Sweet Dreams Bakery opens in Canfield

REGION

Sweet Dreams Bakery
opens in Canfield

CANFIELD — Andrew and Melisa Smyczynski have opened Sweet Dreams Bakery & Cafe at 5231 S. Canfield-Niles Road. The couple launched the store after successfully selling Christmas cookies from their home in 2006. They sold 4,500 cookies in one week. The bakery features cakes, pastries, cookies, breads and kolachi. The business also offers a lunch menu. It is open seven days a week, starting at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. on the weekends.

Shenango business expo
scheduled for February

HERMITAGE, Pa. — The 2008 Shenango Valley Chamber of Commerce Business Expo will be Feb. 7 at the Radisson Hotel in West Middlesex. The expo draws a variety of exhibitors who are showing products and services, including small-business owners and national companies. The event is designed for consumers and businesses. Admission is $2 or $1 with two canned goods for the Prince of Peace Center. For more information, contact Deanne Rose at the chamber at deanne@svchamber.com or (724) 981-5880.

Aqua Ohio official joins
dam safety organization

BOARDMAN — Pete Kusky, Struthers division engineer and project manager at Aqua Ohio, has been appointed to the Ohio Dam Safety Organization. This agency was created by the state to promote dam safety. Kusky is responsible or seven company-owned dams. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

NATION

Ex-Southwest exec
lists business strategies

NEW YORK — When Southwest Airlines Co. was just getting its business off the ground in the 1970s, the Dallas-based company faced stiff competition that threatened to crash it. So when the low-fare airline couldn’t set its fares any lower, it opted to offer something that others weren’t — a free bottle of whiskey.

“We became the leading liquor distributor in Texas,” joked James Parker, Southwest’s former chief executive.

Parker describes similar business strategies in his recently published book, “Do the Right Thing.” His biggest challenge as CEO: Keeping the airline afloat in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. Instead of responding to billion-dollar losses by laying off employees, as other airlines did, the company cut corners elsewhere, Parker said. Southwest was the only major airline to report a profit that year.

“We had our employees cutting our lawn, and everything else you could think of to save money so that we didn’t have involuntary pay cuts,” Parker said. “This company was built on the idea of being frugal, and that has made it successful.”

Parker, who retired from Southwest in 2004, also takes pride in the fact that he personally handed out peanuts to passengers regularly during flights.

Standard & Poor’s
gives kudos to cities

NEW YORK — Bond insurers may be watching their ratings tank, but credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s gave some of the world’s biggest cities high fives (from Paris’s AAA to Moscow’s BBB-plus) in 2007.

S&P’s “World’s Top 10 Economic Centers” ranks cities on how economically vital they are in terms of gross domestic product per capita and unemployment; their creditworthiness; and by capital expenditures and as services providers.

The top 10, according to creditworthiness: Paris; London; Madrid; New York; Toronto; Los Angeles; Chicago; Yokohama, Japan; Milan, Italy and Moscow.

Vindicator staff/wire reports