Volleyball sparks addition to Flannagan’s
Capitalizing on the soaring popularity of beach volleyball, one of central Ohio’s most visible locations for the sport is adding indoor courts to be able to host games year-round.
Flannagan’s Dublin plans to add a 15,000-square-foot metal building at its 6835 Caine Road location, near Sawmill Road and Interstate 270. Plans call for the Fieldhouse at Flannagan’s to open in May, or possibly earlier if work goes quickly.
“We’ve been hounded by our customers to have a
as the world’s biggest packaged food maker by sales.
That might not lead to big changes that customers would notice on the supermarket shelves. But it’s people’s changing tastes, shifting away from boxed and canned groceries in favor of items that seem fresher or healthier, that are driving deal-making in the food industry.
Companies like Kraft Heinz, itself formed from two century-old businesses in 2015, are trying to find new avenues for growth amid heightened competition.
Part of the challenge is the proliferation of smaller food makers marketing more wholesome products, which makes it harder for the established companies to drive up sales simply by selling more of their wellknown products or by raising prices, as they have in the past.
“That obviously has its limits,” said David Garfield, head of the consumer products unit at consulting firm AlixPartners.
Instead, companies are being forced to dig deeper to find cost efficiencies or tap into new markets, Garfield said. That can include mergers that result in consolidated manufacturing systems, or that give companies access to distribution networks in regions of the world where they don’t have a big presence.
Those were some of the factors that drove Oreo and Chips Ahoy maker Mondelez International — which was split from Kraft in 2012 —to make an unsuccessful takeover bid for Hershey last year before retreating. And they were among the reasons cited by executives in the Kraft Heinz tie up, which was engineered by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, the Brazilian investment firm with a history of taking over companies and aggressively cutting costs.