How Tropical Smoothie pulled off record-breaking year during COVID-19
While the pandemic destroyed thousands of restaurants last year, Atlanta-based Tropical Smoothie Cafe had one of its best years to date. It posted its ninth consecutive year of positive same-store sales, with 2020 same-stores up 7.5%. Here s how CEO Charles Watson did it.
Provided
Jan. 13, 2021
While the pandemic destroyed many restaurants last year, Atlanta-based Tropical Smoothie Cafe had one of its best years to date. It posted its ninth consecutive year of positive same-store sales, with 2020 same-store sales up 7.5%. The brand opened 99 cafes, including its 900th location in Fort Benning, Georgia, and signed 254 franchise agreements, 70% of which came from existing franchisees. It s on track to reach more than 1,000 operating restaurants in 2021.
Microsoft said Healthcare Bot’s migration to Azure would further enable organizations to leverage Azure’s enhanced tooling, security, and compliance offerings. Azure Health Bot combines built-in medical databases with natural language capabilities to understand clinical terminology, and organizations can easily customize it to support clinical and operational use cases.
Furthermore, developers in the health care industries can use the platform to build and deploy AI-powered and HIPPA-compliant conversational health care experiences at scale. Health care providers can migrate from Microsoft Healthcare Bot to Azure Health Bot with minimal operator intervention and no downtime.
Lastly, as a native Azure service, Azure Health Bot benefits from Azure’s security investments, including the most comprehensive compliance coverage of any cloud service provider. Customers can use standard Azure management tools that come with an assurance of 99.9% SLA. While currently available in
First responders getting COVID vaccine
Laconia Fire Capt. Chad Vaillancourt gives COVID-19 vaccination shot to Laconia Firefighter Rick Farrell. First responders have begun receiving inoculations against the coronavirus under the state 1A vaccination program.
(Courtesy photo/Laconia Fire Dept.)
Modified: 1/6/2021 9:25:25 PM
New Year’s Eve was special for Laconia Police Chief Matt Canfield. That’s when he got his COVID-19 vaccine shot.
For just over a week now, firefighters, EMTs and police officers have been getting vaccinated against the coronavirus that, as of Monday, had infected 20.9 million Americans, 47,328 of them in New Hampshire.
First responders are part of the state’s first phase of vaccine distribution. Health care workers and people associated with long-term care facilities have already begun receiving their shots.
Originally published on December 24, 2020 10:26 am
The same day the first employees at Memorial Health System hospitals in central Illinois were getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, an internal blog post was published: “Debunking COVID-19 Vaccination Myths.”
The post, which broke down seven common misunderstandings about the vaccine, is part of an effort started in November to encourage employees to get the shot, said Jennifer Harris, incident commander for Memorial’s COVID-19 response.
Harris said the health system, which runs five hospitals across central Illinois, also held virtual Q&A sessions with its chief medical officer, sent out videos and shared more blog posts.
Are those fans?! How the Patriots are honoring health care heroes at Monday night s game Updated: 4:23 PM EST Dec 28, 2020
Are those fans?! How the Patriots are honoring health care heroes at Monday night s game Share Updated: 4:23 PM EST Dec 28, 2020
Hide Transcript Share Updated: 4:23 PM EST Dec 28, 2020 It s been a season unlike any other for both the New England Patriots and the dedicated fans who watch them each week.Gillette Stadium hasn t hosted fans all season, but the team is still doing what it can to honor heroes in the community. Earlier this month, Optum teamed up with the Patriots and the American Nurses Foundation to give health care workers an opportunity to reserve a cutout for free online. It also gave fans the opportunity to participate by making a $75 donation to the American Nurses Foundation.The Patriots say there will be over 900 cutouts displayed at Gillette Stadium on Monday night, placed in both the field lounge and lower