Patients are willing to pay a premium to get extra time from physicians at concierge medical practices.

Small Business of the Year: In a bleak economy, our Small Business of the Year, Johnson Nursery Corp., relieved its growing pains by making color count.

Small Business of the Year Runner-up: Fuentek LLC is based on a simple premise: Brilliant minds often have tunnel vision. Potentially lucrative findings and inventions collect dust at academic institutions and government agencies because their creators don’t envision their commercial viability.

Small Business of the Year Runner-up: Powder-coating company New Finish is expanding in Norwood.

A bid to bring minor-league baseball to the banks of the Cape Fear River in downtown Wilmington struck out with voters in November, when they rejected the use of public money to build a $37 million stadium for an Atlanta Braves affiliate.

Crescent Financial Services has been growing through acquisitions.

Superstorm Sandy was a nasty trick for the East Coast, but what it brought to North Carolina’s mountains was a treat for the ski industry.

Capital Goods: The fishing industry in North Carolina faces a lot of uncertainty these days, and it does so without a dedicated champion in the legislature.

Up Front: Business North Carolina's readers are an erudite bunch.

Red Oak Brewery's CEO says a state law requiring beer makers to turn all of their distribution over to wholesalers if they produce more than 25,000 31-gallon barrels in a year has stymied his expansion plans.

The economy is better, but top contractors are still suffering in the recession's wake.

Harris Teeter Supermarkets Inc., born in Charlotte and now based in the Queen City suburb of Matthews, has long dominated the upper end of the grocery market in and around its hometown, but a new rival Publix is threatening its turf.

Sanderson Farms Inc., the nation’s fourth-largest chicken processor, announced in August it will open a hatchery in southern Nash County, the first step in a $91.4 million project that is expected to add a processing plant and field to spray poultry waste within five years.

Free & Clear: Some have dismissed concerns about policy uncertainty as partisans attacking Obama. It’s more than a talking point, and it didn’t start with this president. 

Looking back, Hugh McColl recalls two turning points in a career that created the biggest bank in America.

Cover story: RTI International thinks it can continue to flourish by using minds over matters.

Two Davidson College soccer teammates started Raleigh-based Creasman and Baltz Inc., a high-end pen maker.

While drought has decimated the Midwest’s corn crop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts North Carolina’s yield will rise nearly 36% per acre compared with last year.

Thomasville-based Wright Global Graphic Solutions Inc. has diversified beyond producing labels for home furnishers to succeed and grow.