August 19, 2024
Challenges lie ahead for Ford’s Chicago plant Despite the automaker’s on-again, off-again plans for electric vehicle development, major changes are coming to the way Americans drive
BAR PARISETTE
By John Pletz
Restaurant owners target affordability with wine lists
As it marks its 100th year, the Ford factory on the Far South Side — one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the state — faces a challenge that may prove greater than the recessions, wars, labor battles and even the COVID pandemic it's already weathered: the auto industry's transition to electric vehicles. No other factory in Ford's portfolio has been in continuous operation longer than the one on Torrence Avenue at 126th Street. Along the way, the plant has produced everything from the Gran Torino and the Granada to the Thunderbird and the Taurus. “There aren’t very many (plants) that make it to this age,” says Kristen Dziczek, a veteran auto industry researcher who is a policy adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. “They’ve continued to invest in that plant. There are a lot of plants in the 60- to 80-year-old range . . . and a handful that are over 80.” With 4,700 employees, Ford is
the largest manufacturer in the city and among the top three statewide. Nearly 1,100 more workers are at the stamping plant in Chicago Heights that supplies the Torrence Avenue factory, which now produces the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator, along with sport-utility vehicles for police. Although Ford doesn’t provide employment numbers for companies in the supplier park near the plant, they’re estimated to provide more than 2,500 jobs. All of which underscores the stakes for Illinois manufacturing — and for a South Side in need of jobs and investment — as Ford and its Detroit Three brethren navigate the emergence of hybrids, electric vehicles and, perhaps down the line, hydrogenpowered cars. For the South Side region where it's been a fixture since 1924, “Ford’s been there through thick and thin, and has been an anchor,” says David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood See FORD on Page 22
Restaurateurs are getting creative to lure customers who have grown weary of paying through the nose for their dinner I By Ally Marotti
I
t’s a Tuesday evening at Mano a Mano, a new pasta and wine joint along Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square. A server is pouring a bottle of Italian white into a half-liter carafe, which glugs as it fills. Someone has ordered the house wine. Chefs Hsing Chen and Doug Psaltis have set their newest restaurant up to keep check prices down for diners. It shares parts of its kitchen and some staffers with sister restaurant Andros Taverna, cutting down on overhead. Psaltis talked to his truffle supplier about buying just the ends and nubby bits of the high-priced ingredient. The menu doesn’t have second courses — segundi in Italian — because Psaltis knows a $45 chicken entree would skew the whole meal. But the real trick comes in with the wine. Mano a Mano sells red and white house wines by the quarter- or half-liter. The quarter-liter is $16 and equates to about a glass and a
“Wine is an alcohol category where operators believe they have room to take price, but the consumer is now pushing back.”
See WINE on Page 22
— Donna Hood Crecca, principal at market research firm Technomic
No other factory in Ford’s portfolio has been in continuous operation longer than the one on Torrence Avenue at 126th Street. | BLOOMBERG
VOL. 47, NO. 32 l COPYRIGHT 2024 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
DAN MCGRATH The White Sox may not have to look far for their new manager.
CRAIN’S LISTS Here’s our annual ranking of the largest venture-capital and private-equity firms.
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