Pinckney Bakery owners Kim and Saing Yam weren't looking to open a second location, but when they came across the space in downtown Chelsea left by cupcake maker Glee, both the building and the timing seemed right.  "It's a coincidental thing," says Kim Yam. "The cupcake lady closed down, and I told my husband to go look. It wasn't planned." Though unplanned, a second location isn't unprecedented for the Yams. They owned the Dexter Bakery for 17 years before deciding to cut back and spend more time with their kids about five years ago. Now that their kids are older, the Chelsea location seemed like a good opportunity.  "The only thing we'll do different than in Dexter, is we don't do bread," Yam says. "We have pastries, pretzels, cookies — everything, you name it, and we bake fresh every day." Yam hopes to open the Chelsea Bakery in the second week of April, initially hiring a staff of two for the store. They are now renovating the 2,000 square foot space, putting in new flooring and countertops. Yam plans to include space for seating inside the bakery. Source: Kim Yam, Pinckney Bakery Writer: Natalie Burg

For more than 60 years, Hunter House Hamburgers has been a Metro Detroit favorite, serving oniony sliders from a white pill-box diner in Birmingham. After all that time, the small family restaurant has decided to expand, and downtown Ann Arbor will be the beneficiary of the decision.  "We had been an institution in the Detroit area for 60 years," says Kelly Cobb, who will operate the new location. "We thought what better way to share than to expand. Ann Arbor was obvious choice." Cobb will open the new Hunter House on E. William St. in late April or early May. At 2,000 square feet, the restaurant will be about twice the size of the original, but will retain the same diner aesthetic customers are used to in Birmingham. That extra room will allow for some changes to the Hunter House menu.  "We never really had a chance to grow at the original place because it's so small," says Cobb. "We have a ton of additional kitchen space now." The Ann Arbor location will offer about a dozen varieties of milkshakes and malts and some additional menu items, but Cobb assures fans of the original that they will also find everything they love from Birmingham as well.  In addition to dine-in seating, Cobb plans to offer a take-out window and stay open late to serve the downtown market. He anticipates hiring a staff of about 25 for the Ann Arbor location. Source: Kelly Cobb, Hunter House Hamburgers Writer: Natalie Burg 

There is a saying about electronic startups that deal more in hardware than software and the difficulty of the task. One Ann Arbor-based venture is learning about that right now. "The cliche is hardware is hard," says Sally Carson, co-founder & CEO of Pinoccio. "That's definitely true." But it's far from impossible. That's something that Pinoccio is proving right now. The startup is shipping the first units of its wireless, web-ready microcontroller, which is about the size of your thumb. The technology comes equiped with WiFi, a LiPo battery and a built-in radio, which allows users to send commands to the microcontroller over the Internet from their laptop. Check out a video about it here. Carson and Eric Jennings began developing this technology a little more than a year ago. They launched a crowdfunding campaign with a goal to raise $60,000. They raised $105,000, which allowed them to ship 2,500 microcontrollers to 700 funders. The recepeints are mostly makers and hobbyists, but with a few other notable exceptions. "We are also finding interest in other product designers and people who want to use Pinoccio in their hardware," Carson says. That success has allowed Pinoccio to expand its staff to eight people after adding six in the last year. The company, which uses the tagline "Building the Internet of things," plans to take more orders for its microcontroller this spring and ship them later this summer. Source: Sally Carson, co-founder & CEO of Pinoccio Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

DeepField launched its first product six months ago and the IT startup is gaining traction with its customers as it prepares to launch more products in the coming weeks. The downtown Ann Arbor-based startup's software that enables large corporations to adapt to the ever changing world of the Internet's back-end IT infrastructure. The technology, which is being branded as Cloud Genome, automatically identifies, tracks, and disambiguates the structure of all cloud-based services. DeepField's big-data platform analyzes and correlates telemetry from routers, switches, DNS, and more, decoding all of the morass of information. The end result is more visibility into all facets of the user's IT network. DeepField launched this technology six months ago. It is now deployed at 25 large networks around the world. The company estimates its software is deployed along 20 percent of all online consumer traffic. The 2-year-old company plans to launch new products during the spring and summer of this year. "The initial offering solved some big problems for our customers," says Craig Labovitz, co-founder of DeepField. "We're diving much deeper now." DeepField recently made the move from its original home in the Tech Brewery to bigger officers in downtown Ann Arbor above the Michigan Theater. It has also opened satellite offices in Colorado, Amsterdam and Washington, D.C. With that growth has brought a doubling of the company’s staff to just under 20 hires. Labovitz expects the company to hit a staff size of 25-30 people by the end of the year to keep up with demand. "We're basically doubling each year," Labovitz says. Source: Craig Labovitz, co-founder of DeepField Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Whiplash is growing its headcount in Ann Arbor and its footprint across America. Whiplash is the merchandising arm of VGKids, handling logistics for its e-commerce activity. The 3-year-old company, which got its start in Ypsilanti but is now located in Ann Arbor, recently opened a new facility in San Francisco. "That was a pretty big win for us," says James Marks, co-founder of Whiplash. Whiplash pulled off the new facility last August by landing an anchor customer (BetaBrand) and then finding a building twice the square footage it would need to accommodate that client. The extra space is then taken up by business that is grown organically from within Whiplash. The facility now employs four people and Whiplash is looking at opening another in Los Angeles, New Jersey or Berlin. Whiplash is also in the process of expanding its Ann Arbor location. The company has hired two people here, growing its Tree Town location to half a dozen employees. It is now building out that building to handle its growing workload. "Originally we had half of the building we are in and then took all of the space," Marks says. "Now we're getting the building next door." He expects to complete the expansion by the end of this summer. Source: James Marks, co-founder of Whiplash Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.