DLC Manufacuring
Exactly 165 years ago in March 1847, the last survivors of the Donner Party reached safety after spending a cataclysmal winter caught in the snowy clutches of Hastings Cutoff, a dead-end pass through the Sierra Nevada in California.
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Paul A. DeBriyn
The years 1987-88 weren’t particularly rosy for Newt Gingrich look-alike Paul A. DeBriyn, then chief executive officer at the rural cooperative that would become AgStar Financial Services. Nationally in those years, many rural financial institutions like his—and many family farms—were becoming unhinged as a barn door kicked in by petulant cows.
Waseca Music Company
What business has been around for more than a half century, serves the music needs of several south-central Minnesota communities and is owned and operated by people who work there without pay?
Bell Tower Suites
Tammy Spence was raised on a Good Thunder farm that instilled a “strong work ethic,” said Spence in a telephone interview. “There was no getting out of responsibility.”
Vault Denim
The example set for Brooke Linder while growing up in Cleveland, Minnesota, was a mother who worked five jobs. “She sacrificed everything she had for us kids,” said 26-year-old Linder in a telephone interview.
Java Lava
Owner Kay Prescher said in a telephone interview, “I was always the person that wanted to be around everyone and make them feel happy.” The 38-year-old Wells native’s business, Lava Java, opened within the last year in the downtown Mankato Mall.
Jiffy Lube
The new owner of Jiffy Lube franchises in Mankato and Rochester, Tony Chahine (pronounced Shuh-HEE-nee), was raised in a close-knit, middle-class family in Los Angeles where dad had a security-related job and mom stayed at home.
Brian Maciej
Brian Maciej and his business, Lime Valley Advertising, are a study in contrasts. The company 47-year-old Maciej owns is located in a two-story French Second Empire home in Mankato. The 3,700 square feet of space provide an elegant setting for the 16 offices from which a staff of eleven provides integrated marketing for clients.
Dan & Angie Bastian
Dan and Angie Bastian of Angie’s Artisan Treats—the parent company of Angie’s Kettle Corn—are pop artists. They have turned ordinary, slightly sweet and salty kettle corn into an artistic subject, a 180-employee North Mankato manufacturing facility into a painter’s palette, and grocery store shelves into a consumer canvas. And a ravenous public devours this pop art.