9770: Lowell Thompson, Adman And Author.

Just in time for Black History Month, Lowell Thompson has written a new book, African Americans in Chicago. Pick up your copy via Amazon.com or other booksellers.

9748: BHM 2012—Museum of Science + Industry.

If the Museum of Science + Industry Chicago celebrates Black Creativity every year, does that demonstrate a lack of creativity?

9635: More Meat On Moo & Oink Story.

From The Austin Weekly News…

Minority firm buys Moo & Oink brand

Stores remain unsold but product to live on

By La Risa Lynch, Contributing Reporter

Moo & Oink, the shuttered retail meat company, will live on in name only as a minority owned company acquired the former store’s brand and other intellectual property for $530,000 during a public sale of the 30-year-old company last week.

Robert Beavers, chairman and CEO of Best Chicago Meat, purchased Moo & Oink’s iconic logo, name, website, catchy commercial jingle as well as the company’s recipes for several of its meat products. Best Chicago Meat, 4649 W. Armitage Ave., makes several well-known local meat products, including Jemm burger and sausage, Red Hot hotdogs and Scala’s, Italian meat and seasoning products.

“We are extremely proud to have Moo & Oink join our stable of brands,” Beavers said. “It’s a brand that is very well-known in the African-American community. Now it will be truly a minority owned.”

Beavers and his partner, Dave Van Kampen, were the highest bidders at the public auction held at 111 S. Wacker. The auction only attracted a few bidders. The opening bid started at $100,000. There were no bids to purchase Moo & Oink’s three city stores and its south suburban Hazel Crest location.

Beavers said competition from big box retailers made it prohibitive for them to purchase all the stores. He said many of the big boxes want to come into areas that are food deserts, an area where Moo & Oink was once the only shopping option. Food desert is a term that describes an area that lacks mainstream grocery stores.

Beavers said he has high hopes for the brand. The company wants to produce other products, such as barbeque sauce or seasoning that could carry the Moo & Oink brand. These products would be sold in retail stores.

The company also hopes to expand the brand’s reach outside of Chicago, targeting cities with high black population like Detroit, Birmingham, Memphis and Atlanta. Moo & Oink’s predecessors wanted to expand to those cities before its financial woes.

Van Kampen said the expansion into other markets is doable because of the Levy family’s efforts in growing the brand over the years. The Levy family operated Moo & Oink retail stores for years.

“I think they … (created) a great foundation and now we want to take it further … move it beyond this region,” said Van Kampen, president and COO of Best Chicago Meat.

An involuntary bankruptcy claim by Moo & Oink’s employee pension fund forced the company’s auction. The pension alleges Moo & Oink owes employees $3 million, a claim which the company denies.

The auction garnered $530,000 for the intellectual property and $68,000 for the furniture, store fixtures and equipment, including countertops, meat processing equipment and freezers.

The auction bought in a fraction of what is owed to First Midwest Bank, Moo & Oink’s largest creditor. Courtney Barr, an attorney for the bank, said the auction generated $598,000. The bank is owed $5.5 million.

Barr said the bank is “still in the hole for a significant amount.” She hopes the sale of Moo & Oink’s four real estate properties would make up the difference. The bank plans to use a real estate broker to put the properties up for sale in the spring.

Financing prevented another minority investor group from bidding in the auction. Attorney Exavier Pope, of The Pope Firm, which represented the group, said he was not surprised that another minority company bought Moo & Oink. He said his group stressed that Moo & Oink “needs to be African-American owned because it had African-American consumers.”

His group’s initial interest to purchase all the stores was to save jobs and preserve food shopping options in low-income communities. Pope said his group did not bid in the auction because they were unable to get their financing in on time. Pope said it was disheartening that no one attempted to save the business.

“That’s a travesty,” he said.

Several employees were on hand to watch the auction’s outcome. Ronald Raddle, 51, of West Englewood, hoped the company would be sold in tact to keep employees’ jobs.

Raddle, a Moo & Oink butcher for 18 years, said it has been hard finding work since grocery stores are carrying more packaged meats.

“I got to find something else,” he said. “I can sweep, wipe windows. I will do anything to put food for my family on the table.”

9592: Moo & Oink & Sold.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Best Chicago buys Moo & Oink brand in auction

By Sandra Guy

Best Chicago Meat Co. emerged as the winner in a bankruptcy auction Wednesday for the Moo & Oink brand, bidding $530,000 for the intellectual property — such as the Moo & Oink characters, web site and product recipes.

The buyer, based at 4649 W. Armitage Ave., is African-American owned. Robert (Bob) Beavers, the chairman and majority shareholder, said the business plans to reinstate the Moo & Oink products in the Chicago market, then test markets in Detroit and Birmingham, Ala., and look into taking the brand to Atlanta and Memphis, Tenn.

Best Chicago may expand the brand to new products, such as barbecue sauce, seasonings and even vegetables, said Dave Van Kampen, president and chief operating officer.

Bidding started at $100,000.

Moo & Oink was offered at auction as a whole and in pieces. Fixtures and equipment sold for a combined $68,000 to two liquidators that planned to sell the items at a public auction, probably in late January. No one bid on the real estate that were the company’s four stores.

Courtney Barr, lawyer for the main creditor, First Midwest Bank, which is owed $5.5 million, said she hopes real estate brokers will sell the properties this spring and raise some cash for creditors. She said one national retailer had taken a close look at buying the Moo & Oink real estate, but didn’t bid.

Moo & Oink had stores on the edges of the city’s so-called “food desert,” and so had drawn interest, Barr said. The Chicago stores were at 7158 S. Stony Island, 4848 W. Madison and 8201 S. Racine, and the chain also was at 3330 W. 183rd St. in Hazel Crest.

Exavier Pope, a lawyer representing two African-American investor groups, said he has talked with parties that are interested in buying the Stony Island and Madison properties.

A bankruptcy judge put Moo & Oink, 150-year-old meat retailer, up for auction on Nov. 14 after insisting that the sale be widely publicized and open to the public. Creditors had forced the company into Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in late September.

Moo & Oink’s demise put 200 employees out of work on Sept. 9 after it closed its stores and its e-commerce and wholesale operations. The employees received no severance benefits.

A holding company Beavers controls said it may hire some of the former Moo & Oink employees for certain operating units, including Best Diamond Plastics, Best Diamond Packaging and Best Croutons. The company’s web site said those divisions primarily sell products to McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food outlets.

Beavers is a former member of McDonald’s Corp.’s board of directors.

Moo & Oink’s business income had dropped to $18.9 million while it operated in 2011, compared with $29.2 million in 2010 and $39.3 million in 2009, court documents show.

Its top 20 creditors are owed a collective $6.4 million.

Mary Steele, who represented the former employees throughout the process, said she wished that the company could have been sold as a whole. “But I’m OK with it. God is still good,” she said.

Ricky Jones, a Moo & Oink driver for 25 years, said, “I am disappointed. I have no job and I still have a family to feed.”

Mari Gallagher, a Chicago consultant who has led research into the availability of groceries in the city, said that retaining a business presence at the Moo & Oink locations in Chicago “is crucial if we want to continue making progress in shrinking the food desert.”

9542: City For Sale.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Emanuel looks to attract more advertising

City offers marketers space on trash cans, website, water bills

By Kristen Mack, Chicago Tribune reporter

Mayor Rahm Emanuel not only wants to sell ad space on bridge houses and trash cans, he’s looking at stuffing corporate fliers in water bills, selling exclusive vending rights at city facilities and allowing promotional sponsorships of public programs.

As part of the mayor’s 2012 budget plan to raise $25 million from marketing the city, the Emanuel administration put out a call for marketing firms to help the city identify opportunities and negotiate contracts with potential advertisers.

The goal is “generating the maximum value for the City’s corporate fund operating budget while limiting the social impacts of such advertising activities, including visual pollution, and preserving the continuity and integrity of the City’s image,” according to the request for proposals posted on the city’s website last week.

That website, by the way, is among the public spots where people may one day find advertisers competing for their attention. So are street sweepers, snowplows, buildings, overpasses and traffic control boxes on sidewalks.

All of which worries observers who were upset at Emanuel’s first try at generating ad revenue earlier this month by leasing space on the historic Wabash Avenue bridge houses over the Chicago River.

The result was red, white and blue signs for Bank of America stuck on to the limestone walls, where they will remain through Dec. 12. The city says it made $4,500 from the deal, but critics said it was an assault on Chicago’s architectural heritage.

The lack of standards suggests that “anything is fair game,” said Jean Follett, interim executive director of Landmarks Illinois.

”Whatever you ask we’ll negotiate it,” Follett said. “We’ve put ourselves in a corner; what you get instead of tax increases is fees and ads in your public spaces and in your water bills.”

The city solicitation, which is only the initial step in the marketing plans, breaks public assets into six categories, including physical property, vending and product licensing, mail and the city’s website. It offers little guidance on how to differentiate between the value of a trash can and public landmarks.

”The Mayor and his administration are exploring any and all innovative options that will bring new revenue into the City to avoid reductions in services the City delivers and any additional financial strains on Chicago taxpayers,” Lois Scott, the city’s chief financial officer, said in a statement responding to questions about the plans. “The city has numerous, diverse places and things to market, and we’re ready to work together under the right set of guidelines to market what Chicago has to offer.”

Former Mayor Richard Daley first proposed the idea of allowing corporate ads on bridge houses. The head of the company that won the resulting contract to market the bridge houses — leading to the recent bank ad — said the city can make money while protecting its landmarks.

”The overall impact of the concept in the long run needs to be sensitive to the needs of the city and maintain its architectural integrity,” said Phillip Lynch, president and owner of Lincolnshire-based Fresh Picked Media. “There’s pop art type executions that don’t have to be as direct as advertising and are clever and add a theme.”

Companies that sell breath fresheners could erect ads outside of restaurants, Lynch said, and gray traffic light boxes could be turned into gift boxes for the holidays.