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JANUARY 1, 2018 | VOL. 54, No. 1
YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR REGIONAL BUSINESS NEWS
Feeding a state’s fried-dough craze
BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
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» DOUGHNUT
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All About Books
ENTREPRENEUR FILLS HOLE IN ECLECTIC-DOUGHNUT MARKET
ou may have to be crazy to open a restaurant in today’s crowded field, but Jason Wojnarowski has found his own niche with Donut Crazy — which, as its name suggests, specializes in “crazy” doughnuts. Indeed, the racks at its four Connecticut locations — Shelton, Westport, Stratford and New Haven, with two more on the way — are divided between “dailies,” which include such mainstays as glazed, jelly and Boston cream, and “crazies,” which range from the Peanut Butter Explosion — chocolate cake covered in peanut butter buttercream and Reese’s Puffs cereal, drizzled with dulce de leche and vanilla and topped with a swirl of peanut butter — and Holiday Cheer — a yeast ring dipped in chocolate and topped with Oreos, Peppermint Patties, chocolate-covered pretzels and holiday M&M’s — to Crème Brulee, Apple Pie and…Maple Bacon? “It really is good,” Wojnarowski said of the latter at his store at the Westport train station. “Crazy” could also describe
BUSINESS FORECAST
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Meryl Moss and pooch at her public relations agency in Westport. Photo by Phil Hall.
Owners see perils for small business in net neutrality reversal
BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairinc.com
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n April 13, 2015, following a 3-2 vote along party lines, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its final rule on net neutrality regulations, effectively changing the federal government’s policy toward cyberspace by placing a new regulatory oversight on internet service providers or ISPs. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and telecommunications industry, at the time said “these enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.” On Dec. 14, 2017, the FCC under Wheeler’s successor, Ajit Pai, reversed the 2015 ruling in a 3-2 vote. Pai, a former gener-
al counsel for Verizon who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2011 to fill a Republican vacancy on the FCC, defended the action by claiming the rules served no practical purpose. “This decision was a mistake,” Pai said of the 2015 policy. “For one thing, there was no problem to solve. The internet wasn’t broken in 2015. We weren’t living in a digital dystopia. To the contrary, the internet is perhaps the one thing in American society we can all agree has been a stunning success.” At the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, President and CEO Joseph Brennan predicted a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump could reverse the controversial policy reversal from the Obama to Trump administrations. “We don’t want to get
caught in a regulatory tug of war with every new administration,” he said. “Hopefully, it is much ado about nothing.” Defenders of the 2015 rules said the net neutrality policy prevented ISPs from deliberately speeding up, slowing down or blocking access to content, applications or websites. Net neutrality supporters argue that with the FCC reversal, ISPs will now be able to punish their competitors by slowing down their content and demanding extra fees from companies that want faster internet service, thus forcing those who cannot pay to put up with slower internet speeds. In the Fairfield County tech industry, there are varying degrees of apprehension as to what the revocation of the net neutrality rules will produce. “We’ll be finding out in » NET NEUTRALITY
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