Sidney Brodsky, chief executive officer of James Gerard Foods, a gourmet food business in Phoenix with roughly 50 employees, says he is considering "weeding out" his weakest performers to reduce his firm's head count to below 50 full-time equivalents.
One such would-be magnate is Vipin Motwani, who has combined his MBA studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix with co-launching an Internet-based food enterprise.
Phoenix's Native-American art shops and taco restaurants offer pockets of variety, but generic food chains such as International House of Pancakes and Pizza Hut still dominate.