All posts by Jeremy Bryne

A “Different Kind” of Call Center Opening in Folsom

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Dan Kiely, CEO of Ireland-based Voxpro, says he will be opening a new customer service center employing about 750 people in Folsom. Most of the employees will be high-level technical support personnel for companies such as Google and Airbnb.

Kiely, who founded Voxpro twenty years ago with his wife, says the facility in Folsom will emulate Google’s much-admired campus, incorporating a lot of open space with a “futuristic” design.

“Our mission is to change the perception of call centers. When you walk in, you won’t have a clue of what business we’re in,” said Kiely on a call from Voxpro’s headquarters in Cork.

Voxpro already has four call centers in Ireland, and a small office in San Francisco for sales and marketing. Folsom was chosen after a six-month search for a location within two hours of the Bay Area, a request made by the Bay Area clients.

Kiely already has 40 people hired for the Folsom location, and is planning on employing at least another 60 in time for the center’s opening during the first quarter of 2016. The CEO said this is just the beginning of his operations in the United States. He is planning on looking for a second location somewhere in the United States this coming year, and would eventually like to open multiple sites across the US.

The company expects to be in Folsom for many years to come.

“We put a lot of due diligence on choosing Folsom…Once we make a decision, we remain committed for years. We’ve never left a site,” he said. “That has always been in our DNA.”

New Wal-Mart Coming to Sacramento

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Sacramento County welcomed a new Wal-Mart branch just south of the city limits at 5915 Gerber Road. Opening day was on November 18, exactly one year after the county issued the building permit for construction of the 132,000 square-foot store.

This branch of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will offer a fully-stocked grocery store, in addition to all the other products usually found in Wal-Mart. Silvio Garbarino is the store’s manager.

The new Wal-Mart will employee about 300 people, both full-time and part-time, and is located where the Champions Golf Links golf course was before it shut down its operations several years ago.

Sacramento Employment Levels

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One of the largest school districts in the region, Sacramento City Unified, will be holding a job fair for classified employee hiring.  Among the potential employees, those invited to the fair include: bus drivers, food service assistants and occupational therapists.

Currently there are vacancies (either part- or full-time) in the areas of child development, custodians, library media technical aides, special education and bilingual assistants who are fluent in Cantonese, Hmong, Mandarin and Spanish.

Unemployment levels in Sacramento are quite high, when looking at statistics nationwide.  This year at the September 2015 analysis assembled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of unemployment was 5.2% as compared to the US average of 4.9%.  The good news however, is that the figure dropped from 6.6% of the same time period in 2014.

In addition, in a recent list compiled by WalletHub detailing the most veteran-friendly cities, Sacramento made it to the top 10 most livable cities.  The study was conducted through a comparison of one hundred most highly populated American cities.  Then, a variety of issues were assessed: housing affordability, job prospects, medical facilities and the amount of homeless veterans the city had.

Finally, according to a recent article in The Carmichael Times “Hiring in the Sacramento region has exploded. Seventy-six percent, or just over three quarters of all companies surveyed in direct contacts by phone report, have opened doors for applicants, raising the demand a full six percentage points over this same time last year. Just twenty-four percent (24%) of top regional employers surveyed between August 17th and September 17th say they are not hiring in in the upcoming months.”

So while there is always room for improvement, Sacramento is definitely moving in the right direction vis-à-vis growth in employment opportunities.

Will LED Bulbs Become Standard Staples?

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The answer to that question is yes, if the California Energy Commission (CEC) has anything to do with it. The Sacramento-based CEC is proposing this because it believes that it will potentially result in a saving in energy expenditure of over $4 billion over the next 13 years.  Apart from the financial incentive, there is also the green aspect.  Should this initiative go ahead, there will also be a substantial decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

According to CEC’s Energy Efficiency Leader and Commissioner, Andrew McAllister, “Replacing inefficient, energy-wasting light bulbs with more efficient ones is one of the easiest ways to save money and help California reach its energy goals. Although both small-diameter directional lamps and LEDs have the potential to save significant amounts of energy, there are no federal or state standards for either.”

This argument has been supported by many others as well.  For example, as an article in LED Luxor stated, “By far the most energy efficient, the cleanest and most eco-friendly way of illumination is LED lighting, which is basically digital light and comes with a multitude of amazing benefits.”  The article then listed these as: long life, energy efficiency, ecology friendly, durable quality, zero UV missions, operational irrespective of heat or cold, light dispersal, instant lighting and frequent switching, and low voltage.

One argument against making this switch is that they are quite pricey. Given that a regular bulb for the home is priced between $5 and $10, people might not necessarily want to spend $20.  But that argument – while it may have been relevant some years ago when people first started switching over to these bulbs – is actually no longer all that relevant.  These days one can get LED bulbs for less than $10 and some even retail at less than $3.

There are a few additional aspects to understand about this proposal.  First, that if approved, it will be a two-tiered process, with starting date in 2017 and an end date in 2019.  And second, the CEC believes that directional lamps would only increase in price by $1.50 but it has an average lifetime.  This results in an average lifetime savings of close to $8.

Fill Your Stomach with FoodJets

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People in Sacramento will soon have another way to fill their stomachs. Darren McAdams has just opened a new service called FoodJets within the business he founded in 1993, called Food to You USA Inc. While Food to You USA delivers food to homes, offices and hotel rooms in 13 markets and six states, FoodJets promises to get it there faster. Noticing that people have little patience for waiting – at all – his new service allows customers to order food through an app and to have affordable, locally prepared food in their hands within ten minutes.

FoodJets has no delivery fees or tipping and all drivers are employees of the company who start at $10 per hour. He hopes to make his money on volume and price point, he explains. FoodJets has created exclusive partnerships with certain restaurants and currently has between 10-12 such locations in the Sacramento area.

Meals are all priced under $10 and include just the basics. For lunch you pick from three main options, and for dinner you’ll have three as well. During the last 30 minutes of the lunch hour (11-2) and the dinner hour (5-9) food is 50% off.

The company even has a charitable aspect, donating leftovers to the Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services and offering customers an option to donate a meal.