Corporate Report

Front Burner Brands hires Fish Consulting for Melting Pot franchise development
Front Burner Brands Inc., a Tampa-based restaurant management company for The Melting Pot Restaurants Inc., Burger 21 and GrillSmith, has selected Fish Consulting LLC as the franchise development public relations agency for The Melting Pot.

Fish Consulting will be responsible for building domestic and international awareness of the brand and driving qualified single- and multi-unit franchisee leads. The firm will also be charged with implementing a marketing strategy for the resale of several existing restaurants.

This expands Front Burner Brands' current partnership with Fish, which has been the franchise development public relations agency of record for Burger 21, which has been franchising since 2011.
The Melting Pot operates more than 135 restaurants in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

DataMentors hires new regional director
Tampa's DataMentors LLC has appointed Paul Karpawich as regional director for the Northeast.

Karpawich has more than 15 years of sales experience working with enterprise and mid-market accounts. Most recently, he managed territories for MongoDB and Riverbed Technology, where he was responsible for territory business development and customer relationship strategies. At Riverbed, Paul helped grow the Northeast region 513% over a four-year period.

“Paul is a skilled professional who understands complex business needs and can translate these needs into data-driven solutions for our clients,” Anders Ekman, president of DataMentors, says in a press release.

This is the first of several planned hires for DataMentors, fuelled by company growth and a recent investment led by Brook Venture Partners.

William Merill III elected president of Argus Foundation
William Merrill III, a senior shareholder at the Sarasota-based Icard Merrill, has been elected president of The Argus Foundation for 2014. A board member of the group for five years, Merrill previously served as vice president and replaces outgoing president R.G. “Kelly” Caldwell Jr., CEO of Caldwell Trust Co.

Also joining the organization as new board members for 2014 are: Charles Brown III, chairman of the board/CEO of Insignia Bank; F. John LaCivita, vice president of Willis A. Smith Construction; and Keith Mercier, partner/regional vice president of Bouchard Insurance.

The Argus Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on bringing together business leaders from diverse industries together to benefit the community and facilitate communications between the public and private sector. The group currently has more than 170 members.