Friday Memos

- More small business owners are opting to take a less expensive vacation and are feeling less guilty about taking time off compared to last year, according to this week’s release of results from an American Express survey of business owners. But four out of 10 business owners don’t plan to take any vacation at all; they can’t afford it. [American Express Open Small Business Monitor]

- Laid-off workers are becoming street-food entrepreneurs in the streets of San Francisco, selling everything from Thai curry, barbecue pork sandwiches, crème brulee, pho and escargot-on-a-stick. To alert customers to their locations, these food sellers are connecting with them via Facebook and Twitter. (Here’s a list of these Twittering vendors from around the country.) But many of them are unlicensed, running afoul of street vending rules. The vendors say the laws are confusing. [San Francisco Chronicle]

- Don’t know which banks in your state are most likely to make loans to small businesses? Download the new annual study of lending to small firms by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. The 2008 report offers a state-by-state ranking of lenders’ overall small business lending, not just SBA-approved loans. A caveat: the data is from 2007 to mid-2008, so it probably won’t take into account the shakeup in the lending industry as a result of the credit crisis and the full impact of the recession. [SBA Office of Advocacy]

- Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., introduced legislation in the House this week that would prohibit publicly traded companies, or their subsidiaries, to qualify as a small business in order to receive government contracts. It would also give individuals the right to file a complaint if they have evidence of a small-business contract being awarded improperly. More than 15 investigations have unearthed widespread abuses in federal contracting to those small businesses that did not meet basic requirements. [Web CPA]

- About half of about 750 small-business owners surveyed said temporary cash-flow problems over the past three months have caused them to stop paying bills, according to findings released this week by credit card issuer Discover Financial Services. [USA Today]

- Small businesses in search of loans may have better luck at local and regional banks than at big national banks. They’re three times as likely to get credit at small lending institutions as those who applied to large banks, according to a May survey by Barlow Research Associates. [New York Times ]

Any interesting or relevant small-business items we missed this week?

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