Hospitality

Curaleaf, a cannabis company headquartered in Wakefield with a dispensary in Oxford, is officially moving into the European market.

Brew City Grill & Brew House on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester will reopen one week from Friday, on March 19, following a temporary closure which began in January, spurred by difficulties in running the restaurant under heightened coronavirus restrictions.

January is often a slow time for Worcester-area hotels, but there was a bright spot this year: rooms were more likely to be occupied here than the rest of the nation on average.

A surge in home deliveries of alcoholic beverages, disproportionate job losses among women during the pandemic, and long-sought authorization for cashless lottery sales are all on Treasurer Deborah Goldberg's mind as the Legislature kicks off its annual budget review.

A bustling, storefront with many eager staff members on-hand to assist customers, The Vault General Manager John Bogdan sat down with WBJ to discuss its customer service business model, the decision-making behind its lengthy menu, and how it plans to distinguish itself from other adult-use dispensaries in the region.

The coronavirus pandemic has crippled the hotel industry, including in Worcester. But work on a second hotel on Worcester's Washington Square next to Union Station is expected to move forward within the next year, according to the city.

The same Fitchburg entity that's bought most of the former Weetabix manufacturing site in Clinton and proposed a cannabis operation there has now bought the remainder for $1.35 million.

A week after the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to City Manager Edward Augustus requesting bar-top dining be allowed once again, the City of Worcester announced on Thursday the ban would be lifted Monday.

Gov. Charlie Baker took a major step forward Thursday to reopen parts of the economy that have been shuttered, in some cases, since the beginning of the pandemic.

“One of the things that's different about us is that we specifically looked for communities that were identified by the state as harmed [by the War on Drugs] or had a high arrest rates, because that's what we want, that's where we can make the most meaningful impact."