Latest news with #SouthCarolina-based
CBS News
3 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Texas travel stop Buc-ee's sues South Carolina clothing company, alleges it copied famous beaver logo
Beloved Texas-based travel stop Buc-ee's is in a legal battle with a South Carolina-based clothing and accessories company over a beaver logo on its merchandise, according to court documents filed last month. Buc-ee's alleges that Born United, which sells merchandise featuring patriotic themes and slogans, is exploiting its reputation by using what appears to be its famous beaver logo. Photos attached to the lawsuit show a beaver, similar to the Buc-ee's beaver, on items like a t-shirt, shorts and a clothing patch. Born United t-shirt, left; Buc-ee's store front, right. Buc-ee's is suing for trademark infringement; false designation of origin and unfair competition; common law trademark infringement; and unfair competition under South Carolina's trade practices act. The items labeled "TAC-BUCC" have since been removed from Born United's website. Not the first time Buc-ee's has claimed copyright infringement In 2018, Buc-ee's argued that San Antonio's Choke Canyon's cartoon logo of an alligator licking its lips is too similar to the company's signature logo illustration of a beaver wearing a baseball cap. In 2023, a knock-off of Buc-ee's opened in Mexico, dubbed Buk-ii's Super Mercado. Buk-ii's said its mascot is a gopher rather than the famous Buc-ee's beaver.
Business Wire
12-06-2025
- Health
- Business Wire
athenahealth, Humana, and Your Health Closing Critical Gaps at the Point of Care While Reducing Administrative Burden on Clinicians
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--athenahealth, a leading provider of network-enabled software and services for healthcare practices nationwide, in collaboration with key partners Humana (NYSE: HUM) and Your Health, a South Carolina-based primary care practice, have received a 2025 Points of Light Award from KLAS. This recognition is for the case study, ' Closing Care Gaps & Reducing the Administrative Burden Through Improved Data Sharing.' This recognition highlights how integrating timely and relevant information directly into the clinical workflow can help improve health outcomes for patients. "Facilitating collaboration between payer and provider organizations to improve care and eliminate administrative tasks is how we can deliver care experience that patients expect and deserve,' said Sam Lambson, VP of Product Management, Data and Ecosystem. 'At Your Health, our clinicians focus on delivering care that's preventative, personalized, and high-quality. This requires our staff to track patients and their health beyond the clinic and identify and address care gaps before they escalate to more serious or costly conditions,' said Will Stillinger, chief operating officer, Your Health. 'Humana and athenahealth have established an open and seamless information exchange that helps us deliver better care while eliminating administrative burden and costly interventions. We are excited by the opportunity for future care intervention pathways based on factors like Social Determinants of Health.' To accomplish this real-time data exchange, Humana and athenahealth partnered to implement athenaPayer's Care and Diagnosis Gaps solutions to identify and surface care and diagnosis gaps among Humana's Medicare Advantage members. Utilizing athenahealth's cloud-based, single instance platform, Your Health clinicians can now see relevant patient information ahead of visits, address identified gaps during the visit, and document diagnoses and care plans directly within athenaOne. Leveraging Da Vinci APIs, athenahealth automatically sends validated data back to Humana to appropriately document and report on the quality of care they provide to members. As the case study reports, athenahealth has uncovered an average of 4.8 additional care gaps and 4.7 additional diagnosis gaps per member among Humana's Medicare Advantage population, and Humana has been able to close 35% of its CMS Star gaps. Your Health clinicians now spend less time identifying care gaps with limited information, improving care while reducing documentation time. 'By investing in improving preventive care and management of chronic conditions, we're able to help our members stay healthier and out of the hospital. And that leads to lower costs for members themselves,' said Chris Walker, associate vice president of Enterprise Transformation and Interoperability, Humana. 'This partnership – and the positive results we've collectively achieved – is another example of how we are working together to improve patient care and deliver better health outcomes.' athenahealth continues to expand its work with payer organizations, boosting information sharing across its network of more than 160,000 providers and facilitating new pathways to improve patient outcomes. To date, athenahealth has surfaced information on more than 25 million care and diagnosis gaps across commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA lines of business. The company has additional solutions that support provider and payer collaboration, including electronic prior authorization, transition of care, and referral management capabilities. 'We are working to create a thriving healthcare ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable care for all,' said Sam Lambson, vice president of Product Management, Data and Ecosystem Platform for athenahealth. 'Our work with Humana and Your Health is an example of exactly what that ecosystem can look like when practices are equipped with purpose-built, innovative solutions that ease clinician burden and enhance patient outcomes. Facilitating collaboration between payer and provider organizations to improve care and eliminate administrative tasks is how we can deliver care experience that patients expect and deserve.' The KLAS Points of Light annual awards celebrate success stories achieved by payers, healthcare organizations, and healthcare IT companies who have partnered to reduce costs and inefficiencies and improve patient experience. The organizations are honored by the recognition and recently presented about their collaboration at the KLAS K2 Collaborative Summit, May 20-22 in Salt Lake City, UT. To learn more about the challenges, outcomes, and key lessons from this collaboration, please visit: About athenahealth, Inc. athenahealth strives to cure complexity and simplify the practice of healthcare. Our innovative technology includes electronic health records, revenue cycle management, and patient engagement solutions that help healthcare providers, administrators, and practices eliminate friction for patients while getting paid efficiently. athenahealth partners with practices with purpose-built software backed by expertise to produce the insights needed to drive better clinical and financial outcomes. We're inspired by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all. Learn more at About Humana Humana Inc. is committed to putting health first – for our teammates, our customers, and our company. Through our Humana insurance services, and our CenterWell health care services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare, Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer at and at About Your Health Your Health is a leading healthcare organization and physician group committed to providing high-quality, patient-centered care across various specialties, including primary and specialty care for seniors in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. With 300 physicians, we deliver care in homes, local offices, facilities, and virtually, ensuring services are available wherever needed. Through continuous education and clinical excellence, Your Health aims to improve health outcomes and enhance community well-being. Our team collaborates closely with families and partners to provide coordinated, compassionate care that prioritizes patients. For more information, please visit
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
ZRS Management hits 100,000 apartment units
This story was originally published on Multifamily Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Multifamily Dive newsletter. In early May, ZRS Management, the No. 13-ranked operator on the most recent National Multifamily Housing Council Top 50 list, surpassed 100,000 units under management. The Orlando, Florida-based company becomes the 13th firm to pass the 100,000 threshold, according to this year's NMHC annual rankings. ZRS had one of the largest jumps on this year's list, jumping six spots and gaining almost 15,000 apartments from the previous year. ZRS operates almost 350 properties in eight states and the District of Columbia. Over the past decade, its portfolio has grown by approximately 70,000 units — a more than 200% increase. Over the last few years, the multifamily industry has seen several third-party operators, including Atlanta-based RangeWater Real Estate, cross the 100,000-unit threshold, as historically high levels of apartments are delivered and consolidation has hit the management business. In 2020, seven operators claimed more than 100,000 units on the NMHC Top 50. In 2015, only four firms had passed that threshold. For many companies, growth has come through acquisitions or absorbing portfolios of operators who want to exit the management business. For example, in February 2024, Atlanta-based Wood Partners transferred property management operations to Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar. However, ZRS has avoided making acquisitions and expanded as its clients grew. 'That's really been the most unique part,' President and CEO Darren Pierce, who stepped into the top role at ZRS in January, told Multifamily Dive. 'With the consolidation that's happened in our industry on the third-party side and a lot of groups doing it through acquisition, our growth as an entire organization from day one has always been organic.' Hitting the 100,000 threshold elevates ZRS to being more of a national property management brand. Pierce credits strong retention among its 2,100 employees with fueling the firm's growth. '[Getting to 100,000 units] solely was just a compounding of good behaviors, a compounding of good client relationships and investing in our employees,' Pierce said. 'It's deal after deal coming in and being rewarded by the confidence from all of our owners. It's definitely been a nice milestone.' Though the transaction market has been slower over the last few years, ZRS has picked up management contracts from new clients, some of whom are developers that are keeping projects longer than they anticipated. 'Our growth has been on transactions, and when transactions are happening in our business, we are rewarded by our clients buying new deals,' Pierce said. 'And so a lot of the growth has also come through management changes — companies that have retained their asset, refinanced their asset, and are looking for a new management partner.' ZRS could see its numbers increase or decrease as its clients buy and sell. 'As the market starts to loosen up and our clients start to sell, we could easily drop below 100,000 or pick up some more and exceed 100,000,' Pierce said. 'We've never measured our success by how many units we've managed.' Click here to sign up to receive multifamily and apartment news like this article in your inbox every weekday. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Mint
09-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
The canned-food aisle is getting squeezed by rising steel tariffs
Soup, black beans and sliced pineapple could all soon become more expensive because of one particular reason: their cans. Cans used for food require tin-coated, ultrathin sheet steel made from molten iron. Not much is produced in the U.S., where domestic producers have been scaling back production for years. The Trump administration's new 50% duty on imported steel could increase store prices for items in steel cans by 9% to 15%, according to the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group whose members include Campbell's, Hormel Foods and Del Monte Foods. At that rate, the price of a can of vegetables costing $2 could increase by 18 cents to 30 cents. 'The American consumer is going to pay more for their cans," said Dan Dietrich, vice president for strategy at Trivium Packaging. President Trump on June 4 doubled the previous 25% tariffs on imported steel, aiming to increase demand for domestic steel by making cheaper, foreign-made metal more expensive. Tariffs are likely to drive up prices for domestic-made steel, too, as U.S. producers raise their own prices. Can manufacturers say they will continue to buy lots of imported tin-coated steel, known as tin-plate—because there isn't enough of it made in the U.S. to supply them. 'I would love nothing more than to allocate more purchases to the United States, but the overall production capacity is not there," said Robert Gatz, general manager of Can Corp. of America, a Pennsylvania-based maker of food cans. Can Corp. produces about one billion food cans annually and specializes in cans for tomatoes. Gatz said the company buys about 12% of its tin-plate from domestic steel mills. Can manufacturers estimate that about three-quarters of tin-plate consumed in the U.S. is foreign-made, with much of it coming from Europe and Canada. Nearly 1.5 million tons of tin-plate were imported last year, about 37% more than in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Tin-plate is made with steel derived from molten iron, but most steel in the U.S. is now made from melted scrap, and that doesn't measure up to the can industry's exacting quality standards. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel continues to produce tin-plate but has reduced its production volume in recent years. Cleveland-Cliffs, another major steelmaker, no longer produces tin-plate after closing its Weirton, mill last year. Cliffs Chief Executive Lourenco Goncalves said he has no plans to restart Weirton, though he had blamed the plant's closing on a lack of tariffs on imported tin-plate. 'It's done. When the horse leaves the barn, the horse does not come back to the barn," Goncalves told reporters last week. The 25% steel tariff imposed in March by the Trump administration raised the cost of producing filled cans by about 7% to 8%, can companies said. They anticipate that doubling the duty on tin-plate to 50% will boost costs by at least 14%. That higher price will hit canned-food producers. South Carolina-based McCall Farms sells canned green beans, carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes and other vegetables grown in the South. Rising expenses for labor and raw vegetables have already driven up production costs over the past five years, said Thomas Hunter, McCall Farms' co-president. 'The biggest concern we have is that these canned vegetables start getting to a point where the consumers are not willing to purchase them any more," Hunter said. Cans are prized for enabling long shelf lives for vegetables, fruit and other ready-to-eat foods, able to keep for years without spoiling. But can manufacturers worry that higher can costs will discourage their use. Cans on a conveyor belt. Can companies say not enough tin-coated steel is made in the U.S. to meet their needs. The Consumer Brands Association said as many as 20,000 U.S. jobs in food-can manufacturing could be at risk if the tariff on tin-plate causes consumers to shy away from higher-priced canned goods and food companies migrate to alternative packaging. 'We're getting to the tipping point with many customers," said Rick Huether, CEO of Maryland-based Independent Can Co., which produces decorative and specialty cans used for cookies, candy, coffee and popcorn. 'You're just driving them to plastic packaging." Write to Bob Tita at
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Medium-sized Nevada apartment operator thrives by staying local
This story was originally published on Multifamily Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Multifamily Dive newsletter. As the larger multifamily management companies get bigger and bigger, with many over 100,000 units and Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar approaching 1 million apartments, it's easy to wonder how smaller firms can compete. Taylor Verhaalen, president of Stout Management, may have an answer. The Las Vegas-based operator has found success focusing on its home state, with a special emphasis on Sin City. 'The knowledge that we have in Vegas has been our special sauce,' Verhaalen told Multifamily Dive. 'We've been here. We've seen the ups and downs and know each submarket.' Stout, founded in 1978, is family-owned and operated and has almost 300 employees. The firm operates roughly 9,400 units, and it just added more than 150 units in Reno after taking over The MOD at Riverwalk II and The Oslo. 'We had close to 1,000 units in Reno years and years ago,' Verhaalen said. 'And then that client sold their portfolio. We had a client who asked us to go up there a couple of years ago. We took on one asset, actually in Sparks, and then through a little bit of effort, I've taken over a couple of other ones.' With good post-pandemic growth, Verhaalen thinks Reno is a good place to expand Stout's model. 'I'm the owner,' Verhaalen said. 'I still walk properties and still talk to clients. My COO runs my operational site organization and still hits sites and meets his regionals. We're all here in Nevada. There is just another level of attention on each asset.' Here, Verhaalen talks with Multifamily Dive about technology, maintenance and the Las Vegas market. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. TAYLOR VERHAALEN: If you're not exploring different avenues of using technology, you're going to be left behind. We're aggressive on things that we think can improve efficiencies and minimize redundant work and things that can be automated. So, as far as rent reminders and resident communication, those things can be automated through text messaging or AI. We take payments strictly through online and digital means now. So, no one is dropping checks off in the office. Technology helps you automate and integrate all your marketing and advertising. So if you've got it synced up with your core systems, people aren't having to change prices daily. We've got databases internally that take all of our data from our properties and aggregate it. So we've got really good visibility in the KPIs from a global level and we can identify certain properties operating outside of the norms of our portfolio. If someone's operating expenses are too high, it's pretty obvious. There are areas we haven't jumped into quite yet, which I think makes us a little more effective. Because we're local, I make those decisions personally. I'm not automating leasing calls and I'm not using call centers or centralized stuff because I don't think they're as effective as your person on site being able to sell the amenities and knowing what happens on their actual properties. We're not quite as far along as the others, but that's by choice. I think there is a benefit to talking to someone who knows their property, not just someone reading a sheet somewhere in a centralized office. I do believe that technicians who sit on site and know that there is a recurring slab leak issue with the properties, for instance, know exactly why things are not working. I think it takes less time for them to understand and fix things that are occurring on the property. That being said, Stout Management also has a floating maintenance team. We've got specialized people within our organization that are not assigned to any property and can be assigned at any given time to assist when there's a flare up in HVAC, for example, in Las Vegas. I'm not going to have my owner pay for an extra person for 40 hours a week. But when we get in a few more calls than we can handle, I have a team I can send out. So it's an avenue of centralization that minimizes costs for owners. We've been asked by our clients and owners to expand out of Nevada. We said no so far, and that's where we are now. I sit on the board of the Nevada Apartment Association. I'm very familiar with the legislative landscape and landlord-tenant laws here in Nevada. I like where we are. We're familiar with it. It would take a large portfolio for me to expand into another state. And it would have to be somewhat similar, like Arizona — a market with a similar kind of construction, feel and growth pattern. But at the moment, that's not our plan. I think the highs and lows are less drastic than they used to be. After the Great Recession, people were highly hesitant to get into Vegas because they thought we were a one-trick pony with casinos and hospitality, which drove the market. And when there's stress elsewhere, that means people don't come to visit Las Vegas. At that point, we were not insulated at all from our core economic driver. If people were having a tough time just paying their bills, they weren't going to come to Vegas. There's still some of that, but we've diversified quite a bit. We've got multiple professional sports teams now, which is a good indicator. We've worked on healthcare — we've got investments there. Our education and our universities are getting better. Even the casinos themselves have sort of diversified their offerings. It's not just gambling. It's events and things like that. You've got world-class hiking and outdoor stuff as well. So we are more diverse. That being said, there are still the ups and downs of Vegas. Click here to sign up to receive multifamily and apartment news like this article in your inbox every weekday. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
