The more things change, the more they need repairmen.
Over the last few days, Business Today has focused on businesses that are buying new, renovating old and fixing the too-good-to-throw-away:
- Change brews at McCullagh - Matt Glynn/The Buffalo News
McCullagh Coffee wants to be a fully environmentally sustainable company within a few years. So company executives decided its truck fleet had to get greener.
The coffee company has replaced its delivery trucks with five Sprinter utility vans, a switch expected to save the company more than $8,600 a year in diesel and gasoline costs. ...
Freightliner's lone Buffalo-area outlet selling Sprinters, Fleet Maintenance in West Seneca, attracts a variety of customers for the vans, said Paul Degasperi, sales manager. "It's somewhat of a niche for someone that's going to run a lot of miles," he said. The vehicles get about 20 miles per gallon, he said. The fuel economy varies for competing commercial vans.
- Mistler is making his mark in Batavia - Bill Brown/The Buffalo News
BATAVIA — Downtown Batavia has a new landlord — an entrepreneur from Staten Island who has acquired most of two city blocks for a variety of uses.
Kenneth R. Mistler moved to Batavia in 1994 ... His first major acquisition was the vacant C.L. Carr department store that closed in 2001 nearly a century after Claude L. Carr began the business. Mistler paid $10,000 to the city for the foreclosed three-story building and an annex on Jackson Street. He said he has since spent more than $600,000 on rehabilitation — including a new facade on both the store and its annex.
The building now houses his auto agency, where he sells Shelby sports cars at $50,000 and up....
His most recent endeavors in another downtown block are the Daily Grind, a coffee and snack shop, and a fitness center that occupies three floors of a former ladies’ ware store. In July, a short distance away, he opened South Beach, a South Florida-themed restaurant, which he acquired more than a year ago after the previous owner suddenly shut down.
- Still busy fixing relics of the past - Stephen T. Watson/The Buffalo News
Carol D. Neubauer doesn't own a cell phone, and she doesn't use a computer.
The retired elementary school teacher and school bus driver does her writing and record-keeping on a word processor. And when anything goes wrong with her Smith-Corona PWP-5500, she has Bob Will to fix it. ...
Will Repair Service [pretty cool - if retro - website for somebody whose customers don't have computers] has one of the largest holdings of Smith-Corona machines and parts in the country after Will bought up the company's inventory following its bankruptcy.
The repair service is run out of the basement of a Dunkirk home, and its loyal customers include filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and a number of inmates in the state prison system.
A little typewriter music please, professor:
-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News
