Local tea company profile

An interesting profile of Argo Tea, a local Chicago chain, from yesterday's NYT. You'll see that you can find market and company information throughout the article:

It isn't every cafe in America that responds to the complaint "I'm thirsty" with a glass of iced tea. But here in the nation's third-largest city, a fast-growing chain called Argo Tea is selling just that notion.
Argo Tea, a four-year-old homegrown company, has developed a distinctive brand that has captured the palate of young professionals. From its novel recipes for sweetened iced teas -- Bubble Tea, a mix of Indian black tea and coconut pearls from the Philippines, is very popular -- to its signature interiors of greens, reds and browns, the brand has become so well known that this month the company opened its eighth cafe, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It plans two more by the end of the year.

Along with hot and iced tea -- and Illy coffee -- the cafes sell sandwiches and pastries, some baked on the premises.

Sales are expected to reach $5 million this year and nearly $10 million in 2008, company executives say. The concept has proved so successful that Argo Tea is planning cafes in other cities, starting with Boston or Washington in 2009.

Read the whole article HERE

Update: Job Fair employers announced

Don't forget! Tomorrow is the Fall Job Fair. More info from the Student Employment Office HERE

Here's a list of the employers who will be eager to interview our students for regular part-time and seasonal jobs:

American Girl
AVID Tutoring Program for Chicago Public Schools
Bank of America
Club Monaco
Chicago Bears Retail
DuSable Museum of African-American History
EXPRESS
Garmin International
Grassroots Campaigns, Inc.
Hamilton Communications
Mad Science of Chicago
NIKETOWN
Nordstrom
Photogenic, Inc.
TEFL Institute
The CAPS Group
The Chicago Theatre
University Center Conference Chicago
UPS
YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago

Job fair next week!

Spread the word (and work!): Next Wednesday, September 12th, the Student Employment Office will be hosting a job fair. See this page for more information.

The ups and downs of movie distribution

This article from today's NYTimes details how a movie that was made over three years ago is just now being released. A behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of movie distribution: Anton Yelchin’s voice was still changing when, at barely 15 years old, he starred alongside Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland in “Fierce People,” an offbeat, surprisingly dark coming-of-age movie that Griffin Dunne directed in the spring of 2004... That a film with such a pedigree could sit on the shelf for so long (it’s already available on DVD in Argentina, Finland, Greece and Hungary) is one of the vagaries of a business in which too many movies from too many distributors are vying for too few weekends, good ones that are released theatrically often fail to attract an audience, and countless others go straight to video.

That “Fierce People” did not ultimately get tossed in the celluloid waste bin is a testament both to the persistence of its backers — among them the No. 2 executive at Lionsgate — and to the importance to a film’s marketing of not just money but attention. Read the whole article HERE.