Love Your Melon *hearts* the environment

Love Your Melon is starting their New Year’s resolution early this year. Starting on December 1, 2017 Love Your Melon will be making a change in the way they manufacture their vast selection of apparel products. The products will now be manufactured in a more sustainable and green manner with new threading machines that emit less pollution to make their products.

The company has decided to make this change to better the future of children all across America. Their mission now is to put a hat on every child battling cancer and to help them reach an amazing future. However, with climate change becoming worse and worse as the years progress, that future may be in danger. By making this change, they are becoming part of the movement to help the planet and make sure it is a safe place for when these children grow up. The executive team feels this is an area where they want and need to make a difference in.

With this change will come a slight price increase of each apparel item, as these machines are more expensive to maintain. However, that also means more money will be able to be donated to Love Your Melon’s non-profit partners and a higher quality hat. Manufacturing may change, but Love Your Melon’s mission has not. No matter what, the company will still be donating 50 percent of its profits to their partner organizations like Pinky Swear and Cure Search.

Love Your Melon has always prided itself on being an American company, and manufacturing all of their products right here in the United States. That will not change. All manufacturing will stay right here at home. To see a closer look visit www.loveyourmelon.com/pages/howitsmade. This shows exactly how products are made right now, and the videos will be updated as soon as the change is made.

For the kids and for the environment. That’s Love Your Melon.

 

Fuji is Fire

Food, entertainment and friends. What more could you ask for in a restaurant? Fuji Steakhouse in Ames has it all.

Chef Mike or “Jake from State Farm” as he said when we asked his name, put on quite the show with his magical food tricks and impeccable ‘juggling’ abilities. His spatula and knife never seemed to touch the grill when he was whipping them around with seemingly no effort at all.

Some of his tricks were magic, some funny and some of them were even meant to scare us. I will admit, one of his cheeky tricks did catch me completely off guard. I was sitting talking with one of my classmates and he had what I though was a bottle full of sauce. He pointed it in our direction, squeezed, and I saw something start to come out of the bottle. Yes, I jumped. Come to find out, it was a trick bottle that had nothing inside but a black string.

Everyone had a good laugh at my expense and continued on with out meal. Chef Mike even gave us refills of the oh so famous yum yum sauce. Yes, I doubled up on the yum yum and passed on the ginger sauce.

To top it all off, there was a lunch special going on: $8 dollar hibachi. We were able to choose from steak, chicken shrimp, veggies, etc. all at the same exact price. With your choice of veggies or protein, we were also treated to a heaping pile of fried rice. Tip: mix in some of that delectable yum yum sauce to your rice. You’ll thank me later.

Overall: 10/10 would recommend Fuji Steakhouse.

Latest in Tech & Health: NutriTech’s BalanceBottle

NutriTech is the newest health-tech company on the block and they’re taking the market by storm. Their first product, the BalanceBottle, made its debut in all Iowa Hy-Vee stores in collaboration with Mark Wahlberg’s protein line. It is now on the shelves of all Hy-Vee locations and Complete Nutrition locations as well as the Wheatsfield Co-op in Ames.

Jillian McKee, Lauren Vespa and Alexis Koedam founded the company and now serve as the CPO, CMO and CEO of NutriTech. The three met in an entrepreneurship class during their junior year at Iowa State University. The concept of NutriTech and the BalanceBottle started out as a project for their entrepreneurship class, but the potential of the company and product was brought to their attention by their professor.

The trio then teamed up with three engineers to create a prototype of the BalanceBottle and launched their official website.  Mere months later, they appeared on Shark Tank, a popular television series on ABC where budding entrepreneurs get the opportunity to make their dreams a reality.

Kevin O’Leary, one of the show’s ‘sharks,’ saw great potential in the young group’s ideas and decided to take the plunge. NutriTech was then officially founded and the BalanceBottle made its debut.

The company is set to have a series of new products launch the Summer of 2018. Stay tuned, this company looks like it has a bright future!