With the end of the California drought nowhere in sight, companies statewide are seeking innovative methods to conserve water. Cruz Thru, a car wash company with seven locations in Bakersfield, has developed a water reclamation system that recycles 90 percent of the water used in one wash cycle.

Duxbury-based VERC Enterprises, with convenience stores, gasoline stations, and car washes sprinkled throughout Eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, started with a single car wash in Marshfield. Today, family-run VERC has 26 locations, with $150 million to $160 million in annual sales.

Star Sushi Bar and Hand Car Wash offers "x-factor" car washes, carpet shampoos, hand polishes and nigiri a la carte, among other Japanese dishes. You don’t go there for the ambience, unless you have a desire to watch your car get waxed while you eat. You go there for the food or a steam-clean, or conveniently: both.

The ChargePoint station - supplied by Riverwoods-based Carbon Day Automotive and installed in May - will allow electric vehicle customers at Crossroads Car Wash to charge for free during detailing work.

It used to be that only huge corporations had employees working across the globe. But with heightened competition for top talent and collaboration technology that provides easy interaction to people in far-away markets, it has become more common for small and midsize businesses to employ workers internationally.

Siblings share the benefits of inherent trust, a shared ethos and often quite brutal honesty. For a business partner, there is often no better set of characteristics. But when siblings decide to start a business together, the results are often either prosperous or, sadly, preposterous.

When you have images filed haphazardly on your computer, you waste time looking for the right image when you need it. Photo-organizing software helps you catalog and manage your images more effectively. We look at five free photo-management applications that can help you organize—or restore order to—your image collection.

Twitter has definitely had its challenges of late. But the company’s challenges are fixable. All it has to do is look at the organizations that have succeeded with the messaging service. I’m not talking about name brands like Coke, Disney’s ESPN or Apple - or celebrities like Beyonce and Taylor Swift. My examples are much, much more boring than that. In fact, you probably haven’t even heard of them.

Ryko Solutions Inc., one of the largest providers of managed car wash systems in North America, recently unveiled its newest in-bay wash system. The SoftGloss MAXX 3 has technologically advanced features and controls, while also putting more options at customers’ fingertips by providing two wash options in one bay.