Wedding & Event Venue Near Columbia, SC.

COLUMBIA — Whataburger, the popular Texas-based burger chain, is one step closer to opening a location in the Capital City.

The fast food chain's Killian Commons Parkway location, one of three planned for the Columbia area, broke ground on April 5. The restaurant is set to open in September.

The area's other locations include one in Irmo and another in Lexington. The chain also plans to open up eateries in the Upstate.

The burger chain, which started in 1950 in Corpus Christi, Tex., is set for 202 Bridgeberry Lane in Columbia.

Teriyaki Madness to open in Five Points

An Asian fusion chain has circled an opening date for its first Columbia location.

Teriyaki Madness, which is set for 942 Harden St. in Five Points, will open its doors April 12, according to a press release from the restaurant.

The Colorado-based chain has locations across 20 states and in 3 countries. Its Five Points location was first reported in September of last year.

The restaurant offers a variety of bowls, including chicken teriyaki bowls and spicy tofu teriyaki bowls, and sides like chicken eggrolls and crab rangoons, according to the website.

It will open alongside a strip of other popular chain businesses like Orangetheory Fitness, a boutique gym and Flying Biscuit Cafe, a Southern food brunch place.

Parlour 818, new hair salon, opens

A new luxury salon, Parlour 818, celebrated opening its doors on Millwood Avenue April 5.

The salon, which offers everything from hair cuts to hair extension applications, comes from Florence native Lex Moore.

LEXINGTON — Krafty Draft Brew Pub, a Lexington restaurant and brewery, split tips illegally and failed to pay tipped workers the required $2.13 per hour wage, an investigation from the U.S. Department of Labor found.

The feds recovered more than a quarter of a million dollars in back pay for 23 employees, according to a April 2 press release from the department.

"In this case, we found that, while allowing some employees to take home more than federal minimum wage, Krafty Draft Brew Pub ignored its obligation to pay their share of its workers’ income and passed that responsibility to its customers,” said Jamie Benefiel, the wage and hour division district director in Columbia.

The brewpub operated what's known as an invalid tip pool, in which non-tipped employees were given earned tips, the department found. The restaurant's owners used money from tips to cover most of the servers' pay and failed to keep an accurate record of tips earned and hours worked. Those failures resulted in $125,819 in lost wages for the two dozen employees, according to the department.

Owners for the restaurant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Krafty Draft has been open in Lexington since June 2014, according to the restaurant's website, and expanded with brewing capabilities in early 2017.

It's not the first time a restaurant in the area has been dinged by a federal agency for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established pay standards like minimum wage and overtime pay.

At the end of October, Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant in Columbia was found to have kept nearly $400,000 in wages from employees and failed to pay minimum wage. Earlier in October, Lexington neighborhood spot Alodia's Cucina Italiana was fined $2,100 from the state's labor department for withholding wages from employees after most of the staff walked off the job a few months prior. The Lexington Italian restaurant closed in November.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The path of finding one’s career beholds endless possibilities.

For some students, the most academic enrichment takes place in the classroom. But, for Columbia High School senior Tyler Clark, the enrichment happens in a car garage at Heyward Career and Technology Center.

“Any work that we do in the fleet shop, my hands are going to touch that. I’m going to do that,” said Clark.

Clark was awarded the 2024 Work-Based Learning Award by the South Carolina Department of Education on April 11th for his excellence in diesel motor work.

The skills he’s learned from Heyward also landed him a hydraulics job with the City of Columbia.

“It’s good,” said Clark. “I mean, there are some nights you have to climb into the back of a garbage truck, and you don’t want to do it, but you have to get that truck moving.”

Tyler and his family lived in Charlotte before moving to Columbia. In his youth, Tyler was always hands-on with automotive parts. It’s a passion that started early on from an important influence in his life.

“My dad was a mechanic,” he said. “When I was five or six years old, my dad could tell me to go change the oil in the car, and I could do it.”

Now, Tyler is doing a bit more than changing car oil. The high school senior comes to the garage to hone his trade with the help of a special mentor. Martin Butler is the diesel technology program instructor.

And, one of Tyler’s biggest supporters.

“To have a student like Tyler,” said Butler. “I can just let him be and grow.”

The cycle of teacher and student intertwines and changes with each day.

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The first day of spring is just a week away and pending anymore out-of-season, late frost situations, we will all be spending more time outdoors.

That means it’s the prime time for pollen, bees, and getting your garden started. If you don’t have a green thumb, then maybe you can get your front yard looking fresh, green, and and ready for spring with new plants.

With the soil warming up, we figured now would be a good time to dig in, especially since the Capital City has a variety of locally owned shops to check out and several plant-centric events on the horizon.

Columbia Garden Club Spring Plant Exchange | Saturday, March 16 | Held in the Talbot’s parking lot at 4809 Forest Dr., donations will be accepted 9:15 a.m.- 9:45 a.m., followed by the exchange beginning at 10 a.m. sharp.

Wingard Markets Spring Fling | Friday, March 15-16 | Enjoy discounts like 25% off all plants and more.

Garden Design with Bill Guess | Thursday, March 21 | Register to attend this event where the B.B. Barns garden coach presents several formulas for botanical combinations.

Boone Fox Farm BFF Spring Plant Sale | Saturday | 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. | City Roots, 1005 Airport Blvd., Columbia | Includes a farm tour at 10 a.m. and noon.

Lexington Herb Bunch Festival | Saturday, April 6 | 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Lexington County Museum, 231 Fox St., Lexington | Supports agricultural student scholarships.

Historic Columbia’s Spring Plant Sale | April 11, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. (HC members only), April 12, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., April 13, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. | Hampton-Preston Mansion, 1615 Blanding St., Columbia | One of two plant sales Historic Columbia holds every year, attendees can purchase plants propagated from the Living Collections across all of the historic sites.

Midlands Plant & Flower Festival | April 11-14 | Thursday-Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | SC State Farmers Market, 3483 Charleston Hwy., West Columbia | Offers a wide selection of plants and garden arts.

Midlands Spring Native Plant Sale | Saturday, April 13 | 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | The plant sale focuses on blooming perennials, grasses, and our favorite smaller blooming shrubs and trees.

Richland County Master Gardeners Annual Plant Sale | Thursday, April 18 + Friday, April 19 | 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. | Master Gardeners will assist with garden and plant selections.

Riverbanks Zoo Spring Plant Sale (Members only) | Saturday, April 20 | 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. | Riverbanks Growing Center, 1201 Seminole Dr., West Columbia | Features a variety of annuals, perennials, trees, and special collections.

In my senior year at USC, I was in a production of "Much Ado About Nothing," directed by Dustin Whitehead. I played Dogberry, my friend Anthony Currie played Benedick.

On Thursday, April 4, at the Nickelodeon, I watched Anthony play Tre – passionate but shortsighted, enthusiastic and soft, central character of Local Cinema Studios’ indie film ‘Hero,’ again under the brilliant direction of Dustin.

As is obvious, I’m not used to seeing my friends onscreen at the Nick. I’m also not used to seeing Columbia up there, central, endearing and rich in all of its dirt, train trestles, tree-shaded neighborhoods and crumbling half-neighborhoods. (Olympia.) I don’t think any of us are used to seeing a film so close to home. To me it struck close to home in a series of compounding ways, one atop another.

As a young person, as an arts student, a student of acting in the South, it’s easy to feel many lifetimes, lengthy distances away from ‘the industry’ ... it's easy to silently harp for days at a time on the perceived kaleidoscopic distance between being a student of film and being within a legitimate film production. This is a way in particular that "Hero" strikes at the heart of the young artist, the ground-up, paycheck-to-paycheck, do-it-oneself artist – I recognized friends from my theater classes in the cast. I saw names of my friends in the credits.

"Hero" is the first chapter in Local Cinema Studios’ ‘Get on Set’ initiative – an effort designed specifically to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

Every summer, Local Cinema Studios produces a feature-length film, specifically designing a production team and environment partly made up of young, starting-out artists.

The stone "Hero" threw closest to home in my experience of premiere night, was the vote of confidence cast on the young artist, the student artist, the curious, hungry & inexperienced & infinitely small, one of many in line to go do something. I’m an actor, but I don’t seem to be edging any closer to Broadway or LA – "Hero" was a vote of confidence in me, in Columbia as a place for me for now.

More than 460,000 people (and thousands of businesses) contribute to the Columbia metro area’s $54 million economy. But have you ever wondered about the Capital City’s heaviest hitters?

Consider this Columbia Business 101 — your guide to our region’s five key industries and major employers.

Note: When we say Columbia metro area, that refers to the Central SC Region that includes Calhoun, Clarendon, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lexington, Newberry, Orangeburg, and Richland counties.

The key industries

Five key industries represent ~55% of the Columbia metro area’s economy, based on data from Central SC. We’ve listed them in order of employment numbers.

Fun fact: Blue Cross Blue Shield of SC offering insurance services, contact center, claims processing... etc. employs over 10,000 people alone and is the top private employer in the region.

Prisma Health Midlands + Lexington Medical Center together employ over 21,000 individuals. The services in these industries are delivered by trained professionals and include establishments providing medical care, health care, and social assistance.

Under that retail bracket of employers, Wal-mart came out on top, employing almost 6,000 people. Amazon followed, employing over 2,600, and Samsung + UPS, both employing 1200-1350 people.

Manufacturing in the Midlands comes in many different forms, but at the top of the list are Nephron Pharmaceuticals, Michelin, Trane, which makes metal products + machinery, and Samsung. Local players such as Kraft Heinz, and Westinghouse Electric Company, also carry a significant employment presence.

Fun fact: According to the latest tourism data from Experience Columbia, visitation increased from 15.1 million in 2021 to 15.8 million in 2022, and visitor spending increased 12% over the previous year to $1.7 billion.

Of the $1.7 billion spent in Columbia, food + beverage spending accounted for $487 million — that’s 29% of each visitor’s budget.

The economic impact of tourism on our region is substantial and the total economic impact in 2022 sustained over 22,300 jobs and generated $130 million in state and local tax revenues.

The top food and beverage employers in the Midlands region are Dak Americans LLC, a company that creates plastic materials and resins, Mark Anthony Brewing, a brewer and producer of hard seltzers, and Devro Inc., a company that creates edible casings for meat packaging.

The Public Administration sector consists of establishments of federal, state, and local government agencies that oversee and manage public programs. In total, the state of SC employs over 30,000 in the Midlands, the top two being the SC Department of Corrections and the SC Department of Social Services.

Now that we’ve established the major industries, we bet you’re curious about some specific names. Whether you’re job hunting (or just “casually prospecting”), here are five major employers — all that employ more than 5,000 workers on average.

32,085 employees | Public sector | Search jobs

With Cola being the capital of South Carolina, the city’s largest employer is the state — which helps drive tourism, the economy, business, and local government agencies.

15,000 employees | Healthcare | Search jobs

In 2017, Greenville Health + Palmetto Health merged to become Prisma — and became the second-largest employer in Richland County and one of the largest healthcare providers in the region.

10,998 employees | Insurance services | Search jobs

BCBSSC is the only SC-owned + operated health insurance carrier in the state and has a family of companies and affiliates also offering services to South Carolinians.

6,557 employees | Healthcare | Search jobs

The hospital in West Columbia delivers more than 4,000 babies each year and performs more than 25,000 surgeries. It was also named the No. 2 hospital in SC and is recognized as the No. 1 hospital in the Midlands, according to U.S. News and World Report.

6,456 employees | Educational services | Search jobs

The over 200-year-old university is the largest in South Carolina and has been ranked as the nation’s number one first-year student experience. The university also boasts the country’s number-one ranking for international business via the Darla Moore School of Business. With its campus spread throughout the city, USC is the heartbeat of Columbia.

2023 was a year of record achievements for economic growth in Richland County. The Richland County Economic Development Office (RCEDO) announced capital investments have surged to $2.35 billion, and with them, 4,532 new job opportunities have become available.

Scout Motors | Automotive |~4,000 jobs | Volkswagon is entering the electric off-road vehicle arena under the Scout Motors nameplate and building those cars at a new facility coming to Blythewood.

Cirba Solutions | Energy | ~300 jobs | Cirba Solutions — an electric vehicle battery materials facility — is investing $323 million to establish operations in Richland County. The new state-of-the-art, world-class lithium-ion battery recycling + materials facility will be ~400,000 sqft and located at Pineview Industrial Park, which is less than 1.5 miles from I-77 via Shop Road and home to Mark Anthony Brewing.

FN America, LLC | Manufacturing | ~100 jobs | The United States subsidiary of global firearms manufacturer, FN Herstal plans to expand its Richland County operations. The company’s $18 million investment will create approximately 102 new jobs.

Blanchard Machinery Company | Construction | ~30 jobs | The construction equipment supplier is opening new operations in Calhoun County. The company’s $46 million investment will create 30 new jobs and transfer 150 existing jobs from its Lexington County operations to the new facility.

Cooperative Electric Energy Utility Supply, Inc. | Utility, Energy | ~100 jobs | A consumer-owned electric materials supplier plans to expand operations in Lexington County, making a $52 Million investment.

Xerxes | Manufacturing | ~80 jobs | Xerxes is planning to establish its first SC Operations in Richland County by leasing a new production facility that will expand the company’s capability to deliver market-leading underground fuel and water storage tanks.

Mark Anthony Brewing | Fourth largest brewer in the US |~300 jobs | The Mark Anthony Brewing is a supply chain management company that invested $400 million in a new facility that created 300 new jobs to increase production of White Claw and Mike’s Hard Lemonade on Shop Road in Columbia.

This information is derived from the most recent data published by Central SC.