The 19th annual back-to-school sales tax holiday is this weekend, and parents are being encouraged to take advantage of the savings. Gov. Kay Ivey said families should use the occasion to stock up on school supplies. “With the upcoming school year just around the corner, I encourage everyone to take full advantage of our Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday,” […]

Charlie and Sandra Wrape served 27 dinners on their first day of business. The year was 1973, and they had just opened a restaurant in a former bait shop on the shores of Wolf Bay in the tiny Baldwin County community of Miflin. “Business just blossomed from there,” said the Wrapes’ daughter and the current […]

In a single decade, David and Andrea Snyder will have launched two dining concepts and opened six restaurants as owners. “It’s been an amazing journey,” said David, who with his wife founded Urban Cookhouse and Farm Bowl + Juice Co. The Snyders opened the first Urban Cookhouse, a farm-to-fire-to-table, fast-casual restaurant, in Homewood in June 2010.

Dustin Beaty had been operating Hospital Discount Pharmacy in downtown Jasper for nine years when he agreed to his wife’s request to sell game-day clothes in the pharmacy. A week after she began the venture, Shannon Beaty nonchalantly informed him, “I’m having to reorder. I ordered some non-game-day stuff.’’ With that seemingly innocent statement, the […]

For Jheovanny Gomez, the path to the American dream began by pursuing his high school sweetheart to Tuscaloosa. In his native country of Colombia, his life choices were pursuing drug cartel members as an undercover army intelligence operative, going to college there or following his love. Love won.