- May 11, 2024
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Business excellence starts with a culture, quality core values, a great team and a clear mission. The businesses recognized in this section, and which were recognized with Standing O Awards Nov. 1 at the Expo, all possess those qualities.
How did each business win a Standing O? Our process is simple. With collaboration from our partner council, a true Business Performance Matrix was created. The Observer staff solicited area businesses to participate. Applications were collected from each participant, and confidential data was collected and then separated from the name of the business. The scoring was completed based on facts and figures, not based on the company name. This is not a popularity contest.
Our scoring process was a points-based system for each question on the survey. The points were totaled and validated by the partner council, and the businesses were ranked in their respective category by their point totals.
Special thanks to the members of the partner council, for their help: Business Assistance Center, Joe Roy; Flagler County Chamber, Rebecca Delorenzo and Howard Holley; Daytona State College, Kent Ryan; SCORE, Glenn Laury, Gene Balderate and Roger Leverton; Economic Opportunity Council, Helga Van Eckert and Paul Manning; Center for Business Excellence, Robin King and Rick Fraser; Palm Coast Observer, Kaitlin Murray.
We all know Palm Coast is a great place to live. So it stands to reason that it’s also a great place to do business. Here are two indicators that will confirm that opinion:
New business permits in Palm Coast have risen from 191 in 2011, to 199 in 2012, to 326 so far in 2013. That’s a 63% increase from 2012 to 2013 — with two more months to go!
The second indicator is the collected sales tax in Palm Coast. It’s up 15% in the past three years!
On the following pages, you will find nine businesses, identified by category, that were the most excellent businesses this year. To help you get to know them a bit better, we asked them to tell us their story in a paragraph (elevator speech), to tell us what they do better than anyone else in the market (wow factor), and to tell us one principle that guides them (words to live by).
