STARTUPS CENTRAL

Jacqueline Gathers took over a Brooklyn home inspection franchise after her husband’s death and transformed a personal loss into a profitable local enterprise. Having spent three decades with the New York City Housing Authority, Gathers earned her New York State inspector license and reopened the operation her husband had been setting up, launching the business in 2018. She framed the move as both a way to preserve his work and a second act in her own career, stepping into an

Cooks and bartenders from coffee shops to fine-dining rooms say cinnamon is moving beyond pie plates and holiday drinks, showing up in savory entrees, cocktails and vegetarian dishes year-round. Across several cities, restaurant managers report a steady uptick in dishes that use ground bark from the cinnamon tree, and diners are taking notice. The shift, chefs say, is driven partly by a search for familiar flavors with fresh twists — think spiced rubs for meat, warm notes in

A short, practical playbook for keeping customer-facing bots useful: feed them the right information, watch how they behave, and update them regularly. Too many local shops and service providers rush to add conversational tools thinking they’ll instantly shoulder customer inquiries. They won’t — not unless someone prepares the knowledge those systems draw on. The most urgent task for business owners isn’t buying a fancy interface; it’s organizing the facts, policies and answe

AI Helpers Tailor Study Plans, Recommend Resources and Shift Corporate Training — But They Also Raise Trust and Quality Questions AI-powered assistants are altering how adults pick up new skills, from weekend hobbyists to employees in large firms. Companies and individual learners are increasingly treating these tools as collaborators that can evaluate a person’s starting point, assemble a step-by-step curriculum and adapt materials as competence grows. Recent industry analys

Leventhal tells restaurateurs that clear, useful digital tools and distinct guest experiences are the real assets for winning loyalty; he says the goal is to simplify operations, not layer on new technical burdens. Leventhal, now leading Blackbird, argues the point bluntly: software should make day-to-day restaurant work easier, not require owners to become technicians. He says operators don’t need to master cryptocurrency or other specialized systems — they just need access

An online marketplace created by an immigrant entrepreneur has helped thousands set up independent businesses, with a handful of top sellers reporting monthly income as high as $260,000. The startup packages tools for marketing, payments and client management into a single service meant to lower the barriers to self-employment and give professionals an alternative to traditional jobs. The founder, who moved to the U.S. in pursuit of better opportunities, says early frustratio

Millions of workers say a dramatic pivot rarely sparks a lasting career reinvention. Career advisers and workplace psychologists report that most professional shifts begin with a series of modest actions repeated over months, not a single watershed moment. Those incremental moves — a brief conversation with a stranger, an evening class, or a tentative application — can build into steady progress: practice yields skill, skill breeds confidence, and confidence opens doors to ro

A large share of marketers report trouble tailoring messages for many customers at once, but a recent analysis suggests a practical fix: pair physical mail with digital ads. Campaigns that coordinated mailed pieces and online promotions saw sales climb to roughly 4 1/2 times those produced by digital-only efforts. When the campaign began with an offline touch followed by online outreach, results edged closer to five times the sales of online-only programs; starting with digit

Target, American Eagle and other national brands are increasingly recruiting everyday social media users who have only a few hundred followers to post about their products, often offering discounts, samples or store credit instead of direct payment. Major retailers and consumer brands have rolled out in-house creator programs that look more like loyalty games than traditional influencer contracts. Participants climb through membership levels by completing tasks — sharing phot

Subheadline: A former stage performer says businesses lose customers by skipping two short, necessary steps before asking for a sale For more than two decades I stood under lights and faced rooms that didn’t know me. The trick wasn’t the stunt; it was getting people to stop scrolling in their heads and start paying attention. That experience taught me a simple truth that many business owners ignore: a direct request—book this, buy that, schedule now—won’t work unless you firs