Kathy's Pies owner Amy Jordan has purchased The Kettel House Bakery and Cafe at 945 Sixth Ave. in Marion and is looking for opportunities to expand into he Iowa City metro market within the next year. CREDIT THE KETTEL HOUSE
The Kettel House Bakery and Cafe in Marion has a sweet future ahead with its recent acquisition by
Kathy's Pies owner Amy Jordan.
Ms. Jordan acquired the business at 945 Sixth Ave. this month from founder Cindy Kettelkamp. She has begun offering gluten-free baked goods from Kettel House at Kathy's Pies, and plans to add pies and other items from Kathy's Pies to the Kettel House menu.
"It just worked out really well," said Ms. Jordan, who acquired Kathy's Pies, the popular Cedar Rapids bakery, just over a year ago. "We were looking for retail locations for pie by the slice."
Ms. Kettelkamp founded Kettel House in 2012 in a converted residential structure in central Marion after having considerable success selling her baked goods in farmers markets with her daughter, Emily Hamilton. She was looking to exit the business, and agreed to work with Ms. Jordan for 30 days to make it a smooth transition before she headed off on a mission trip.
"When I decided it was time to retire, we both thought it was a great fit," Ms. Kettelkamp said in a Facebook post announcing the transition. "The plan is to keep all the treats that you like and add some new favorites, like pies."
Over time, Ms. Jordan plans to add more pies, cakes, cheesecakes and pastries from Kathy's Pies to the Kettel House menu, along with milkshakes and ice cream. She envisions the Kettel House becoming more of a sweet shop, carving out a niche in a Marion restaurant market that's becoming more crowded every year. .
Ms. Jordan is still looking for expansion opportunities to offer pie by the slice in the Iowa City-North Liberty-Coralville area, within the next year or so.
New dealer highlights hard-to-find performance, electric cars
JETSET Automotive team members Paul Trovas (l), Ryan Light and Micheal Svoboda specialize in pre-owned luxury, performance and electric vehicles. CREDIT JETSET
Electric and luxury car enthusiasts have a new car marketplace in Cedar Rapids.
Car fanatics Paul Trovas and Duane Smith have partnered to open
JETSET Automotive, a dealership specializing in pre-owned luxury, performance and electric vehicles. The dealership buys and sells autos that are hard to find in the Corridor, many of them packed with the latest technology.
With a dearth of high-end luxury car dealers in the market, Mr. Trovas said he and Mr. Smith saw an opportunity.
The current inventory includes a 1994 Porsche Carrera 911 Speedster and a 2018 Lexus LS 100, as well as a 2009 Aston Martin DB9 Volante. JETSET Automotive offers price quotations to owners interested in selling most types of popular electric cars.
"Most dealers shy away from electric on the new vehicle side, but we really feel that's the way the market is moving," Mr. Trovas said. "Some of the new car companies have committed to be 60% electric, 70% electric - even 100% electric. We want to be ahead of that curve."
JETSET Automotive is located in the same location as one of Mr. Smith's other businesses - Duffy's Collectible Cars - at 250 Classic Car Court SW, Cedar Rapids. Mr. Smith is executive chairman of TrueNorth Companies, a longtime collector of classic cars and was recently voted the Corridor's Most Influential leader by CBJ readers.
"He is the car enthusiast of enthusiasts," Mr. Trovas said. "It's special for me to do this project with him, not just because he's my friend, but because it's something that's truly interesting to both of us."
Mr. Trovas is a nearly 20-year veteran in Corridor dealership management, investing most of those years at a luxury and import dealership in Iowa City. He's seen the trajectory of automotive technology over that period, and has never been more excited than he is now by what he sees in the electric and luxury car markets.
"To put a car on autopilot and take your hands off the wheel and watch it maintain control is pretty unbelievable," he said. "We love the technology and really like showing it off."
In the CBJ: Survey aims to support Marion businesses
The Marion Economic Development Corp. and the Marion Chamber of Commerce are surveying more than 150 businesses to evaluate and improve economic development performance. CREDIT CITY OF MARION
A new economic development strategy being launched this year in Marion will use insights gathered from a broad cross-section of businesses to evaluate the city's economic development performance and improve support for businesses.
More than 150 businesses will be surveyed throughout the year by the Marion Economic Development Corp. (MEDCO) and the Marion Chamber of Commerce using the Synchronist Main Street survey tool. The tool is used by a growing number of communities to gather standard data that can be used for a performance dashboard that compares their findings.
The surveys will be conducted in-person, and the responses will remain confidential, according to MEDCO President Nick Glew. The chamber will interview retail businesses, and MEDCO will interview manufacturers and other non-retail firms.
A growing number of regional communities use the Synchronist Main Street survey tool, according to Jennifer Daly, president of ICR Iowa, the regional economic development agency. They include the MedQuarter in Cedar Rapids, city of Hiawatha and the Benton Development Group in Benton County. Others are expected to adopt it this year, she added.
MEDCO has previously participated in a survey program in collaboration with local utility providers, Mr. Glew said. However, that has targeted only interstate commerce companies, a minority of the businesses operating in Marion. He said the new initiative aims to better meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.
"We enthusiastically support this effort with MEDCO as it will strengthen communication and build our knowledge of Marion's existing business community," Marion Chamber President Jill Ackerman said in a release. She expects to see great value in having in-depth conversations with chamber members.
The 25 standard questions in the survey cover a broad range of topics, including whether the businesses want to expand and what they need to expand, and whether they are planning to add products or services. The survey will also include custom questions specific to Marion.
U.S. Senators call on SBA to help counter Iranian cyber threat
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) are calling on Jovita Carranza, the newly-named administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), to take immediate action to help small businesses prepare for potential cybersecurity threats from Iran and its proxies.
"As technology has grown to be deeply embedded in every aspect of our lives, the battlefield has also expanded into the cyber realm," the senators wrote in a letter to Ms. Carranza late last week. "Unfortunately, small businesses are yet to amass the capabilities required to protect themselves from highly dangerous exploits possessed by nation-state actors. We must do what is necessary to provide small businesses with the tools and expertise required to shield themselves."
Mr. Rubio is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Mr. Cardin is the committee's ranking member. Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have issued advisories urging U.S. organizations to prepare for potential cyber-attacks "in light of Iran's continued threats and aggression toward America." Those attacks could include cyber-enabled espionage and intellectual property theft.
"We are concerned that small businesses may not have the information and tools necessary to implement the DHS and CISA's recommendations and thus, not adequately able to defend against these potential cyber threats," the senators wrote.
Iranian actors have been implicated in a number of cyberattacks, including flooding JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Capital One with traffic, knocking them offline, and a
2018 ransomware attack that crippled the city of Atlanta.
Consulting: How to navigate workplace politics
In this week's consulting spotlight, Scott Rude, a strategic adviser on organizational change and growth who teaches at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, explains the tricky art of dealing with workplace politics.
Climbing the corporate ladder is a worthy goal. But many of us are more concerned with doing a good job and being rewarded and recognized based on merit, without regard for political artifice.
Negotiating complex corporate dynamics and the sometimes-negative political traps can be daunting and disheartening, but there are a few helpful strategies professionals can use to counteract these issues:
Understand a company's culture
You are unlikely to find a company advertising its flaws on its website or when you apply for employment, so professionals must be aware that there are often two cultures within an organization: the stated culture and the real culture.
Stated cultures are found in handbooks, bullet points on wall plaques or statements on website "About Us" pages. The real culture takes more study to understand.
As a personal example, I once interviewed for, and was ecstatic to be selected for, a top role with a Fortune 500 company. I was impressed with the stated mission and its values, and the people I met were very capable and engaging. When offered the job, I felt the opportunity was a great fit. But in my eagerness to take the role, it turned out that I hadn't done my due diligence. Within two weeks of joining, I found the company's leader to be highly authoritarian and the antithesis of the company's value statements. All of his direct reports feared him.
We often think of the interview process as a situation where we must be at our best and impress the decision makers. That's certainly true, but we also can't waste the opportunity to thoroughly investigate and learn the real, unstated culture of an organization.
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Corridor Stocks
Short-Term Event Planner
Jan. 24
Mental Health in the Workplace Webinar, by Kirkwood Corporate Training, 1-1:30 p.m., online. Learn about the risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, strategies for how to help someone in crisis, and where to turn to for help. Free. To register, visit
www.kirkwood.edu/signup.
Jan. 27
Coralville Roundtable, by Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce, noon-1 p.m., Marquee Pizzeria, 920 E. Second Ave., Ste. 123, Coralville. Members are invited to network and keep up to date with chamber and community events. For information, call (319) 337-9637.
Jan. 28
2020 Crop Advantage Series, by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, 8:30 a.m.-4:15 p.m., Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, 1220 First Ave., Coralville. Topics during this meeting will include trade with China, weed management, corn and soybean diseases, grain drying and storage, and a crop market outlook for 2020. Price: $50 before Jan. 21, $60 after. To register, visit
cropadvantage.org.
Headlines from CBS2/FOX 28
These news items are provided by CBS2/FOX 28
University of Iowa athletics director Gary Barta has been appointed to be the College Football Playoff committee chair for the 2020 football season.
The College Football Playoff made the announcement yesterday. 2020 will be Mr. Barta's second season with the committee. He is replacing Oregon's athletic director Rob Mullens as the new chair of the group. "I had a terrific experience my first year on the committee," he said. "I have so much respect for the other committee members, and for Bill Hancock and the CFP staff. I'm honored to be asked to serve as committee chair and look forward to working with this group again in 2020." Mr. Barta has been the athletic director at Iowa since August 2006.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar is constitutionally bound to Capitol Hill as a juror for President Trump's impeachment trial. It otherwise wouldn't be that inconvenient - if she weren't running for the Democratic nomination for president.
"I'm not going to shirk that duty. I think the people of Iowa are going to understand that," Ms. Klobuchar said during an interview Wednesday. She and three other U.S. Senators, who are also presidential hopefuls, have become fixtures in Iowa over the last several months as they traverse the state seeking support from Democratic caucus-goers who will get the first say in the presidential nominating contest. But it's crunch time before the lead-off Iowa caucuses just 10 days away, and these contenders are sidelined in Washington for the trial, which began in earnest on Tuesday. Ms. Klobuchar has slowly gained momentum here in the past few months - she is polling at 8% according to polling averages after once circling around low single digits - but she still trails the top four candidates in Iowa: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden. She hopes to bottle up that growing support and keep moving forward, despite the circumstances. And like other senators in this race, she'll rely on local endorsements - she touts more backers in the state legislature than any other candidate - to campaign for her while she's gone. Her family will also host events in Iowa, she said. Read the full story here.
These news items are provided by CBS2/FOX 28
CBS2 Weather First Forecast
Flurries or freezing drizzle will be possible during the afternoon. Otherwise, it will be cloudy and cool with temperatures in the low 30s. The next round of snow starts to develop tonight and moves in after 10 p.m. Light to moderate snow showers will continue through the night and through the day Friday. Snow will start to wind down Saturday morning. Snowfall totals will be around 3-5 inches in the eastern half of the area with 1-3 inches to the west.
Kathy's Pies owner purchases Kettel House in Marion
