Investments Blog

Happy Tuesday, loyal readers. I'm looking forward to seeing you at our Redefining the Core event this morning. Oh yeah, it's also National Chocolate Chip Day. Now, here are your headlines.

Hitting the gym tonight?

Sacramento ranks No. 27 on a list of the nation's 100 fittest cities, released Tuesday by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the Anthem Foundation. Before you get too excited, I'll note we were No. 11 last year. However, the rankings aren't entirely comparable, since…

The Leawood-based owner of Houlihan's has bought out its largest franchisee, which owned 17 Houlihan's restaurants in New York and New Jersey.

Houlihan's Restaurants Inc. bought the restaurants from A.C.E. Restaurant Group. Financial details were not disclosed.

A.C.E. Restaurant Group was sued by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2015 for allegedly skimming tips, using a mandatory tip pool to pay non-tipped employees and failing to pay employees overtime. A consent judgment was filed last month,…

May is National Burger Month, and to mark the occasion, the Dayton Business Journal has compiled a list of the top burger spots in the Dayton area, as ranked by Yelp users.

Many of the top picks can be found in downtown Dayton, especially in the Oregon District, which boasts six of the best burger spots. The list also includes restaurants in Kettering, Beavercreek, Moraine, Centerville and Miamisburg.

Some of the restaurants, like Slyders Tavern and The Root Beer Stande, are long-time diner staples,…

Home ownership seems to serve as a litmus test for how affordable seems to residents. “For companies thinking about relocating or opening a satellite office, these survey results provide extremely useful data.”

The new Cracker Barrel restaurant will be just off Kellogg in west Wichita.

Country music legend and Texas native George Strait is returning to Rodeo Houston's rotating stage to close out next year’s event.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has added an extra day to the 2019 event schedule so that the superstar can perform on Sunday, March 17, according to a press release. The remaining acts, including the opener, will be announced in early January.

On March 17, there will be no rodeo competition before the full-performance concert by Strait, but other rodeo activities…

And another one bites the dust.

Brandon Rhoten, the chief marketing officer of Papa John's International Inc. (Nasdaq: PZZA), will step down at the end of this month, marking the third executive departure in the company's C-suite since December.

The announcement came during the company's quarterly earnings call last week.

Rhoten's last day will be May 25, and the company has begun looking for a new CMO. In the interim, CEO Steve Ritchie said, he would be leading the company's marketing.

Rhoten…

ProMusica wants to be the next Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. Or maybe Wendy's. Or L Brands. Or the next – well, you get the idea.

To that end, ProMusica has a new brand and logo to help it meet that goal.

“We are a chamber orchestra, and there are a lot of questions about that,” Janet Chen, ProMusica's executive director, told me. “Just from a 'Who are you?' or 'What do you do?' aspect, there were a lot of questions and we wanted to take ownership and define that.”

The chamber orchestra hired…

Sum Dem Korean Barbeque has closed its doors in South Minneapolis' Field neighborhood.

The restaurant — at Chicago Avenue and 48th Street, just around the corner from Town Hall Tap — closed “due to unforeseen circumstances,” according to a post on its Facebook page.

At 850-square-feet, Sum Dem was primarily a takeout restaurant with a couple of tables. It served a variety of Korean dishes like bulgoki (think sliced marinated meat like beef or pork), Korean short ribs, chap chae (stir fried…