Current News

Vermont Business Magazine With daylight hours decreasing and holiday feasts fast approaching, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets (VAAFM) and the Vermont Fresh Network (VFN) are looking towards a traditional Thanksgiving dinner that Vermont’s local farms can help prepare.  Ingredients from the turkey to the stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, pies, local beverages and spirits can be found at a farm, farmers market or store near you! The time to order your local bird is now! Vermont is home to many turkey farms and diversified farming operations raising turkeys across the state, just in time for Thanksgiving and the holiday season. According to the National Turkey Federation, nearly 88 percent of Americans eat turkey at Thanksgiving. The average weight of turkeys purchased for Thanksgiving is 16 pounds, meaning that approximately 736 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the United States during Thanksgiving in 2016.  

Vermont Business Magazine Downs Rachlin Martin was named by Best Law Firms in 2025 for several practice areas. The first group is Metropolitan Tier 1, Burlington, VT for Business Organizations (including LLCs and Partnerships), Commercial Litigation, Commercial Transactions/UCC Law, Copyright Law, Corporate Law, Labor Law, Labor Law – Management, Land Use & Zoning Law, Litigation – Intellectual Property, Litigation – Land Use & Zoning Law, Litigation – Real Estate, Mergers & Acquisitions Law, Real Estate Law, Tax Law and Trademark Law. DRM was also recognized for Metropolitan Tier 1, Concord, NH for Employment Law – Management, Litigation – Labor & Employment and Trusts & Estates Law, and Metropolitan Tier 1, Montpelier, VT for Energy Law, Environmental Law, Real Estate Law, and Trusts & Estates Law.

Vermont Business Magazine Smugglers’ Notch Distillery is honored to have been chosen to represent Vermont as a partner with Princess Cruises in their “Cocktails with a Story” program. This culturally meaningful initiative delights passengers with top-shelf regional spirits and specialty beverages, helping to make destination cruises a distinctive experience to be remembered. Smugglers’ Notch Distillery’s Maple Gin and Maple Cream Liqueur will be featured as a distinctive Northeast brand on the cocktail menu and in the coffee bars for the cruise line’s fourteen Canada and New England cruises that charter guests from New York, Newport, Boston and Portland in the USA to St. Johns’s (for the Bay of Fundy), Halifax, Sydney, Charlottetown, Saguenay, and Quebec City in Canada.

Vermont Business Magazine ISO New England has announced the retirement of Peter Brandien, vice president of System Operations and Market Administration. Stephen George will succeed Brandien on Nov. 11. During his 20-year career with ISO New England, Brandien has led the ISO’s efforts to ensure the reliable and efficient day-to-day operation of the region’s power system. In recent years, he has taken on the additional responsibility of ensuring the fair administration of the region’s wholesale electricity markets. George has held several positions of increasing responsibility since joining the ISO in 2004 as a system operator. Most recently, he has served as director, Operational Performance, Training, and Integration, where he has been responsible for the department’s strategic planning initiatives, project integration, operational analysis, operator training, human performance improvement, and procedure administration.

Vermont Business Magazine For over three decades, the Shires’ Holiday Inn Tours have invited visitors to step into the holiday spirit in the heart of Vermont. This beloved tradition, coordinated by the Manchester Business Association and The Shires of Southwestern Vermont Destination Marketing Organization, returns this year on Saturday, December 7, and/or Saturday, December 14. Join us for self-guided tours of the region’s finest inns, hotels, and bed-and-breakfasts from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. each day. Patrons must have tickets to participate. With over a dozen participating properties, from historic hotels to quaint B&Bs, you'll discover the warmth and charm of Vermont’s holiday season. Each location offers a unique atmosphere, festive decorations, and delightful treats, along with a taste of local beverages, making this event a memorable experience for all ages.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT) received 118 new names for its big orange plow trucks through this year’s Name a Plow program for Vermont schools. The Agency also received 77 entries in the contest for schools to name the new plow truck that has a second plow spanning 21 feet and will be used to clear Interstate 89. That truck is now named “The Vermonster” thanks to the winning entry from Townshend Elementary School. Employees in AOT’s nine Maintenance Districts were invited to vote, and The Vermonster was the clear winner with 83 votes received out of a total of 281 votes cast throughout the state.

Vermont Business Magazine In anticipation of the 2024 Killington World Cup, the Killington World Cup Foundation (KWCF) will be honoring four worthy recipients with grants which will allow each organization to increase access to winter sports for youth and individuals in the Northeast, creating more lifelong winter sports participants. This year’s grantees reflect KWCF’s dedication to promoting ski racing and supporting athletes at the highest level. 

Vermont Business Magazine U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, celebrated the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) recent launch of the Organic Dairy Product Promotion (ODPP) program, which will invest $15 million in expanding access to organic dairy products to K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and other community-based programs for youth. USDA announced the program at Miller Farm in Vernon, Vt., which previously received USDA funding from the NE-DBIC to provide organic milk directly from the farm to a dozen local schools. 

Vermont Business Magazine New Chapter, a Brattleboro, Vermont-based vitamin and supplement company, has announced its first Upcycled Certified products, including its entire Wholemega Wild Alaskan Salmon Fish Oil line. The Upcycled Certified mark identifies products that have full nutritional value but would have otherwise been discarded for various reasons. Using these surplus foods to create new, high-quality items reduces food waste and promotes sustainable practices, both of which are core to the New Chapter brand. New Chapter has long been on the cutting edge of sustainable certifications having obtained Organic Certification on multivitamins in 2005 and enrolling products in the Non-GMO Project Verification program in 2010. 

Vermont Business Magazine After several years growing their real estate business throughout Northern New England, the Biondolillo family has sold their offices in Maine and NH in order to consolidate their Central Vermont locations. BCK Real Estate President, John Biondolillo said, "As exciting and rewarding as it’s been to acquire offices and expand along the Maine and New Hampshire coasts, we’ve always been a family brokerage and it was the right time to return to our roots. Our home office in Barre has always been our anchor, it’s where we built our home, raised our family and started our business."

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Secretary of State supports a district-wide revote to assure that every voter in the Bennington-1 House District has a chance to vote. The district-wide revote should occur because of an error in Pownal’s checklist, which placed about 40 voters in the wrong legislative district. The outcome of the Bennington-1 House race could have been impacted by this error because Democrat Jonathan Cooper’s margin of victory was only 25 votes over Republican Bruce Busa.

Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont (UVM) Grossman School of Business (GSB) again ranks at the top of the Corporate Knights 2024 Better World MBA ranking, jumping from 5th in the world in 2023 to 2nd globally, and climbing to #1 in the United States. This makes the seventh consecutive year that GSB’s Sustainable Innovation MBA (SI-MBA) secured a top 10 position in Better World MBA rankings. It also marks the return to the top spot domestically again since it was #1 in 2019. Among U.S. universities, the Grossman School of Business’s SI-MBA program has always remained third or above in the Corporate Knights rankings. SI-MBA is an accelerated one-year program that focuses on equipping graduates with the knowledge and the toolkit to manage and transform businesses by embedding sustainability in their operations.