(FORTUNE Magazine) – ELDER CARE COUNSELING Halfway across the country your widowed mother is recovering from a recent stroke. The worst is over, and the hospital is letting her go home. But she needs special therapy and food, someone to make sure the house gets cleaned and the checkbook stays balanced. Employee surveys indicate that one in four workers worries about an older dependent. Elder care counseling, one of the fastest-growing employee benefits, can help. Consultants, reached via a toll- free telephone number, advise employees on how to find all sorts of services in the parent's community, from Meals on Wheels programs to adult day care centers. The employee chooses a service from those the firm suggests, and pays for it. Among the largest elder care firms: the Partnership Group of Lansdale, Pennsylvania (800-847-5437), and Work/Family Elder Directions of Watertown, Massachusetts (800-426-3141). Such companies as IBM, Colgate- Palmolive, and Phillips Petroleum pay the consultants about $10 to $15 per employee a year.

BACKUP BATTERIES Uh-oh, you did it again. Left the headlights on all night and now the Mercedes won't start. Time to get out the jumper cables? Summon the local garage? Not if your car battery is the EverStart or Champion Switch, the newest cells from Johnson Controls and GNB, a subsidiary of Pacific Dunlop. The Switch and EverStart house two separate batteries inside a single case. Should the ''main'' battery fail to crank the engine, drivers flick a switch on top to tap into the built-in backup. The main battery in the $129 EverStart contains 525 so-called cold cranking amps. Its emergency reserve packs 275 CCAs. GNB's Switch, list priced at $110, has 460 CCAs and 180 CCAs, respectively. Motorists trying to start up on particularly frosty mornings can call on the reserve battery for an extra boost. Like any auto battery, the system recharges itself on the road. Some 60 million batteries are replaced every year: Drivers must pay at least a 33% premium for the two-for-one versions. GNB says it will sell about 500,000 batteries a year, through Montgomery Ward and auto parts stores. Johnson Controls plans to sell 350,000 EverStarts through Sears and other outlets.

PEPSI A.M. ''The taste that beats coffee cold.'' With that pitch, Pepsi is test-marketing two extra-caffeine colas in Waterloo, Iowa. The wide-awake soft drinks, Pepsi A.M. and Diet Pepsi A.M., contain 4.1 milligrams of caffeine per ounce, about 30% more than regular Pepsi, but 80% less than a cup of coffee. The less fizzy colas, which cost the same as regular Pepsi, mark the latest assault in the beverage-bean war. Coca-Cola has run a ''Coke in the morning'' campaign in some markets. Since 1986, Jolt of Rochester, New York, has been selling a cola with about six milligrams of caffeine per ounce.

AT&T MERLIN CORDLESS If you believe in management by walking around, the Merlin could be the phone for you. The first cordless telephone designed for small businesses, it can be programmed to speed-dial, link intercoms, and handle up to five lines at once. The $560, one-pound phone is compatible only with AT&T's communications systems. If you buy a new system, the company will give you a discount on these phones. Cordless models already account for nearly half of AT&T's home phone sales. To create an office version, the company installed a Bell Labs chip that cuts down on interference from fluorescent lights, concrete walls, and high-voltage computers. Says George J. Kelly, a Morgan Stanley analyst: ''AT&T leveraged the technology so that the set in your hand is the same as the one on the wall.''