Sam Stall

He’s called The Peanut King, but these days Richard Green, president of the Indianapolis-based Richard Green Co., offers a lot more than just goobers. His company, founded in 1957, is a mini-conglomerate of sorts, selling pretty much anything necessary for work in the food-concessions business. From a nondescript cluster of buildings on South Meridian Street, […]

Restaurant diners, spooked by the recession, have never been more tight-fisted. Restaurateurs are responding to this challenge, be they the proprietors of fine-dining establishments or burger joints, by offering low-cost dining deals. It’s an effort to preserve their customer base and, just perhaps, poach a few hungry mouths from their competitors. But according to some […]

At first glance, the smart way to profit from the real estate downturn seems obvious: Buy foreclosed homes, fix them up and resell them for a profit. After all, there’s no shortage of supply. In February, Marion County alone had 1,640 new foreclosure filings. There’s just one hitch. The strategy that fueled such TV programs […]

When it comes to niche marketing, few companies are more specialized than Cookie Cutters Haircuts for Kids. The Indianapolis-based firm, with seven stores in central Indiana and a total of 39 across the United States and Canada, makes its living selling haircuts for children-specifically those between the ages of 2 and 12. “The average age […]

The 600-seat Randall L. and Marianne W. Tobias Theater (nicknamed The Toby) sits at the nexus of two cultural frontiers. On the arts front, it offers a home to cutting-edge entertainers, speakers and films. On the environmental front, the newly remodeled performance space is arguably the greenest facility of its kind in the nation. It […]

Media pundits regularly call the current economic crisis the worst since the Great Depression. One of the few Indianapolis financial experts who’s actually qualified to make such a comparison is Donald C. “Danny” Danielson, the 89-year-old vice chairman of City Securities Corp. For Danielson, who still comes to work every business day, the Great Depression […]

In early April, the 110,000-square-foot Indianapolis distribution center of California-based medical-device supplier DJO Inc. will quietly roll out a revolutionary automated package-handling system. If it works as advertised, it could signify the dawn of a robot-centric age for Indiana’s distribution industry-a niche that, according to fi gures from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, employs […]

Here’s something that passes as good news for central Indiana’s moribund housing market: Prices might hold steady this year, after falling nearly 7 percent from their 2006 peak. Economists and other real estate professionals say the economy may start to recover in the second half of the year, boosting demand just as the glut of […]