Coffee Break: Viking lays off 30 workers in Miss.

Viking Range Corp. has laid off 30 more employees in Greenwood.

Bill Crump, Viking's director of governmental affairs, tells the Greenwood Commonwealth that the layoffs, which came this past week, involved salaried and hourly workers.

Crump says the layoffs were spread among the company's four manufacturing facilities in Leflore County and its corporate office in downtown Greenwood.

Since April 2008, Viking has shed 327 jobs, or about 23 percent of its total work force. It currently employs 1,090 workers, 910 in Leflore County.

Crump says the upscale kitchen appliance manufacturer has been especially hurt by the severe drop-off in new housing construction.

He says the new housing segment has accounted for about 20 percent of Viking's business.

According to its Web site, Viking sells its appliance products through 13 residential appliance distributors covering the 50 states and Canada.

A winning pitch

The Sales and Marketing Society of the Mid-South will present "Developing a Dynamic Escalator Pitch" from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at EmergeMemphis, 516 Tennessee.

The workshop will help participants develop a winning pitch to attract investors. Training will be provided by RedRover Sales & Marketing.

Admission is $25. Seating is limited and registration is required.

For details, visit pitchworkshop.eventbrite.com

AAF luncheon

The American Advertising Federation Memphis will host its monthly luncheon from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Thursday at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis, 3700 Central.

Keynote speaker will be Steve Bassett, creative director at the Martin Agency. He will discuss how his firm and GEICO created one of the country's most successful brands by using a gecko, a caveman and a pair of googly eyes.

Admission is free to AAF Memphis members, $10 for students and $25 for guests.

For more information, call 748-8889 or send an email to info@aafmemphis.org.

FedEx air safety

FedEx's new on-board automatic fire suppression system garnered the annual Honeywell Bendix Trophy for Aviation Safety from the Flight Safety Foundation.

The award was presented Monday at the National Business Aviation Association Annual Meeting and Convention in Orlando to five members of the strategic projects team in the air operations division of FedEx Express: Joel Murdock, Bruce Popp, Jeff Peltz, Mark Petzinger and Art Benjamin.

The system, which is initially being installed on FedEx's MD-11 freighters, detects fire with infrared heat sensors and heat modeling and injects an extinguishing agent into cargo containers.