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When Deirdre Flynn from NAFEM called me a week ago Monday to tell me that Mike Carpenter had suddenly passed away, I was so flabbergasted, all I could say was, “What? What? That really, really sucks!” Not the most elegant of responses, but a deeply heartfelt one. Judging from all the e-mails and phone calls…

Hockenbergs Food Service Equipment and Supply Co., a dealer headquartered in Omaha, Neb, has acquired Global KES. Based in Lee’s Summit, Mo., Global KES was a subsidiary of Sub-Technologies Inc., a supplier of smallwares—including janitorial products, scales and cutting boards—with a special focus on products for the Subway chain. Sub-Technologies will continue to operate under…

Average list-price increases for equipment and supplies remained moderate over the past nine months, according to new data from AutoQuotes Inc., even though materials prices have soared during the period. The average price increase was a moderate 2.2% for all 358,262 products from 411 manufacturers in the company’s database. The analysis covers the period July…

New guidelines issued April 15 recommend a slow roll-out of the July 1 enforcement of California’s Food Handler Card. The new recommendations posted by the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health recommend that from July 1 through Jan. 1, 2012, enforcement of the law be limited to “education and notification of requirements for compliance.”…

Budget watch: Despite concerns that budget wrangling in Washington would lead to cuts in food-safety programs, it appears that most funding for the Food Safety Modernization Act signed into law in January is secure. The Senate Appropriations summary says the funding level for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration takes into account the government’s distinct…

Always on the lookout for positive economic signs to offset the negatives, two upbeat reports came across our desk last week. The National Restaurant Association, analyzing recent employment data from the state perspective, reported on its TrendMapper research website that 34 states saw their jobless rates decline in March–“one of the most broad-based improvements since…

States’ tax revenues rose significantly during the latter part of 2010, continuing a trend toward gradual fiscal recovery, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s latest State Revenue Report. But local tax revenues, highly dependent on property taxes, moved in the opposite direction in the fourth quarter last year, the Albany, N.Y., organization reported. Publicly…