Crains New York - March 11, 2013 - (Page 3)

IN THE BOROUGHS BROOKLYN Coney Is. roars like a cyclone A tight lid on food artisanals Lacking affordable space, growing mom-and-pops pack up elsewhere Park reopens brighter, cleaner, not in spite of Sandy but thanks to it BY STEPHEN KLEEGE Anna Wolf ’s specialty mustard business in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was going great,until she got orders from big names such as Whole Foods and suddenly needed to ramp up production. That’s when she discovered that her company would have to go elsewhere for the affordable space it needed to expand. As a result, later this year she will relaunch My Friend’s Mustard from Detroit, where she will share a plant with another growing Brooklyn-based food maker, McClure’s Pickles. “The prices were never right, and the clauses in the leases were never right,” Ms. Wolf said, recalling her fruitless search for affordable quarters that took her to Philadelphia and, ultimately, to Michigan, where she grew up. In recent years, the growing number and success of small-scale food makers in Brooklyn has become a rare bright spot in the borough’s long-shrinking manufacturing sector. Even better, Brooklyn has become a crucial part of a powerful brand identity for the bakers and beverage and condiment makers who’ve set up in shared kitchens and incubator spaces in the borough. Yet many of those young outfits are struggling to make the leap from mom-and-pop operators to busi- BY MATT CHABAN david neff BROOKLYN GOTHIC: Matt Burns (left) and Rob Behnke of Brooklyn Salsa Co. produce their Bushwick sauce in the Bluegrass State. See TIGHT on Page 19 BY JUDITH MESSINA Yodle, the ad platform for small businesses that is one of Silicon Alley’s strongest IPO candidates, last week took another step toward a public offering by acquiring Lighthouse Practice Management Group in Atlanta. Five-year-old Yodle, which had $131 million in sales last year, is hoping to become a one-stop marketing shop for small businesses, building websites, optimizing a company’s searchability online and placing advertising on search engines and social-media sites. Yodle CEO Court Cunningham told Crain’s that its recent acquisition speeds up its time frame to go public. “We are highly likely to file for a public offering,” Mr. Cunningham ‘We have the financial profile, and we’ve been profitable’ said. “We have the financial profile, and we’ve been profitable for over a year. We absolutely have the ability to do that.We have not picked a specific time, but we’ll be assessing this year what that timing is.” The acquisition represents an important step for Yodle as it expands its business model from helping small firms acquire new customers to helping them retain those customers. It extends its capabilities in a world where all sorts of players—from Google to Facebook— are plumbing the small business market for its online potential. “We think product extension is a critical part of continuing to grow the business,”said Rob Stavis,a partner with Bessemer Venture Partners, which is an investor in Yodle. Yodle builds and updates websites for small businesses, monitors their reputations on the Web and provides online advertising services—both Web and mobile—that drive new customers to them, but it hasn’t had the ability to help small businesses cultivate those customer contacts over time. See YODLE on Page 19 See CONEY on Page 19 STATS AND THE CITY ERIN GO BRAGH: New Yorkers will see green as the massive St. Patrick’s Day Parade rolls up Fifth on Saturday and the pubs pour fast all weekend. 1762 1ST YEAR of NYC’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which peaked in ’02 with 300K marchers and 3M spectators 405.7K NEW YORKERS who officially claim Irish heritage $850K COST IN 1853 of building St. Patrick’s Cathedral, unfurnished. Current renovations will run $177M 29.4% RISE IN value of 2012 New York state cabbage production, vs. 2011, for total of $106M $374.1M VALUE OF malt beer imported into the U.S. in March 2012, up 30% from Feb. 2012 Sources: nycstpatricksparade.org, U.S. Census Bureau, Archdiocese of New York, USDA ADDICTED TO NUMBERS? GET A DAILY DOSE AT @STATSANDTHECITY istockphoto Silicon Alley star Yodle closer to singing IPOdle-ayheehoo! With last week’s acquisition, ad tech firm assesses public offering timetable Last week, with the wind howling in off the Atlantic, Dennis Vourderis stood inside the Spook-a-rama haunted house at Deno’s Wonder Wheel, the historic Coney Island amusement park his family has owned since 1981, proudly pointing out the brand new gaggle of ghouls, vampires and corpses. “I bought them and helped install them, but the first time they turned them on, it still scared the crap out of me,” Mr. Vourderis said. The Spook-a-rama is one of dozens of new or refurbished attractions that the Vourderises will have ready for the park’s traditional opening day on Palm Sunday, March 24—just five months after Superstorm Sandy inundated Coney Island with up to 10 feet of seawater. “We’re gonna look as good as the first day we opened,” Mr. Vourderis said. “Probably better.” Oddly enough, a lot of people agree that not just in spite of the storm, but also in part because of it, this could be the best season in memory for Coney Island. “There are a lot of words that people have used to describe Coney, and one of them is ‘gritty,’ ” said March 11, 2013 | Crain’s New York Business | 3 http://www.nycstpatricksparade.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - March 11, 2013

IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
THE INSIDER
BUSINESS PEOPLE
CORPORATE LADDER
OPINION
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
REPORT: SMALL BUSINESS
STARTUP GUIDE
CLASSIFIEDS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crains New York - March 11, 2013