Action Heating & Air Conditioning in Charleston, SC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina are kicking off Girl Scout Cookie season again this year with a megadrop.

The Girl Scout Cookie program continues to be one of the country’s biggest girl-led businesses. This year, the Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina is starting the season off with a megadrop at its new distribution center at Smith Dray Line.

“We’re delivering over 18,000 cases to our troops from our new distribution center at Smith Dray Line,” says Diane Flannagan, CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina. “They’ve been an amazing partner and all of our troop leaders are here picking up cookies, so girls will start selling them today and they go through the middle of March.”

Flannagan added that almost a quarter-million boxes of cookies were planning to be sold Saturday with troops picking up boxes every week until the end of the season.

“Across the state of South Carolina we’re distributing almost a half a million boxes, so it’s very exciting and the girls love it; when they’re selling Girl Scout cookies they’re running a business for the first time in their lives.”

The Girl Scouts also earn rewards and make money to do things in their community. They also learn all of the facets of running a business including money management, entrepreneurship, customer service, and goal-setting.

“Girl Scout cookies have been sold for well over 100 years and we’ve been using this distribution process to distribute cookies for well over a decade because there’s just no way we can do this out of an office, you got to have a distribution center to do it.”

This year, the Girl Scouts introduced a new cookie, the Adventureful, which is a brownie-inspired cookie with caramel, that’s expected to be a great seller.

“We’re also keeping our price at $4 a box, so it’s a great bargain,” Flannagan said. “Our girls in Eastern South Carolina averaged last year selling 450 boxes per girl.”

The megadrop is Girl Scout of South Carolina’s biggest drop in the state with distributions happening in areas including Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Orangeburg, Beaufort, and Florence.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A Charleston location of the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain is in violation of child labor laws, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

A Walgreens store located at 1115 Old Town Rd. in Charleston failed to comply with federal labor laws setting minimum age standards and limiting the number of hours and times a minor-aged employee can work.

The department’s wage and hour division found the store allowed a 12-year-old employee to work before reaching age 14, the minimum age for employment in non-agricultural occupations covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, a news release stated.

“We take any allegations of minors working under the age of 14 very seriously, especially if it’s non-agriculture,” U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division Community Outreach and Resource Planning Specialist Colin Trimble said.

The investigation also found that the store allowed the minor to work more than 8 hours on a non-school day, more than 18 hours during a school week and after 7 p.m. on multiple days, which violates work hour standards for employees under 16 under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Walgreens could not provide the required documents to prove they paid the minor over a two-month period. The department found Walgreens did not maintain records of pay and lacked records of hours worked and the date of birth for the worker.

The department assessed Walgreens with a $7,034 civil money penalty for the child labor and recordkeeping violations and recovered $368 in back wages for the youth.

Trimble said the investigation reviewed a two-year period between July 2019 and July 2021. The incidents took place in April and May of 2021.

“Minors under the age of 18 who decide to work they deserve safe working experiences that don’t jeopardize their health, wellbeing, or education,” Trimble said.

Trimble also said they tend to find child labor violations in certain industries where minors are more likely to be employed, like retail, restaurants, grocery stores, or recreational establishments like marinas and golf courses.

“We prioritize the protection of young workers regardless of the industry they’re working in,” Trimble said.

Live 5 reached out to Walgreens, but they said they would not be making a statement at this time.

For more information about child labor laws, click here.

You can also contact the agency’s helpline at 866-4US-WAGE.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

There is a certain pride that comes with living or growing up in Charleston. Often, it manifests itself in quirky ways, like specific city knowledge, trends, and colloquialisms. Think: What is proper etiquette when walking down King Street? We’ll get into that.

If you happen to be lucky enough to be from the Holy City, here are a few unwritten rules you may know to be true submitted by readers on Instagram + through email — and if you’re not from Charleston, you might want to save this article for future reference.

“Never talk politics at Happy Hour. Always discuss the weather.” – Reader Ken B.

“During rainy season, keep an eye on the tide charts when planning to drive through downtown.” – Reader Erin C.

“Don’t be using the horn when driving unless it’s an absolute emergency and even then, probably don’t use the horn.” – Anon Reader

“Handwritten thank you notes are a must!” – Reader Ellen D.

“King Street sidewalks:

“Keep an eye out for the one-way streets ” – @charleston_food_spot

“Don’t have any part of your tires on the asphalt when you park at the beach … $50 parking ticket automatically (might be higher now).” – @thejoelsario

“Don’t feed the seagulls!” – @holycityglass

“When the [Krispy Kreme] hot sign is on, you always have to stop…” – @stan_kablick

“Always have an umbrella during the summer, regardless of the forecast ” – @kateringram

“When merging on to 17 N. from Coming St. downtown, KEEP moving! Change lanes LATER!” – @eruss28

“You don’t have to pay the meter on Sundays!” – @charleston_food_spot

“East Bay from the aquarium to Harris Teeter is a 2 lane street, but it only fits one car.” – @notcharliehabakus

“Shop local. Support local. Eat local…” – @jeanneaeverett

Sure, the holidays are all fun and games — but if you celebrate Christmas, you know that sooner or later you have to deal with that “Night of the Living Dead” tree in the corner. That doesn’t mean it’s Dumpster-bound. Instead, we have some tips on how to put an old tree to good use.

Curbside pickup

Charleston County will recycle your tree for you: all you have to do is bring it out to the curb for your usual pick-up day. To make sure it gets properly recycled, you’ll need to remove the tinsel, garland, tree stand + ornaments before bringing it out.

Drop-off recycling

Maybe you just can’t wait for curbside pickup. Drop the tree off yourself at Charleston County’s McGill Bees Ferry Compost Facility or any staffed center — excluding the Signal Point Road location. Be sure to properly secure the tree to your car if you opt for this route. Bonus: If you drop your tree off before Jan. 10, you’ll get a free bag of compost at the Bees Ferry facility.

Natural feeders

Give back to Mother Nature by making a natural bird feeder. Get creative with edible ornaments (think: orange-apple garlands and peanut butter pine cones), then set the tree out for birds to eat + take shelter. If your property includes a pond or lake, you can toss in the tree to make a natural reef, giving local fish a home.

Make your own mulch

When you take a tree to a recycling center, they turn it into mulch anyway. So, why not use it for your own yard + spring garden? Ideally, you could shred the tree (for example, Home Depot has mulchers for rent), but usually, by the time the holidays are over, the needles will be falling off. You can spread them in garden beds or over the lawn.

The moment he realized that Magnolias could not reopen quickly or easily last summer, restaurant owner T.J. Parsell thought to himself, “How can it really get any worse after the last year that we’ve had?”

The pandemic had been a doozy for fine dining — even for an iconic Charleston establishment like Magnolias.

When the upscale Southern restaurant first opened on East Bay Street in the summer of 1990, it ushered in a culinary renaissance in a city that was still rebuilding a year after Hurricane Hugo smashed into the South Carolina coast.

The restaurant’s sophisticated take on Southern food in a modern atmosphere dazzled discerning critics and longtime locals alike, catapulting both the restaurant and the city itself to culinary fame as a must-visit food destination.

Yet in all of its 31 years, Magnolias has faced no greater challenge than the one-two punch of the pandemic and its accompanying labor shortage, followed by the devastating August kitchen fire that forced the iconic restaurant to close for more than five months. (An investigation later determined the fire was accidental after flammable items were discovered near a pilot light on a gas appliance, according to Charleston Chief Fire Marshal Mike Julazadeh.)

Such a combination of pandemic and fire would have destroyed almost any other restaurant, according to Bobby Williams, the chairman of the S.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association.

“But Magnolias is just that strong,” said Williams, who is also the CEO and co-founder of Lizard’s Thicket. “People have a special place in their hearts for Magnolias. It is the crown jewel of Charleston, and it’s one of those places that you can always recommend.”

Now, at long last, customers will finally be able to return to Magnolias again.

After a five-month hiatus, if all goes according to plan, Magnolias will reopen its doors either this week or next, making the restaurant’s recovery a much more emotional comeback than a return to business as usual.

“You know, you question what you did for God to put you through this test,” Parsell said as he reflected on the obstacles his restaurant has overcome. “And this has just been unlike anything we’ve had to endure.”

He mentioned the sacrifice of his employees — the servers, the line cooks, the dishwashers, the chefs, the managers — the folks whose lives bore the brunt of the restaurant’s temporary closure.

“It’s the people who are working in the restaurant that make Magnolias what it is,” Parsell said ahead of the reopening. “And with everything that’s been happening in the labor market, particularly in the restaurants, that was really the most trying thing we had to address.”

And so, Parsell made a pivotal decision.

He wouldn’t just encourage Magnolias employees to return to work when the restaurant reopened. Instead, he continued to pay them during the entire five months that Magnolias was closed.

Parsell knew he was taking a risk by paying his employees throughout the restaurant’s closure. But he said he felt like he needed to give his employees a strong reason to return.

Most of the funds, Parsell said, will be covered by business interruption insurance, which helps companies recoup major financial losses if they are forced to close or suspend operations due to a disaster.

The only tricky thing has been working out the wages for workers like servers and bartenders who earn a majority of their income through tips. No matter what insurance decides to cover, Parsell said he has promised to pay a fair wage even if he has to pay it out of his own pocket.

“It’s so important to keep these people on the payroll in a fair way, with a fair wage because I don’t expect somebody to come back to us if we don’t show up for them,” Parsell said of his decision.

The choice comes at a time when most restaurants are still getting squeezed by a nationwide labor shortage. In a recent survey of 3,000 U.S. restaurant operators, 77% said they did not have enough workers to meet demand, according to the National Restaurant Association.

It was also a decision informed by some hard lessons learned during the peaks and valleys of the coronavirus pandemic.

Between mandated dining room closures and other pandemic restrictions, Parsell said annual sales at Magnolias tanked by 40% between 2019 and 2020. But in 2021, when pent-up demand sent customers racing back to restaurants, Magnolias struggled to keep up.

To cope with its lack of staff, the restaurant limited the number of reservations it could offer on a nightly basis and, on especially busy evenings, Magnolias staggered reservations so the kitchen would not get overwhelmed.

The delivery of a steady paycheck, which came with no strings attached during the restaurant’s temporary closure, may have paid off.

An estimated 75% of Magnolias staff will be returning when the restaurant reopens, including the heavy-hitters in the kitchen.

Don Drake, who first joined Magnolias as a sous chef in 1991 and is now its culinary arts director, will still be at the helm of the kitchen. The restaurant also confirmed Kevin Southerlin will be returning as chef de cuisine, along with executive sous chef Landice Simmons and sous chefs Elliott Wells and James Simmons.

“The truth is we have people that have been with us for 10, 15, 20 years. They have remained loyal to us, and I have remained loyal to them,” Parsell said.

One of those people is Ed Murray, who has been a server at Magnolias ever since it opened.

He was there on the restaurant’s first night, and can still recall every detail, right down to the number of meals they served (178). And he’s looking forward to being a part of Magnolias’ triumphant return.

“You’ve got to make yourself eye-appealing and make sure that you’re ready to go,” said Murray, who is the last original hire who still works at Magnolias.

“Being a waiter is like going on stage,” he continued. “You’re looking out at a bunch of strangers, and you have to win them over and, at the same time, you have to win them over to the restaurant.”

He let out a chuckle.

“But let me tell you,” Murray said. “Magnolias is special. It’s service. It’s food. It’s hospitality. It’s everything.”