Friday, July 29, 2011

Tasty Catering Expands in Elk Grove Village

Elk Grove Village - Tasty Catering, a suburban-Chicago based corporate catering and event planning services company, has purchased the 1175 McCabe Avenue building in Elk Grove Village, IL, adding 15,000 square feet to accommodate the company’s growth. This purchase follows a number of progressive achievements for Tasty Catering and its affiliated companies.

Tasty Catering began more than 20 years ago catering out of its well known hot dog stand Tasty Dawg in Elk Grove Village. Since 1991, Tasty Catering has been exceeding the catering needs of Chicago area corporations and organizations working from its 22,000 square foot 1900 Touhy Avenue building in Elk Grove Village. A 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces, Tasty Catering managed nearly 11,000 events in 2010 and acquired two catering businesses since 2009.

The 1175 McCabe Avenue building was purchased as part of a strategic plan to expand Tasty Catering and its affiliated companies That’s Caring (www.ThatsCaring.com), an eco-friendly online gift company, T.F. Processors (www.TFProcessors.com), a wholesale contract manufacturer of baked goods, and nuphorIQ (www.nuphorIQ.com), a creative agency. That’s Caring and nuphorIQ will occupy 5,000 square feet of the 1175 McCabe building with the balance satisfying storage needs and being offered for short term leases.

“As a small business that continues to lead the corporate catering industry, we are proud to expand Tasty Catering in Elk Grove Village, an exceptional place offering business owners a prime location and great local talent,” said Larry Walter, Tasty Catering principal and cofounder.

Chicago Judge Backs FTC to Stop Online Directory Scam

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge in Chicago has temporarily restrained a European-based operation that has purported scammed small businesses and nonprofit organizations, including churches, out of millions of dollars. Judge Harry Leinenweber of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued the court order halting the practice and freezing the defendants’ assets. The FTC is also seeking to permanently stop the illegal practices and to require that the defendants pay refunds to their victims.

According to court filings by the FTC, the defendants operate their scheme from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, using corporations based in England and the Netherlands. Since 2009, they have sent unsolicited faxes to churches, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, and local retailers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and possibly other countries. Each fax sent to a U.S. business or nonprofit includes a name such as YellowPage-Illinois.com, depending upon the location of the organization, and a “walking fingers” logo similar to the one commonly associated with local yellow pages.

The FTC alleges that these faxed forms falsely imply that the business or nonprofit has a pre-existing relationship with the defendants. The forms contain information about the business or nonprofit, and a Yellow Page ID number, and instruct the recipient to confirm and update the information and sign and fax the form back by a certain deadline. Hidden in fine print at the bottom of the form is the only disclosure that the fax is a solicitation for new business and that organizations that return the form are ordering an $89 per month, two-year registration in the defendants’ online directory, payable a full year in advance. Many consumers do not notice the fine print and sign and return the form, believing that they are just updating their local yellow pages listing. Often the person who signs and returns the form is not authorized to purchase services on behalf of the business or nonprofit.

According to the FTC, organizations that return the form then receive a faxed invoice seeking payment of $1,068 for 12 months of directory listings. They are instructed to direct the payment to Yellow Page B.V. at a New York City address. If the business or nonprofit tries to cancel, they are often told that the cancellation period has expired, and that the defendant intends to enforce the contract. Organizations that refuse to pay receive faxes seeking late fees and threatening to refer the alleged debts to a collection agency and injure their company’s credit rating.

The complaint names Jan Marks; Yellow Page Marketing B.V., also doing business as Yellow Page B.V. and Yellow Page (Netherlands) B.V.; Yellow Publishing Ltd.; and Yellow Data Services Ltd..

In conjunction with the FTC’s case, the Canadian Competition Bureau, which took the lead in coordinating the joint effort, also filed a lawsuit against this operation, alleging that the defendants’ deceptive scheme similarly targets small businesses and other organizations in Canada. In addition, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission previously brought an action against the defendants’ operations in Australia, and provided assistance to the current enforcement effort.

Friday, July 22, 2011

SceneTap App Launches in Chicago

SceneTap, a Chicago startup, launches today with what it calls "the biggest party of the year," taking place at 50+ Chicago bars.

The launch was announced with a four-page full color cover on today's RedEye, a free daily newspaper published by Tribune Company. 50 spotlights will be lighting up the sky to mark the locations of participating bars, and drink specials from Bacardi and Goose Island will be available to SceneTap users at every venue. Joe's Bar on Weed St. will kick off the party with some great musical guests.

SceneTap is a free app for iPhone, Android and the web that gives you real-time info on the scene at your favorite bars, including male-to-female ratio, average age, crowd size, atmosphere and exclusive deals. You can integrate your SceneTap profile with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and join the chat on your favorite bar’s profile page.

In attendance at the launch party central at Joe's Bar on Weed St will be members of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl team (Dan Hampton, Steve McMichael, Keith Van Horne and Otis Wilson), current Bear Charles Tillman and Blackhawks players Jonathan Toews and Brent Seabrook.

For more information on the SceneTap launch, visit the company's FaceBook events page.

Google Fast Tracks Google+ Business Profiles

According to a report on PC World, the surging demand for Google+ business profiles has prompted Google+ product leader Vic Gundotra, a Google senior vice president of engineering, to acknowledge that Google was caught off guard, but he says that a business solution is being fast-tracked.

So far, only companies hand-selected to participate in a test program for the development of business profiles have been allowed to have Google+ pages. Google has been deleting unapproved Google+ business profiles.

Search engine expert Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog, whose business profile was among those removed from the site, wrote a series of critical posts on Thursday. In a comment to one of those posts, Gundotra wrote that Google should have anticipated the frustration among those who want a Google+ business profile. "This is my fault. I prioritized other things first. So when Danny says Google screwed up, he is right," wrote Gundotra.

View the original article.