What’s New in the Sacramento Food Industry?

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pizzaPizzaRev is coming to Sacramento.   This pizza franchise store is hoping that there is potential for another pizza business in the region for when it opens in the new year. The operation offers customized 11 inch pizzas that are ready in just a few minutes. It will be located in a retail center currently under construction at 5801 Folsom Boulevard, east Sacramento and will use 1,800 square feet.

However, it will be right near Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza and Pieology Pizzeria. But Harvind Uppal is aware of the existence of these and is still not concerned. He pointed out that the toppings being offered at his pizza place – ranging from vegan sausage to anchovies – give it its edge. The store already has a presence in six states. And it is called rev, short for revolution, creating a “national movement that’s all about empowering you to ‘craft your own.’”

Meanwhile, the new Flamingo Palace banquet hall, in North Highlands just opened last month. Offering a 16,000 square feet banquet hall on Watt Avenue, this building was actually closed for three years before Avtar Singh and Pradeep Paul Sharma joined together to invest $1.2 million for renovations. The end result? A world class banquet hall, featuring plus carpets, marble floors and chandeliers.

Get Ready for Spiced Up Downtown Sacramento

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The winner of this year’s Calling All Dreamers competition, Heather Wong, is planning on opening her specialty spices shop in downtown Sacramento early in the new year. The contest awarded a prize package worth $100,000 to the best retail business plan, presented by the Downtown Sacramento Foundation.

A location has been secured for the spice shop at 1125 11th Street. The location was the former home of a Merle Norman Cosmetics store, and is close to Chops restaurant in downtown.

The name has gone through a change from the original proposed in the contest entry. The first name it had was “Sacramento Spice Emporium.” Then it was altered to “Spice Station Sacramento.” Now the shop will go by the catchy “Allspicery.”

According to a press release from the Downtown Sacramento Foundation, the business will “be the first one-stop spice shop in Sacramento, offering a curated selection of spices, salts, teas and proprietary house-made spice blends sourced from around the world.”

Sacramento Salary Surge

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wagesThe current minimum wage in Sacramento is $12.50. However, there is a group of community organizers who are trying to further increase this $15. They are attempting to collect signatures to boost their campaign. If it goes ahead, by 2020 $15 will be the minimum wage in Sacramento, plus, following that, inflation adjustments. Further, this would give employees an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

This measure still needs to qualify for the ballot, otherwise it won’t be implemented. Indeed, there have been various proposed $15 minimum wage measures that have not filled the ballot qualifications. However, just two months ago the Sacramento City Council approved increasing the minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020 so it is unclear whether the change to $15 is likely to happen.

In other wage-related news in California, at the beginning of this month, according to the UC system said that the US Department of Labor requested assistance in “fixing the university’s payroll system.” Apparently it has actually underpaid up to 40,000 employees up to $5 each week on their paycheck, a discovery that was only made when the university moved over to a new payroll system.  A Board of Regents attorney explained: “the reasons for these failures are complex. We would like to reach a suitable resolution that would provide retroactive payments to affected employees.” The total amount of underpayments is valued at $3 million.

To sum up, the California Fair Pay Act (FPA) which will go into effect January 1, 2016, gives greater protection to employees as well as increasing burdens on employers in defending against unequal pay claims.

Good News for Sacramento Economy

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California’s State capital can finally kiss good-bye to the recession. Data released on Friday shows that an important milestone has been reached: all the jobs lost during the recession have been recovered. Jeff Michael, an economist at the University of the Pacific shed a sigh of relief:

“It’s about time. Sacramento has definitely had a long, slow journey out of this.”

California cities have been slowly coming back to pre-recession employment figures, but Sacramento has had the hardest time. It was the last of the Golden State’s metropolitan areas to get back to where it was before disaster struck.

Sacramento was especially hard hit due to the slow job growth in the public sector, where many citizens find employment. The truth is that Sacramento still has not fully recovered in this sector, still suffering from a net job loss since the Great Recession.

Recovery has come from outside government jobs. In November the region added 5,400 new jobs, totaling 936,900, according to the California Employment Development Department. That number is 3,000 jobs more than the area’s pre-recession high back in June 2007.

 

Sacramento Republic Endorsing Soccer for Homeless

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Sac Republic huddle prior to the second half of a friendly match against Atlas of Mexico. Photo by Splitfire1000
Sac Republic huddle prior to the second half of a friendly match against Atlas of Mexico. Photo by Splitfire1000

President of Sacramento Republic FC Warren Smith announced that his company will be supporting a soccer team created to help the homeless population of Sacramento. The partnership is with a new group known as Street Soccer USA Sacramento. This group hopes to use the popular game as a way to teach homeless adults and youth at-risk important life skills.

The group is also working with Loaves and Fishes, and other similar organizations to make sure that those involved in the team are receiving the social services they are entitled to and that is available to them.

“The group does incredible work, around the country and world, using the beautiful game to hit social weaknesses in communities,” Smith said. “It’s a great way to use the sport to help the community. I couldn’t be happier to partner with them.”

The group’s founder, Lawrence Cann, said that Street Soccer USA Sacramento is just one part of a national organization which sponsors 16 programs throughout the country. San Francisco also has a branch. The Sacramento branch has been developing over the past five years informally, organizing soccer games for homeless people in the state’s capital. The teams train each year for a national tournament.

The philosophy of the group is to get the homeless to socialize more and think about values such as loyalty and responsibility, said executive director Lisa Wrightsman. She stated that while the participants are having fun playing the game of soccer, they are also learning about eight “core concepts” or life skills.

“One core skill is showing up,” Wrightsman said. “That means being there on time, and being mentally prepared to communicate and play. We ask (our players) what that skill might look like outside of soccer? It might mean showing up to a job, or to school, to an AA meeting or to counseling.”

Pushkin’s Bakery Expanding to New Location

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Located at 1820 29th Street in Sacramento, Pushkin’s Bakery is apparently bursting at the seams, and is planning to open a new store to accommodate its growth.

Pushkin’s opened in 2013 in its present site. The new site, which is under construction, is located at 1813 Capitol Avenue, and will not replace, but rather will add to the old Pushkin’s. The new site is in the Young Clifford project, which will be comprised of four condos perched above Pushkin’s retail space.

The new spot is over four times the size of the cozy old location, with 2,900 square feet to fill with their delectable baked goods, in addition to opening a café which will serve breakfast, lunch, and eventually dinner, too. Owners Danny and Olga Turner own the enterprise, which specializes in gluten, dairy and wheat free products. The old store will most likely be re-branded, Turner says, once the new store is underway. He is considering such alternatives as a vegan doughnut store of a sandwich shop.

Pushkin’s announced their upcoming move with the following video:

Sacramento Interactive Obesity Map Can Help Improve Citizens Health

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Using data from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RTI International created and interactive map showing the risk of obesity in different neighborhoods in Sacramento.
The map shows that Sacramento actually has a smaller number of neighborhoods with high obesity rates compared to other cities in California.

However, the results could be inaccurate since they are not a result of information gleaned from real individual residents. Rather, the researchers relied on statistics for income, ethnicity, age and household size to create “virtual households.” In other words, the map really a compilation of “educated guesses” about obesity risk in different Sacramento neighborhoods.

“It’s not that everybody in those areas are obese,” said Bill Wheaton, director of RTI’s Geospatial Science and Technology Program. “It’s more risk-based.”

Wheaton is hoping that the map can aid health workers to discover the places where the risk for obesity might be greater. The hope is that then policymakers will respond with public interventions such as building more parks, not allowing so many fast food restaurants into the area, and encouraging more community health programming in those higher risk neighborhoods.

Unique Hot-Dogery Expanding to New Location

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Umai Savory Hot Dogs in Roseville is expanding.
Umai Savory Hot Dogs in Roseville is expanding.

In case you haven’t heard, there is a new way to eat hot dogs in Roseville. Umai Savory Hot Dogs has taken the art of eating dogs to a whole new level. Opened this past summer, Umai offers a startling assortment of toppings and specialty hot dogs to make the most tainted hot dog connoisseur smile.

For instance, who could possibly resist something called “Mexicali Mayhem” or “Honolulu Bang Bang?” and for the true artist among us, diners can invent their own specialty dog, kind of like “Build-a-Bear” for foodies. Even normal folks could be enticed with toppings like maple bacon chips, roasted seaweed and kimchi.

Louie Tran, the CEO of Umai, is ready to expand into a location in Natomas. Looking at a February opening, his new branch will fill the space left open by a fish and chips joint, right next door to Beach Hut Deli at 3620 N. Freeway Blvd.

According to information gleaned from the company’s website, this new venture is only the beginning for Umai. They are also considering opening more stores in downtown Sacramento and close to Arden Fair.

Major League Soccer Stadium Proposed for Sacramento

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This coming Tuesday the Sacramento City Council has on its agenda a term sheet outlining the construction of a $180 million soccer stadium in the downtown rail-yard.

The term sheet does not call for any additional funding for the stadium other than the $46 million already spent or earmarked for general infrastructure improvements of the rail-yard.

The term sheet outlines some of the details of the project. Sac Soccer and Entertainment Holdings, according to the term sheet, will be totally responsible for the costs of the stadium. They will build as many as 6,500 parking spaces in garages close to the proposed stadium. In addition, depending on how the stadium parking will be organized the city could have the opportunity to receive as much as half of all future parking revenues in other lots in the vicinity.

The proposed stadium will have 25,000 seats, 3100 of which will be premium and 500 for standing room only. The rest will be general seating. The stadium will also be used for other sporting events aside from soccer, as well as concerts and other “large-scale” events. The term sheet outlines that the city would have use of the stadium as many as four times each year for city-centered events.

The term sheet also describes that the project will have to go through a usual environmental impact review.

Sac Soccer and Entertainment Holdings, which owns the Sacramento Republic FC soccer club, is listed as the developer of the stadium. They will eventually create a separate entity which will operate the stadium.

Toshiba Coming Soon to Sacramento Area

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Toshiba Corporation Headquarters, Tokyo, at night seen from the Tokyo Tower. Photo by Josef Thiel
Toshiba Corporation Headquarters, Tokyo, at night seen from the Tokyo Tower. Photo by Josef Thiel

Toshiba, the Japanese-based consumer electronics company, has rented a 21,000 square-foot space in an office in Folsom, the first such office in the region. The company is expected to hire about 60 new workers at its 35 Iron Point Circle office.

Real estate broker Nate Cyphers confirmed that Toshiba will need employees in the areas of sales, research and design.

“It’s encouraging,” said Cyphers, a vice president with CBRE Sacramento. “We’re slowly seeing organic growth here from companies that aren’t here, and from companies that are here.”

Cyphers added that Toshiba signed a ten-year lease, and indication of their long-term commitment to the area. It is a logical addition to the already established region’s high-tech industry. Companies already in the area include Intel, Micron and Hewlett-Packard.

“Folsom also provides a great cost of living and workers can be in a community that’s more competitive than Silicon Valley,” he said. “It’s good news for this region.”