Kingsport picked as US HQ for snack manufacturer

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by Page2

I'd don't want to criticize addition of new jobs to the area, but there's one thing that hasn't been pushed to the top of the discussion. If you take the company's stated annual payroll and divide it by the number of employees you get an across the board annual pay of just under $30,000. Of course, that's not a good number because some people will make much more. that mean others will make less. The point is even the across the board number is for an annual wage just under the living wage standard of $33,796 for a family of two adults and a child or the $34,448 threshold for one adult and one child. For a one person household it's well above the living wage level. There will be spin offs and multipliers that will no doubt help the local economy, and any job addition is good news. But doesn't it still fall short of creating jobs that pay a living wage?

You're probably spot-on with this. There are also going to be management, senior management, and top-level executives that make a lot more than $30k who are going to pull the average significantly. I'd say your run of the mill production workers are going to be making $10-$12/hr.

[Page2]

Originally Posted by rccrain

Not sure I'd rely on that annual payroll number. Is that an average of the three years projected? Or is that year number 3 with all 273 employees?

If it's average annual payroll and the average number of employees over the 3 years is 150, then the average wage is $53k.

According to the press report "The 273 jobs would be over a three year period and have an annual payroll of $8 million" I took it as total employment at the end of the three years since the press reports cited the creation of 300 jobs. If that's in error no corrections have been posted yet. It does bring up an interesting point. Why is the job creation scripted that way instead of annual jobs. A press report saying that it would create 150 jobs with an average pay of $53,000 would have a much higher political and news impact than the way it was presented by both the company.

[rccrain]

I'm not saying there's an error - it just seems ambiguous. I would expect a development stage company to create jobs incrementally. So perhaps 50 jobs year one, 150 jobs year two, 73 year three - for a total of 273. Does $8m annual payroll mean year three with all 273 employees? I'm not sure and it's hard to tell from the language used. $30k per job just seems unreasonably low to me. I wouldn't put much stock in it.

[Page2]

Originally Posted by rccrain

I'm not saying there's an error - it just seems ambiguous. I would expect a development stage company to create jobs incrementally. So perhaps 50 jobs year one, 150 jobs year two, 73 year three - for a total of 273. Does $8m annual payroll mean year three with all 273 employees? I'm not sure and it's hard to tell from the language used. $30k per job just seems unreasonably low to me. I wouldn't put much stock in it.

It does make you wonder when such broad numbers are used but when you start looking it's very mushy. It's sort of like the claims about jobs created. While the numbers are correct they never point out how many jobs were lost in the same period you you have a net number. Same for new business listing. The lists would be informative if it included businesses that closed.

[kamoshika]

John Frostad is biting into something he feels will taste pretty good down the road.

Frostad, president and CEO of Pure Foods, the newly minted specialty healthy snack food producer in the Gateway Commerce Park, believes he can turn a cutthroat industry on its ear and make a healthy profit by making and selling nutrient-dense and reduced-fat specialty snack foods.

He doesn’t want Pure Foods to be compared to traditional snack companies. “The new frontier — that’s us,” Frostad said of Pure Foods, a privately-held company which cut the ribbon on its 88,000-square-foot Kingsport production facility and global headquarters off Interstate 26 on Friday.
Kingsport Times-News: 'The new frontier — that's us'

Pure Foods opens its global headquarters in Kingsport | WJHL

[Serious Conversation]

I'm interested to see how this plays out. I think the healthy part may spur a little movement toward more healthy eating in the area.