues.

  August 4, 2009

• When local goes corporate

  ​The idea of buying and eating local is one of the most easily identifiable food trends. There's been an explosion in farmer's markets, farm-to-table dinners/restaurants and a series of articles, movies and books trying to teach people to ask questions about where their food is grown or made.But invariably when a grassroots movement (pun slightly intended) enters the zeitgeist, corporations quickly follow. In this case, we've gone from born-on dates and use-by stamps to location codes allowing

  August 7, 2009

• Green Dirt Farm cheese wins gold, bronze awards

  Green Dirt Farm's Bossa...is the boss​Green Dirt Farm, the lamb farm and artisan cheese maker in Weston, Missouri, was honored last Friday at the 2009 American Cheese Society Competition in Austin, Texas. This was the first year that cheesemaker Sarah Hoffman -- who owns the farm with Jacquie Smith -- has entered the competition, but good fortune was definitely with her: Green Dirt Farm's Bossa won the gold medal in the washed rind sheep's milk category and two other cheeses -- Fresh Pl

  August 13, 2009

• The 20 food inventions that didn't further our existence

  ​Food science in the hands of someone evil can be as devastating on your stomach as something off the Volcano menu at Taco Bell -- you know, the menu with the big signs proclaiming "the good hurt." Taco Bell isn't an emo ex-girlfriend. There is no good hurt in relation to that drive-thru. Sloshspot has compiled a list of the "20 Food Innovations That We Could Have Done Without." In hitting a number of packaged food products and beverages, the list is a nice walk-through of the items that masqu

  September 1, 2009

• Wheaties Fuel set for release today

  ​You probably haven't thought about Wheaties recently -- you haven't thought about the 1984 Olympics either, which was when Wheaties probably peaked. But General Mills is hoping to change all that with today's introduction (at 1 p.m., according to the Facebook page) of Wheaties Fuel -- an athlete-tested, souped-up version of the standard cereal. It's a radical move for "The Breakfast of Champions," which seemingly hasn't changed since that slogan was introduced in 1933. Those who are nostalgic

  September 9, 2009

• A closer look at beef inspection

  ​Ground beef is one of the few foods that can make me uneasy because I can't divorce the delicious joy of eating burgers from the very real fear of E.Coli contamination. While the odds suggest that a severe infection or death are highly unlikely, our current food safety system makes me weigh the benefits and risks in the same way I'd check to see whether a bungee cord operator really cares about whether I'm strapped in tightly.  This results in a binge-dieting-like approach to burger cons

  October 6, 2009

• Closing Saturday: Midtown's Russell Stover Shop

  Midtown's Russell Stover's Candy Kitchen bids a bittersweet farewell​Saturday will be the final day for the sweet little Russell Stover store on 51st Street -- the 51st Street Candy Kitchen -- before the popular confectionary closes for good. It's been a neighborhood candy shop (it also sold ice cream and baked goods) since 2000. Now that the newly built Russell Stover in Fairway has opened at 2814 Shawnee Mission Parkway -- which also has ice cream and a candy kitchen and a lot more pa

  October 29, 2009