Cash Haul
In a single generation, the Rozakis family went from having one dump truck to owning a $16 million materials transport business
In 2005, GR launched Crete Crush, a sister company to its trucking operation that includes two concrete and asphalt crushing and recycling centers, one at the company’s Rancho Cordova headquarters, and another at its 15-acre facility off Bradshaw Road in Sacramento. When the company first started, it was paying someone else to crush the concrete and asphalt that was accumulating from demolition site hauls.
Community Collaboration
The Sacramento Region Community Foundation gives financial support to local nonprofits willing to work together
The Sacramento Region Community Foundation operates a little differently from your typical private foundation. According to SRCF Chief Giving Officer Priscilla Enriquez, community foundations enable would-be philanthropists in the Sacramento region to give back to their own community.
Waste Not
Sacramento restaurants reduce food waste and help build healthy soil
Though largely hidden from the consumer’s eye, food waste is hardly insignificant. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we waste between 30 to 40 percent of food each year — and with it water, money and the chance to feed food-insecure people.
Can a Comic Book Teach Children About STEM?
Sacramento-based entrepreneur tries to do just that with PodPi
Entrepreneur Stephane Come feels that “fun” products and games currently on the market are short-changing children. That’s because they don’t often show kids that it’s OK to fail. Instead, Come wishes that children would be challenged and taught that getting things wrong is an acceptable part of the process. It isn’t necessary to come to the solution instantly.
The Future Success of Sacramento Business isn’t in Sacramento — Or is it?
Businesses in Northern California are especially well-positioned to expand globally. The region has a culturally diverse population and an enviable proximity to ports, airports, rail systems and foreign trade zones. Even as exporting makes sense for individual businesses, encouraging companies to expand internationally makes even more sense for the local economy.
Something Between
Nonprofits excel in non-traditional roles
Girls on the Run of Greater Sacramento is an afterschool positive youth development program that inspires girls to be joyful, healthy and confident, using a fun, experience-based curriculum that creatively integrates running
The Family Fund
Immigrant entrepreneurs are twice as likely to launch new businesses, and their startup success often hinges on family
There are good reasons to focus on the special challenges posed by family businesses, like how to keep family resentments from turning to business rivalries and avoid nepotism that results in the wrong people working in key positions. But for some Sacramento immigrant family businesses, blood ties have been the key to survival.
Follow the Leader
Nonprofits achieve success when they reflect what their community looks like
When Latino kids grow up not seeing doctors, cops or college professors that look like them, they begin to think that those are not viable career choices: Those are jobs for other people. It is hard to encourage anyone to go into those professions when they don’t know people already in them.
Buzzwords: Funnel
Are you a customer that has fallen out of the funnel?
“If I have to use the word ‘funnel’ one more time today, I might die. #buzzwords” — @abhinemani
Posted on Twitter by Sacramento’s Chief Innovation Officer, Abhi Nemani, on Aug. 22, this was the tweet heard ‘round the Comstock’s office. It kicked off a lengthy debate among our staff about what “funnel” actually meant.
Landmark Environmental Legislation Marks 10th Anniversary
While proponents point to success, the future of AB 32’s cap-and-trade program remains uncertain
California’s landmark greenhouse-gas reduction law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, turned 10 last month. Like most precocious 10-year-olds, AB 32 (as it’s better known) is very much a work in progress.