Things To Do In SW Florida

It’s been all hands on deck for the past few weeks at The Great Southern Box Company Food Hall as the developer and the vendors prepped for their soft opening this weekend in Orlando’s Packing District.

The food hall at 2105 N. Orange Blossom Trail opens to the public Friday with nine of the 11 vendor spots serving everything from chicken shawarma, to Picanha steak, to Oreo-cheesecake brownies, to some of Orlando’s best Neapolitan-style pizza.

Paul Jacques, chef and owner of Antica Wood Fired Pizza, spent most of the week curing the new pizza oven and fermenting the dough before knocking out the first four pies. “And they all came out excellent,” he told GrowthSpotter.

As a two-time Foodie award winner, Antica holds itself to a high standard. Not to mention, Dr. Phillips Charities CEO Ken Robinson will tell anyone who asks, it’s “maybe one of the best pizza places you’ll find anywhere.” He personally recruited Jacques and his partner, Kevin Turner, to the food hall.

“I’d like to think it took a lot of convincing, but the property sells itself,” Robinson said. “And so when people come and see it, they understand the vision. … And we’re excited to have each and every one of them.” read more

Disney’s Princess Tiana appears on the invitations to Democratic state Sen. Geraldine Thompson’s fundraiser next month, and with that image comes the return of a major player in Florida politics.

The Walt Disney Co. provided theme park tickets, Thompson said, in what’s known as an in-kind contribution. It could be the first contribution to a Florida politician in more than two years from the entertainment giant, once one of the biggest donors to Democrats and Republicans alike.

In March 2022, Disney suspended all political contributions in Florida in the wake of the controversy over the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.

Then-CEO Bob Chapek stated his opposition to the bill after criticism from some fans and the LGBTQ community for not speaking out.

Before the pause, Disney had given about $55 million to Republicans, Democrats and political committees in the state over the previous 28 years, including about $5 million in 2020 and more than $2 million in just the first two months of 2022, state records show. read more

Brooks Johnson | (TNS) Star Tribune

Fast food has long been a staple of American diets because it is, or was, so inexpensive.

Not so much anymore.

Over the past five years, prices for popular menu items at chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell have risen dramatically. The cost of a Big Mac or a Chalupa has doubled since 2019, according to archived and current pages of the Fast Food Menu Prices online tracker.

Restaurant inflation overall has been significant, though much tamer by comparison, with dining-out prices up 30% on average since 2019.

“My New Year’s resolution is to start taking packed lunches instead of getting fast food every day because it’s so ridiculously expensive now,” one Reddit user proclaimed earlier this year.

Between 2019 and 2024, the price of a medium fries order has more than doubled from $1.79 to $4.79, and the price of a Big Mac Meal has gone from $5.99 to $12.69, according to the tracker at Fastfoodmenuprices.com. A BLT Footlong at Subway has gone from $5.50 to $8.49. And a chicken burrito at Chipotle has gone from $6.50 to $10.70. read more

Tim Henderson | (TNS) Stateline.org

Births continued a historic slide in all but two states last year, making it clear that a brief post-pandemic uptick in the nation’s birth numbers was all about planned pregnancies that had been delayed temporarily by COVID-19.

Only Tennessee and North Dakota had small increases in births from 2022 to 2023, according to a Stateline analysis of provisional federal data on births. In California, births dropped by 5%, or nearly 20,000, for the year. And as is the case in most other states, there will be repercussions now and later for schools and the workforce, said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who follows birth trends.

“These effects are already being felt in a lot of school districts in California. Which schools are going to close? That’s a contentious issue,” Johnson said.

In the short term, having fewer births means lower state costs for services such as subsidized day care and public schools at a time when aging baby boomers are straining resources. But eventually, the lack of people could affect workforces needed both to pay taxes and to fuel economic growth. read more

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE and BARBARA ORTUTAY (AP Technology Writers)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is tried to confront the latest in a succession of legal attacks on its digital empire on Thursday as federal judge began to address anticompetitive practices in the app market for smartphones powered by its Android software.

The San Francisco court hearing before U.S. District Judge James Donato comes five months after a nine-person jury decided Google had turned its Play Store for Android phone apps into an illegal monopoly following a four-week trial in an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite.

At the start of the hearing, Donato told lawyers for both parties not to revisit the jury’s verdict, which is now “carved in stone.” He also said that the case is about “competing generally,” and he is “not looking for a relief that gives a helping hand just to Epic.”

The verdict has given Epic a chance to persuade Donato to impose sweeping restrictions and other changes on how Google manages the distribution of Android apps. Those apps enable a wide range of services on virtually every phone that isn’t made by Apple. read more