Pearson's new chocolate, Minnesota solar gardens and Minnesota business ethics awards

Pear­son Candy Co. plans to tap an em­er­ging con­sum­er mar­ket with its first new prod­uct since the Great Depression.

The St. Paul-based can­dy mak­er on Tues­day un­veiled its new line of snack­ing choc­o­late, called 7th Street Con­fec­tions, named af­ter the home­town street where it's lo­cat­ed. Fans have an­tic­i­pated the launch since word of a new prod­uct line leaked out last No­vem­ber.

Pear­son's is best known for ven­er­able Salt­ed Nut Roll and Nut Good­ies. The 108-year-old com­pany also makes Mint Pat­ties and Bit-O-Hon­ey.

The 7th Street pro­ducts in­clude four fla­vors of dark choc­o­late thins: rasp­berry and qui­no­a, straw­ber­ry, blue­ber­ry and al­mond, and pine­ap­ple and toast­ed co­co­nut. The wa­fer-like crisps con­tain 52 percent ca­cao and are tex­tured with freeze-dried fruit, glu­ten-free qui­no­a — known for its high pro­tein and fiber con­tent — and nuts. They seek to ap­peal to health-con­scious con­sum­ers with nonge­net­i­cal­ly modi­fied in­gre­di­ents and no ar­ti­fi­cial colors or fla­vors.

Pear­son's points to the fast-grow­ing snack­ing-choc­o­late seg­ment as a key driv­er for this new prod­uct. Pre­mium choc­o­late, a loose­ly de­fined cate­go­ry that of­ten in­cludes "bet­ter for you" traits, grew at a­bout 5 percent in 2016. While its growth is far out­pacing ev­er­y­day choc­o­late, pre­mium choc­o­late still rep­re­sents a much small­er per­cent­age of the mar­ket than main­stays pro­duced by Her­shey's or Mars.

The dark choc­o­late thins come in 4.7-ounce, re­seal­able pouch­es at a sug­gest­ed re­tail price of $4.49.

"As con­sum­ers' snack­ing pre­fer­ences con­tin­ue to e­volve, we need­ed to be in a po­si­tion to con­tin­u­al­ly pro­vide in­no­va­tive con­fec­tions items and unique fla­vors," said Pear­son CEO Mi­chael Kel­ler. Ex­pect more at the hol­i­days such as dark choc­o­late with pret­zel and pep­per­mint and white choc­o­late with rasp­berry and dark choc­o­late chips.

Pear­son's moved from Min­ne­ap­olis to St. Paul in 1950. Pri­vate-equi­ty own­ers ac­quired the com­pany in 2011, bring­ing in new lead­er­ship and new ideas. Pear­son's intro­duced fun-size ver­sions of its pro­ducts and ac­quired Bit-O-Hon­ey in 2013 from gi­ant Nest­lé.

Kris­ten Painter

NRG has com­pleted seven com­muni­ty so­lar pro­jects in Min­ne­so­ta that will serve more than 1,000 resi­den­tial, com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment cli­ents.

The pro­jects to­gether will pro­duce 32 mega­watts of pow­er and are part of Min­ne­so­ta's Community Solar Garden pro­gram, which was cre­at­ed by the state leg­is­la­ture and is ad­min­is­tered by Xcel Energy. (A meg­a­watt is 1 mil­lion watts.)

NRG, which has its main of­fices in Texas and New Jer­sey, is a large en­er­gy com­pany that pro­duc­es whole­sale e­lec­tric­i­ty from tra­di­tion­al pow­er plants but has in­creas­ing­ly gotten into so­lar en­er­gy in re­cent years.

The com­pany's seven Min­ne­so­ta com­muni­ty so­lar pro­jects are lo­cat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, Da­ko­ta, Good­hue, Olm­stead, Dodge, Rice and Wabasha coun­ties. The pro­jects' larg­est com­mer­cial cus­tom­ers in­clude U.S. Bank, Land O'Lakes, Ecolab, Red Wing Shoe Co. and Macy's.

NRG has sev­er­al more so­lar gar­dens in Min­ne­so­ta that are un­der vari­ous stages of con­struc­tion and de­vel­op­ment.

Min­ne­so­ta's Community Solar Garden pro­gram, while slow to roll out, is ex­pect­ed to be one of the larg­est pro­jects of its kind na­tion­al­ly.

Cus­tom­ers sub­scribe to a com­muni­ty so­lar farm like those of NRG through a long-term con­tract. The pow­er flows to the grid, and cus­tom­ers re­ceive a bill cred­it from Xcel for their sub­scribed share. The Min­ne­so­ta pro­gram is ex­pect­ed to be one of the larg­est in the na­tion.

Mike Hughlett

Brenny Transportation of St. Cloud, a 100-em­ploy­ee truck­ing firm found­ed by Joyce Brenny in 1996 af­ter she hit the glass ceil­ing at an­oth­er truck­ing firm, was named the small-com­pany win­ner of the 2017 Min­ne­so­ta Business Ethics Award (MBEA).

"In a tough in­dus­try, Brenny stands out for its com­mit­ment to em­ploy­ees, re­gard­ing them as mem­bers of a fam­i­ly not only em­ploy­ees," said David Rodbourne, vice pres­i­dent of the Center for Ethi­cal Business Cul­tures at the University of St. Thom­as and co-chair of the MBEA. "Core values per­me­ate a range of prac­tices from in­itial inter­view­ing and hir­ing, to their ap­proach to dis­ci­pline and se­cond chan­ces, to en­gag­ing em­ploy­ees in peer-to-peer re­views … [pay­ing] driv­ers for time wait­ing dur­ing a job that might not have been com­pen­sated in oth­er or­gan­i­za­tions."

Reell Pre­ci­sion Manufacturing of sub­ur­ban St. Paul was the win­ner in the midsize-com­pany cate­go­ry of up to 500 em­ploy­ees. Employees own 72 percent of the com­pany through an em­ploy­ee stock own­er­ship plan. Reell, which also won the a­ward in 2002, was rec­og­nized for treat­ing cus­tom­ers and work­ers fair­ly, as well as com­mit­ting 10 percent of pretax prof­it to com­muni­ty needs.

Big-firm win­ner U.S. Bank was cited for liv­ing its code of eth­ics, in­clud­ing in­cen­tive-a­ward re­views that re­ward ethi­cal be­hav­ior as well as sales.

Neal St. An­thony