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.
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.
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.
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.
The large layout on Le Sueur heights. Fountains spraying water. Flapping American flags. Bluegrass meticulously clipped at five inches. The imposing 300,000 sq. ft. Cambria plant of Le Sueur captures most everyone’s imagination.
Recently, Tammy Lillo began part-time taking over her father’s metalworking business, Timeless Images in Metal, and opened a metal work retail store at the site, called Old West Country Store.
Through the 1970 song “Stage Fright,” ‘60s-’70s country rockers The Band publicly admitted having a performance phobia. Playing that song, singer/bassist Rick Danko would repeatedly confess, “See the man with the stage fright, just standin’ up there to give it all his might. And he got caught in the spotlight. But when we get to the end, he wants to start all over again.”
Starting a music therapy business was Emily Labes’ answer to marrying her love for music and her yearning to help people. After growing up in a musical family, and taking piano lessons, choir, and band throughout high school, she had a tough decision to make after graduating from Fairmont High.
If not for a well-rounded education from her mother, 1978 St. Peter High graduate Bridget Blaido never would have begun 4 The Team within the last year in St. Peter.
