Cupcakes and Comcast

I have a huge sweet tooth, so when Cupcake Crusader first hit the streets with their mobile food truck a few years back, I was one of the first people to line up for their tasty treats. Then they opened a brick-and-mortar shop on East Avenue with a drive-through and made it so I didn't even have to get out of my car for my favorite cookies and cream cupcake. It was pretty much a dream come true for a lazy sugar lover like myself.

A few weeks back, though, owners Tia Zimmerman and Laura Dohojda announced they were closing their shop. That broke my heart—until I realized they were sweetening the customer experience even more. Although the mother-daughter team will no longer have their drive-through storefront, Cupcake Crusader will remain in business and will be making free cupcake deliveries in Chico. Now, all I have to do for a cupcake is get off the couch to answer the door.

Customers will have to plan a bit in advance (no more impulse sugar highs), but if you place an order by 5 p.m., you can have cupcakes on your doorstep the next day. As the ladies of Cupcake Crusader try out this new business model—which comes as Zimmerman welcomes new daughter Mathilda to the world—deliveries will be made Tuesdays through Thursdays after 5 p.m., Fridays after noon, and Saturdays on a case-by-case basis.

Cupcake Crusader will continue to roll out the mobile truck and take orders for special events.

Higher speeds. Businesses in one south Chico neighborhood recently got an upgrade to their Internet connections. Last week, Comcast Business expanded its advanced fiber network to the Meyers Business Park and 166 businesses in the area. The high-performance fiber network will provide them with Internet services up to 10 Gbps—pretty dang fast. Comcast invested $350,000 in infrastructure for the fiber network.

It's not the most glamorous news, but for anyone's who has been at the frustrating end of a bad connection on a business Skype call or sat watching the progress bar inch along while uploading a document to a government website, you know how integral reliable, fast Internet is to business efficiency and overall sanity.

The city of Chico identified a need for high-speed Internet in its Economic Development Action Plan, which was adopted for 2012-13, as well as the Chico 2030 General Plan, noting that the infrastructure helps keep the region competitive for new business investments and expansions.