| Poutine is Coming to A Fast Food Restaurant New Year Posted: 01 Jun 2012 03:24 PM PDT 
Burger Business: Burger King offers it, but only in Canada. Wendy’s recently began offering it in Canada, too. And when the first Canadian Smashburger opened this month in Calgary, it was on the menu. “It” is poutine, the iconic Canadian/Quebecer side dish of crisp french fries and squeaky cheese curds covered in brown gravy. As these three American burger chains-and countless Canadian burger chains including The Works Gourmet Burger Bistro and m:brgr-know, one of the things poutine goes with well is a burger. More and more American burger bars and other restaurants are catching on. Poutine is tasty, fun and messy and some of the best young American chefs are having a ball with it. And with snack foods such a restaurant growth trend, poutine’s presence is likely to keep expanding. 
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| Radio Stations Pay People to Call In Posted: 01 Jun 2012 12:42 PM PDT 
Tablet Magazine: Last year, a young man called in to a radio station with a problem. He’d recently attended a bachelor party, he said, and a friend of the groom-to-be, clueless of the unwritten etiquette of maledom, brought his girlfriend along, derailing what was supposed to be a weekend of gambling, girls, and general debauchery. The caller told his story with passion and verve, and then asked the station’s listeners for their advice on how to treat his clueless pal. Or at least he would have, had this been a real conversation. The young man-who asked to remain nameless in order to protect his chances for future employment-was an actor, and the staged call an audition. A short while later, he received the following email: “Thank you for auditioning for Premiere On Call,” it said. “Your audition was great! We’d like to invite you to join our official roster of ‘ready-to-work’ actors.” The job, the email indicated, paid $40 an hour, with one hour guaranteed per day. But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated-which they always were. Photo by AlexLawrence. 
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| Entrepreneur Turns Family Recipe Into Gourmet Snack Business Posted: 01 Jun 2012 12:23 PM PDT 
MLive: Faced with an uncertain economy and tepid job prospects for recent grads, Bisera Urdarevik had one response: Nuts. Peanuts, that is. The Portage 23-year-old took her mother’s recipe – a family staple at holidays — and has parlayed it into her own company, Lush Gourmet Foods, LLC. “The original flavor was the family recipe,” said Urdarevik. “My mom, she always made it when I was growing up.” 
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| Niche Biz: The High End Pawnshop Posted: 01 Jun 2012 11:45 AM PDT 
CNN: Artwork by Andy Warhol, military medals, helicopters, and a Babe Ruth baseball bat aren’t the typical pawnshop fare. But all of these valuables have been used to secure loans through a personal asset company called Borro. At a time when small business bank loans can be hard to get, more entrepreneurs are looking for alternative ways to finance their businesses. Borro is trying to tap into that niche, offering short-term loans between $1,000 and $1 million to small businesses and other clients who provide collateral such as fine art, watches, jewelry and even private jets and yachts. Paul Aitken, founder and CEO of Borro, came up with the idea for the firm after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. “I felt there was an opportunity to provide a business that bridges the gap between the very high end types of lending that private banks do and the very high end of retail pawnbroking,” he said. 
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| Invention: Self Stirring Pot Posted: 01 Jun 2012 11:31 AM PDT |
| Today in Entrepreneurial History: June 1 Posted: 01 Jun 2012 10:22 AM PDT |
| Creating Conditions For Small Business Survival Posted: 01 Jun 2012 04:30 AM PDT 
We need new businesses to survive if we want to create more jobs in this country. The Huffington Post has created a list of barriers we need to overcome to reach success. 1. Improve access to capital 2. Leverage government purchasing power 3. Cultivate regional economic clusters 4. Foster small business workshops 5. Address health care costs to help small businesses thrive Click here for a more thorough description of each barrier.
Photo by Global X 
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| You Can Get A Small Biz Loan From A Big Bank Posted: 01 Jun 2012 04:00 AM PDT 
There has been a lot of talk about how difficult it is to obtain a small business loan from big banks. However, The Street argues that it’s really the small business owners who are failing to try. What do you think? Earlier this month, Bank of America released its inaugural Small Business Owner Report, a semi-annual survey about the health of the small business community. The survey included a national sample of 1,000 business owners with revenue of $100,000 to $5 million and a maximum of 99 employees It found that 78% of those surveyed who applied for a loan within the past two years were approved, however, owners may not be taking advantage of their lines of credit to meet their business objectives. Of the approximately 64% of the respondents who have an open line of credit today, half have earmarked the money for emergency purposes only, rather than using it as day-to-day capital. Twenty-three percent said they were trying to pay down debt so there was available capital to use, while 19% said it was their primary source of business cash flow. Bank of America was one of 13 big bank lenders that agreed in September to increase lending to the nation’s smallest businesses by a combined $20 billion over the next three years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Photo by Billy Brown 
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