Standard Fiber to use SkyBlue protective bedding technology

kyBlue, an innovator in protective bedding technology for the retail and hospitality industries, announced a new license agreement that gives Standard Fiber the exclusive global rights to manufacture, market and distribute two of its patent-pending innovations, the ZipIt on/off top encasement structure and the revolutionary box spring encasement design, both featuring its BB-Lock protective locking technology.

A new bedding category that combines defense and design, SkyBlue's revolutionary DreamTec bedding technology offers advanced protection from bed bugs, stains and liquids in an attractive streamlined encasement for any mattress, box spring, or pillow. Its patent-pending BB-Lock technology provides maximum control of bed bug entry and escape, working together with its advanced bite-proof protection.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies.

"We are thrilled to partner with Standard Fiber to bring our DreamTec protective bedding to the global marketplace," said Petra Michael, founder and CEO of SkyBlue. "Introducing a new category to the market—stylized protective bedding—marks a significant milestone for us as we strive to design solutions that safeguard people as they sleep. We are confident that Standard Fiber is the right partner to launch the category by giving our invention the broadest distribution and access to the world's leading bedding brands."

Using existing manufacturing facilities throughout China, Standard Fiber will begin production using SkyBlue protective bedding technology immediately. Products featuring the stylized encasements will be available to wholesalers and select retailers in late summer 2011.

"With the hyperawareness of bed bugs today, the hospitality industry is at a tipping point," said Sandy Gray, president of Standard Fiber. "Bed bug infestation is no longer exclusively about guest satisfaction or perceived cleanliness—it's an economic issue that can have significant impact to a hotel's bottom line. Petra understands the economics of the crisis and how to get control of it from being at the forefront of the issue for over six years.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc." The costs of eradication, lost bookings,we supply all kinds of oil painting reproduction, and a bad reputation can add up to tens of thousands of dollars.

"At Standard Fiber, we have built our business by enhancing world-class products with the latest innovations and technologies that make the best even better. SkyBlue's dual-role stylized protective bedding enables us to add value to those brands and deliver a competitive advantage to our customers in the retail and hospitality markets."

The DreamTec line includes a selection of designer quality fabrics that are Nanotex treated to strengthen the material and provide world-class stain and fluid resistancLargest Collection of billabong boardshorts,e. For hotel owners and operators,uy sculpture direct from us at low prices DreamTec's zip top mattress encasement saves housekeeping labor and natural resources with an easy to handle top cover. It can be quickly removed by one staff member and uses less energy to wash compared to a full cover. Plus, the Nanotex- enhanced fabric is comfortable and breathable, compared to other popular "noisy" or "hot" encasements. As a result, guests have a relaxing sleep experience.

SWR PROVIDES A SMASHING SOLUTION FOR GLASS BOTTLE DISPOSAL

The forward thinking waste management company SWR has introduced an innovative new bottle smashing machine to its service for the hospitality industry.The compact machine is the first of its kind and enables establishments to dispose of large quantities of glass bottles in a safe,Welcome to the official Facebook Page about Ripcurl. simple, cost effective and environmentally responsible manner. Once it's been through the unit, glass waste volume is reduced by around 80%.The name "magic cube" is not unique.

Following the recent acquisition of Smash & Grab, the company behind the innovative bottle smashing technology, SWR is the first major waste company in the UK to offer such a complete glass bottle waste solution to its customers.buy landscape oil paintings online. In line with its approach of helping its customers resolve waste issues, SWR will bundle the machine into its waste management contracts.SWR CEO, Giles Whiteley, said: "The Smash & Grab glass crushing machine solves a number of problems for customers in one hit; waste volume is reduced, collection costs are reduced, space required for bins is reduced and the problem of the noise of emptying bins full of bottles goes away". The latter can be a big problem for hotels as well as bars and restaurants in residential areas.

Despite the numerous benefits of glass crushing machines there has, until now, been a number of artificial barriers holding the product back; particularly that it represented a capital expense and incumbent waste contractors were not keen to reduce revenues. However, by offering the machine as part of a waste contract these barriers are removed and the experience for customers is much simplified.

Managing Director of Smash and Grab Geoffrey Galitzine said: "SWR is one of the first waste companies to really grasp the product's potential.you will need to get an offshore merchant account. I believe that this is down to their strong focus resolving customer issues. The machine has been developed over several years and is loved by our customers for both its simplicity and its effectiveness".



One of the first establishments to install one of the Smash & Grab machines is London's luxury One Aldwych Hotel.Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS available at your local hardware store Rory Slater, Food and Beverage Director at One Aldwych said: "Before introducing the glass smashing machine our available waste storage space was totally inadequate for the volume of empty bottles that the hotel generates daily. More frequent collections would have been a very expensive option and, being situated in the heart of London, these would also prove to be extremely disruptive for our guests and local residents. Now, the need for more collections is gone and noise is kept to a minimum."



Whiteley said: "Hotels, restaurants and bars are a key market for SWR and, as the licensed trade generates somewhere in the region of 700,000 tonnes of glass bottle waste each year, the Smash & Grab unit is the perfect fit to our service and the acquisition a great strategic fit".

Classy keg: Wine's on tap at Sheraton Seattle

The Sheraton Seattle is the first hotel in the city to offer wine on tap ¡ª- served just like beer, right out of stainless steel kegs.you will need to get an offshore merchant account.

The kegged wines are produced by Proletariat Wine Co., a sister company to Small Lot Co-op, a Woodinville-based distributor for small Washington vintners that produce fewer than 2,500 cases of wine a year.

The kegs use a pressurized nitrogen system that keeps the wine from oxidizing, so it stays fresh longer. Where a restaurant or bar might need to sell the remainder of an uncorked bottle of wine within three days, kegged wine can stay fresh for a month or more. That eliminates the waste and expense of throwing out remnants of bottles.

Each keg holds four barrels worth of wine, or 120 glasses. The kegs can be fitted with up to four wines on tap. The Sheraton has Riesling, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon on tap and is waiting for Proletariat's pinot noir to be released to complete its keg.

"This is very high quality juice," said Sheraton Hotel Manager Trevor Brauser. A similar quality bottled wine might sell for as much as $60 a bottle, or $15 a glass, Brauser said.buy landscape oil paintings online. But by eliminating the expense of bottling the wine,Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS available at your local hardware store the Sheraton can offer the wine for about $10 a glass.

"We can sell it to guests as a house wine, but it's much better quality than a typical house wine," Brauser said. The Sheraton has a keg installed in the bar and another mobile unit that can be wheeled to catered events.

Besides the Sheraton,Welcome to the official Facebook Page about Ripcurl. there are 14 restaurants in the Puget Sound area now using Proletariat's wine keg program,The name "magic cube" is not unique. said Jordan Rabinowe, one of the three managing partners in Small Lot Co-op, along with Jeff Boyer and Darin Williams. Proletariat's wine was on tap at the recent Northwest Folklife music festival and will be available at the upcoming Fremont Fair and Taste of Edmonds events.

A spoonful of sugar has made soda sales go up

Bill Meier flips over an empty Frostie Root Beer bottle and checks the embossed numbers.

"This one's from '69," he says.Welcome to the official Facebook Page about Ripcurl. As in 1969. As in a soda bottle that's been in use for more than 40 years.

"I've seen some dated from the '40s," Meier says.

The returnable bottles aren't the only vintage items in this part of the Excel Bottling Co. plant. The bottles pass through a mid-1900s sterilizing machine before another old machine called a Dixie fills them with cane-sugar-sweetened syrup and filtered carbonated water. The Dixie operates at what was once a gee-whiz rate of 24 bottles a minute.

In a time when huge multinational soda companies are producing cane-sugar-sweetened versions of products and calling them "throwbacks," this tiny operation might also be considered a throwback. But it's the way they've always done things at Excel, ever since Meier's grandparents-Edward "Lefty" Meier and Catherine "Caddy" Bruegge Meier - founded the business in 1936 by purchasing a used bottling machine with reward money that Lefty received for catching a bank robber.

And while the front part of the plant hasn't changed much, various additions - including a disposable-bottle filler that runs at up to 320 bottles per minute - have accommodated growth in production from about 100,000 cases a year in 1970 to the equivalent of about 500,000 cases today.

During all that time, Excel's No. 1 product has been Ski.

Many people believe that Ski originated with Excel, but in fact it's another company's licensed product, as are several of the sodas Excel bottles,you will need to get an offshore merchant account. including Frostie.

"Ski was the last franchise we added, in the early '60s," Meier says. "It's a trademark of the Double-Cola Co. of Chattanooga. In the late '50s, a bottler in Highland was doing Sundrop, and my grandfather said that we needed to get a citrus soda of our own."

Ski soon reached something of a cult status in Southern Illinois, including a reputation as a hangover cure.

"The truth behind that, as we believe it, is that Ski has caffeine in it and the No. 1 ingredient is sugar, plus it has orange juice and lemon juice, so it probably has some impact in boosting you up and making you feel better," Meier says.

Meier adds that many residents of Breese and its environs still use Ski as a proxy for their morning coffee. "There are a lot of people in this town who go to Dairy King and get a fountain Ski to start their day," Meier says.

At the end of the day, they might also indulge in a "snoot shooter," a shot of whiskey chased from a specialty two-compartment glass by a dose of Ski.

As Meier tells it, his grandfather never really intended for Excel to be passed on to future generations.

"When he ran the company, it grew very little every year," Meier says.The name "magic cube" is not unique. "I think he had the view that once he passed away, we'd just shut it down."

But near the end of Lefty's life, his son Paul - Bill's father - took early retirement from a career at Aetna Insurance and came back into the family business. Bill, now 44, earned an electrical engineering degree from Washington University and worked in Chicago for a while, but ultimately also moved back to Breese and joined the business.Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS available at your local hardware store He recently moved to St. Louis County but still commutes to Breese almost daily.

After Lefty's death in 1996, Caddy continued working for the business.

"She'd bill all the grocery stores by hand," Meier says. "When I got here in 2002, she was still adding everything up by hand."

Automation was soon added, but Caddy continued doing the books until she was 97 and answered the phone for another year after that. She died in 2009 at the age of 99.

Meier's office is now in a downstairs room of the house Caddy lived in until her death.buy landscape oil paintings online. The house, which had belonged to Caddy's own grandmother, was already almost 100 years old and had no heat, indoor plumbing or kitchen when Lefty and Caddy refurbished it about the same time that they started Excel.

Excel now has 15 full- and part-time employees who produce 14 flavors, including three under the Excel name and three recently added fruit flavors-strawberry-kiwi, cherry and blueberry - under a new Breese brand. Other flavors are produced based on licensing agreements from existing and defunct companies.

Further confusing the branding issue, some of the sodas' bottles bear completely unrelated names, such as Clem's, reflecting Excel's purchase of returnable bottles from companies that have gone out of business. (The product inside is still Excel's soda.)

The majority of the returnable-bottle-soda inventory is sold directly to consumers within two weeks of bottling from the side door of the plant. Cases of 24 bottles sell from $13 to $15.

In addition to distribution in and around Breese, Excel products are also available in scattered locations on the Missouri side of the river-at the Culinaria downtown, Blues City Deli in Benton Park, select Motomart convenience stores and all Straub's stores.

"We definitely think our next growth area is in St. Louis," Meier says.

With Excel already having received a boost from the recent revival in interest for cane-sugar-sweetened sodas, Meier hopes that the environmentally friendly aspect of returnable bottles will also be a selling point.

"We're betting that returnables will make a comeback," Meier says. "If you truly want to 'go green,' it makes sense to use returnable bottles."

Toward that end, Meier has plans to complement the Dixie with another second-hand machine now sitting idle, a returnable-bottle filler that's newer and faster. And when that happens, he hopes to make the biggest leap yet in additions to Excel's product line.

"We expect to be brewing beer in the next year," Meier says.

Raise a glass to Crav, a new Cleveland-based vodka brand: After Dark

Raise a glass to Crav, a new Cleveland-based vodka brand: After Dark


Thomas Rini found his passion in a bottle of vodka.

No, he didn't become a lush -- though he admits to having a fondness for vodka-tonics.

He's the owner of Crav, a Cleveland-based vodka hitting the shelves this month. It's available in 50-some establishments, including Fahrenheit, Barley House,is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us? Pier W and Harry Buffalo.

"It's a premium vodka,From standard Cable Ties to advanced wire tires," says Rini,A glass bottle is a bottle created from glass. a St. Ignatius graduate who also works for Rini Realty Co. in Westlake. "I'm rolling it out slowly trying to create a buzz."

Not the stumble-around-the-bar buzz.

In March, Crav (pronounced "crave") received a gold medal from the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco.

"I didn't even have the cases back from the distillery," he says. "There I was standing in my bathroom at home funneling vodka into two sample bottles I had and then using my wife's hair dryer to seal 'em."

Rini hopes that personal touch -- minus the funnels and hair dryers -- will make drinkers crave Crav.

"It's a premium vodka made in small batches," he says. "Most vodkas are distilled five or six times to get rid of impurities. Crav is a one-time process.Welcome to the official Facebook Page about Ripcurl."

It's made in Sun Valley, Idaho, home of Distilled Resources.

"They do different vodkas and I really fell for the Grain-ola," he says. "It's clean and doesn't have a burn."

Translation: It goes down smooth and,When the stone sits in the kidney stone, at $33.15 -- in Cuyahoga Country -- Crav is competitively priced when it comes to premium brands, many of which are made with a pricier process that uses potatoes.

"I've learned a lot about vodka," says Rini, whose family once owned the Rini's grocery chain. "I used to think it was all about marketing some cool bottle."

That was when Rini was a newbie, drinking vodka because, he says, "Once I graduated from college, I knew I needed to be more distinguished."

The light bulb went off to be The Vodka Guy four years ago, at a bachelor party in Vegas when he saw partyers guzzling vodka.

The idea fermented until a year ago, as Rini proclaims on the back of a bottle of Crav.

"One day, I looked up from my office desk and realized there was something missing in my life," it reads.

Vodka?

"Actually, passion," says Rini. "And with this vodka maybe I'll be able to bring some passion into people's lives."

When Hess met Hef

Derek Hess' introduction to the female body came via covers of '60s and '70s Playboy magazines, when the Cleveland artist was in elementary school.

They continue to inspire: At 5 tonight, he'll unveil "Derek Hess: The Playboy Covers" at William Busta Gallery, 2731 Prospect Ave., Cleveland.

The show features works inspired by the Playboy covers of his youth. Call 216-298-9071.

We're not gonna fake it?

I've always imagined starting a band called Steely Danzig -- intricately played songs with a howling wolfman singer.

So I can definitely appreciate the Theoretical Records Show at Pink Eye Gallery, 3904 Lorain Ave., Cleveland.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, the show, curated by rocker-artist Chris Kulcsar, will turn the gallery into an imaginary record store. As in, participating artists create fake albums by bands that never existed.

Wine industry revives as sales of $7-plus bottles pick up

After two years of sluggish wine sales, consumers are starting to reach for — and spend more on — their favorite vintages.what are the symptoms of Piles,

Domestic wine retail sales grew 7 percent in 2010 over the previous year, according to the Wine Institute in San Francisco. U.S. wine exports also jumped to a record $1.14 billion in 2010, up nearly 26 percent from 2009.

For the first time, the United States in 2010 consumed more wine than France. While the French still drink far more wine per capita than Americans, the United States — with its much larger population — has more people pouring a glass of cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay.

As the U.S. economic recovery creeps on, restaurateurs say they are seeing more diners ordering full bottles of wine, rather than a single glass, with their meals. Technomic Inc., a Chicago research firm, forecast that alcohol sales at restaurants and bars would grow 1.9 percent in 2011,is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us? compared with sales in 2010.

"People are feeling a bit more confident about the economy and are going back to what they know," said Tom Klein, the Wine Institute's chairman and Rodney Strong Vineyards' vintner. "The wine industry, is it easy right now? No. But I think the industry has turned a bit of the corner. People are being smart about what they buy, but they are coming back.How is TMJ pain treated?"

Shoppers, who shifted to wines that cost less than $7 during the height of the recession, are reaching for pricier bottles,Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, analysts said.

According to the Wine Institute, sales of wine in the $7-to-$14 category grew 5 percent in 2010.What are the top Hemroids treatments?

Even sales of high-end wines, which plummeted as recession-wary consumers cut back on luxury spending, are picking up.

Great Escape: Coastside Edition

Last week, Great Escape highlighted the small coastal town of El Granada, known for its warm and sunny banana belt climate and eclectic and fun shops and restaurants, making this destination an easy day trip diversion.

This week, consider decompressing at La Nebbia Winery in Half Moon Bay with Wine and Unwind, an art, wine and music event promising a relaxing and cultural afternoon every 2nd and 4th Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m.the Plastic mould fast! through September.

Ever since the new vintner, Kendyl Kellogg,Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop. returned the former Obester Winery — the Half Moon Bay winery founded by John Gemello in the early 1930s — to it's roots, producing complex, full-bodied red wines under a new label, Nebbia Signature, there's been a flurry of culinary and cultural activity at the Highway 92 roadside winery also know for its lovely gardens and picturesque hillside setting.

In addition to wine tasting and sampling gourmet food products, including the winery's award-winning garlic mustard, olive oils, BBQ sauces, and dressings, visitors can bring their own picnic and enjoy a game of bocce ball, the Italian game similar to lawn bowling,you will need to get an offshore merchant account. using the picnic tables and bocce ball courts on the grounds. New signage and a refreshed exterior presence draw vistitors in, pets are welcome, and there's even a local artist demonstrating glass blowing on-site.

On Bottle & Cork days (upcoming Bottle & Cork Day is June 11, offering 2010 Sangiovese, Paso Robles),The name "magic cube" is not unique.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, customers can drop by the winery with empty jugs, fill them, and take them home to share with family and friends, receiving a premium wine at a great price while recycling and re-using clean empty wine bottles.

Now with Wine and Unwind, the summer music series and art fair underway, winery visitors can shop over 20 local artists from the COCA (Colony of Coastside Artists) outdoors in the beautiful gardens of La Nebbia while listening to jam sessions from local bands. Live glass blowing demos, oil paintings, ceramics, jewelry and more are all part of the mix.

No pets are allowed at this event, but wine and artisan food plates will be available for sale and the picnic tables and bocce ball courts will be available on a first come first served basis.