Business is booming in our lovely beachside city of Clearwater, and it’s recently gained some national commendation to prove it.

In its latest September 2016 issue, Inc. magazine ranks Clearwater No. 1 in the nation for the number of private businesses rated in the magazine’s annual Inc. 500 list. Four made the cut this year, and an additional five businesses ranked in the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

Inc., founded in 1979 and based in New York City, is a monthly publication that focuses on growing companies. Each year it publishes an annual list of the fastest-growing private companies, titled “Inc. 500;” “Inc. 5000” is an expansion of that list and ranks the country’s top 5,000 fastest-growing companies according to percentage revenue growth over a three-year period. 

For Inc. 500, cities are tiered based on their populations in relation to their highest concentration of fast-growing companies, according to the September edition of the list; this year Clearwater out beat Irvine, CA; Alexandra, VA; Atlanta, GA; and Hollywood, FL  in those rankings, to name a few.

Here are the Clearwater studs that made the Inc. 500 list this year:

1.       Stratus (ranked No. 66)

2.       Telequote Insurance (113)

3.       KnowBe4 (139)

4.       Digital Medial Solutions (434)

And for the Inc. 5000 list:

1.       Progressive Dental (739)

2.       GovDirect (1,150)

3.       Pure Air Control Systems (1,638)

4.       CWU Inc. (1,939)

5.       Murphy Business & Financial Corporation LLC (3,061)

The city of Clearwater’s Economic Development and Housing Director Denise Sanderson was pleased with the news but not too surprised.

“Clearwater has and will continue to attract entrepreneurs, startups and established businesses poised for growth and expansion,” Sanderson says.

This is the fourth year in a row that Stratus, a company based in the language access industry that focuses on video, audio and in-person interpreting solutions, has made the Inc. 500 list, and is showing no signs of uprooting from its home base in Clearwater anytime soon.

“Clearwater has been an excellent home for us, and we plan to continue our growth in this innovative community,” says David Fetterolf, president of Stratus’ language access division. “It’s fantastic to share the same space as other companies that have made the Inc. list.”

Downtown Clearwater’s KnowBe4, an information technology and online security awareness training company, is also no stranger to Inc. magazine’s glory; from 2012 to 2015, Inc. ranked it the No. 1 security company for its percentage of growth in revenue in the nation.  Not bad for a six-year-old company with a 140+ staff.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Knowbe4 Stu Sjouwerman humbly credits the company’s success to Clearwater’s business climate and opportunity.

“Being in Clearwater has been great for KnowBe4,” Sjouwerman says. “It offers access to a trained workforce, low cost of living combined with a high quality of life, and a great financial climate that allows a startup to scale fast and generate new jobs.”

Apart from being an ideal spot for business, the nation also knows Clearwater as being an ideal place for pleasure purposes, too - remember how Trip Advisor bestowed it with the No. 1 title earlier this year for best beach in the country? (The second year in a row, let me remind you).

I’m naturally biased, born and raised in the city myself, but all this publicity makes it difficult to deny that Clearwater is just the hot place to be right now. (And that, still being mid summer, my double entendre is inarguably appropriate).

With 430 restaurants in 28 countries, its original nestled in Clearwater since 1983, and many other bug-eyed-owl-decorated establishments sprinkled throughout the Tampa Bay area, Hooters is hailed and renowned for its’ three B’s: Beer, Bar food, Buxom waitresses  - and it’s just beckoned a fourth: bumpin’ Beats.

Recently Technomic, a research and consulting firm based in Chicago, Ill. that focuses on food and related products and services, ranked Hooters. No. 1 for having the best music at a casual-dining chain, according to RestaurantBusinessOnline.com. Technomic is a sister division to Restaurant Business, and the two collaborated on a special project that surveyed about 600 guests who visited a variety of chains nationwide.

This may seem like an insignificant honor, but it isn’t when you’re in the business of accommodating hungry Americans. Technomic’s research reveals that 52% of casual-dining guests say the music selection is “important” or “very important” to their experience, with it being marginally more important to millennials, women, nonwhites and folks who have an annual household income of $75K or more.

The ranking is based on the firm’s ongoing Consumer Brand Metrics program, which asks consumers to report on the importance of “music selection is appropriate” when visiting one its top 100-rated restaurants by system-wide sales.

Here’s the breakdown of Technomic’s rankings for top 10 casual-dining playlists:

1. Hooters

2. Maggiano's Little Italy

3. Yard House

4. Carrabba's Italian Grill

5. Joe's Crab Shack

6. Bonefish Grill

7. Cheesecake Factory

8. Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen

9. BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse

10. Logan's Roadhouse

Hooters stole the top spot with a solid 82.4% of customers classifying its music selection as being “very good” or “good.” About 73% and upwards of customers from the other nine restaurants gave the same rating on each’s respective music playlists.

According to RestaurantBusinessOnline.com, there seems to be no particular commonality to the above restaurants’ popular music choices; all seem to have fairly distinctive music playlists, ranging from classic rock, to mainstream pop, to R&B, to jazz, to even Frank Sinatra, to classics from most decades of the past 50 years, to a combination of most of these.

When I walked into the original Hooters, located at 2800 Gulf to Bay Blvd. in Clearwater, a couple weekends ago to place a to-go order of some mild chicken wings at my family’s request, the music was loud, mostly upbeat and all over the place, including a Franz Ferdinand single, to the most overplayed song of the late 2000’s: “Photograph” by Nickleback, to a country tune of which I couldn’t recall the name, to the good ‘ol 80’s classic“Take me Home Tonight” by Eddie Money.

Hooter’s plastic bag in hand, I arrived at my family’s destination humming Money’s classic that evening, opened up my heavenly smelling styrofoam box, and realized my waitress gave me regular mild wings instead of my requested “boneless” order. Maybe the music was so loud that it affected the young, blonde woman’s hearing? Maybe I spoke too fast. Maybe my bubbly waitress decided “bone-in” was the better choice and was too shy to tell me.  At least Hooters’ chefs prepare wings well enough to sell my family on eating the mistake.

So the next time you head to Hooters for some wings, like I recently did, for some beers or to watch some football with your buddies, pay attention to the tunes and judge them for yourself.

Apart from crafting a somewhat coherent idea on a keyboard, if you’re a modern, avid text-messager, like myself, you know the familiar, sometimes grueling question you contemplate when you reach the end of a thought: to choose or not to choose a complementary emoji (or three)?  [Insert face with rolling eyes emoji here]

Sometimes sifting through the hefty multitude of yellow, round-face personalities, animal faces, food items, hearts, shapes, vehicles, unidentifiable symbols, etc. takes longer than composing the text itself. Besides, a single emoji can be worth a thousand words, no? And you, naturally, don’t want to convey a wrong tone to your recipient if you don’t select wisely…  

For example if I want to express happiness, do I pick the traditional smiley face, the upside down smiley face, or the smiley face with rosy cheeks? Or the open-mouth smiley face, or the open-mouth smiley face with matching smiling eyes? Or I could skip the smiley face altogether and pick a sunshine… Of course there’s always the now passé emoticon of my friend to my right. :-)

Two minutes later, still vacillating, I find myself hitting “send” sans emoji. [Insert facepalm monkey emoji here]

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English defines an emoji simply as a “a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc. in electronic communication," but have you ever wondered who chooses which of these mini colorful celebrities makes it to your keyboard?

It’s a group called the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization with widespread, international acceptance that standardizes the characters, digits and symbols you type via various platforms to ensure they are communicated as you want them to, minus strange characters or pesky white boxes.

Founded in 1991, Unicode promotes, extends and develops the use of the Unicode Standard, and its sweeping success is evident in its supporters, with big-name vendors such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Adobe and Yahoo, to name a few.

Every year Unicode launches a new version that includes fresh-faced emoji characters. Last year Unicode 8.0 released the unicorn face, burrito and 39 other icons; this year Unicode 9.0 added the selfie, bacon, avocado and 69 other icons (For Apple users, it’s estimated you’ll see these around October).

Unicode, specifically the Unicode Technical Committee, chooses which emojis make the cut, but the ideas make it to your keyboard through its proposal process, which can be completed by any emoji enthusiast.

Yes, it’s true - you can create and propose to have your own emoji appear on millions of cell phones and other digital platforms across the world! But unfortunately the process is laborious and can take about 1.5 yrs to become an accepted candidate, according to the Unicode Consortium’s sample timeline.

Each emoji has to meet specific selection criteria, such as expected usage level and image distinctiveness, and clear a few meetings.

Some that are up for petition currently are a redhead emoji, the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, a KitKat “break” emoji, and a dumpling emoji.  

But if the perfect emoji isn’t at the disposal of your fingertips right now and could save you numerous seconds of yellow-face scrolling if handy, perhaps it’s worth the trouble? Others have certainly made the cut. The journey to your new emoji starts here.