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» Two Lucky Shoppers Win … More Shopping!
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Two Lucky Shoppers Win … More Shopping!
For an entire month, people visited 40 different businesses all over town and dropped registration slips into our Official Lucky Shopper Contest Vases. Why? Because two (very) lucky shoppers would win $1,000 worth of gift certificates from our participating merchants. And the more shops they frequented, the better their odds of winning.
We received nearly 3,000 entries (not counting the guy who put his name in 25 times at the same place). And on July 23 the Lucky Shopper Team convened to draw two names at random from the pile.
Two piles, actually. We divided our 40 retailers into two groups: one covering the Post Road from Bridgeport to Southport, and the other encompassing Black Rock Turnpike and surrounding areas.
Congratulations to Rachel Alcosser (top) of Fairfield and Sharon Plante (bottom) of Ansonia, who managed to beat thousands of other people to the finish line and nab those gift certificates. Rachel was our Post Road winner, and Sharon scored the certificates from the Black Rock Turnpike area. (Rachel also received a goodie basket from the Chocolate Shoppe, which closed this summer. We miss it already.)
Rachel is a resident of the beach area with close ties to the Fairfield community. She and her husband have two kids in the local school system, and although Rachel grew up in Westport, she does much of her shopping in Fairfield. She registered for the Lucky Shopper event at The Pantry, a local gourmet deli.
Sharon is a teacher at the Eagle Hill School in Southport and her husband Phil Plante is a local firefighter. She registered at Lucy's Kitchen when she stopped to buy a sandwich on her way to work. Sharon grew up in Easton and has long been a supporter of Fairfield businesses, even today as an Ansonia resident. She fully supports the chamber's efforts to keep families shopping in Fairfield, and hopes we'll run the Lucky Shopper event every year.
Editor's note: Some of our readers with longer attention spans may recall that the original plan involved fishbowls, not vases (but only half as many retailers). Acquiring forty fishbowls, it turns out, is not a cheap proposition. So we ditched that idea and found glass vases in all shapes and sizes for 50 cents, a dollar, maybe three bucks tops. Who knew?
Join the Fairfield GreenTeam
No, it has nothing to do with golf.
The Fairfield GreenTeam bills itself as "Fairfield's green and responsible living source." Unless you've been living under a lily pad,* you know that being green isn't just for frogs anymore.
Register your green and/or responsible business on the GreenTeam website and help them reach their goal: to provide Fairfield businesses and residents the resources and information needed to make informed decisions, and to bring people together to share ideas. It should be easy being green.
Questions about green and responsible living? Visit www.fairfieldgreenteam.org.
* If you are living under a lily pad, there's nothing wrong with that. My parents used to say that they found me hiding under one — heck, if you asked them today, I bet they'd tell you the same story.
Renovating in a Big Way? Wanna Be on TV?
The HGTV program "My Big Amazing Renovation" is looking for Fairfield area homeowners who are just starting a major renovation.
If you're doubling the size of your home and transforming the original space (kitchen included), you could have your dream-home-in-the-making featured on television. The producers are looking for projects with a set budget and timeframe, and lots of enthusiasm.
The show is produced by High Noon Entertainment. To apply, contact Cindy Baggish at 303-712-3093 or cbaggish@HighNoonEntertainment.com.
Penfield: Darkness Falls, and Unexpected Goldfish
There were exciting times to be had for the second annual Penfield Beach Bash on July 10, and that was long before anyone got to the beach.
It all started when everything stopped — and rather abruptly at that. A blown transformer on the Post Road had knocked out the power at the Chamber office, or most of it. There was one working phone and a few live outlets in the kitchen, but the computers were down for the count.
This called for some creativity later on at the sign-in table, since the attendance list was sitting on a comatose hard drive and we'd shredded all of the older printouts. Just pretend we're back in the 1970s and everything makes perfect sense. Really.
Anna had two crock pots plugged into the few working outlets we could find, and with a flashlight and the light from the microwave she got to work on the baked beans. She assembled the pasta salad in the conference room, where the windows gave us enough light to see what the @#$% we were doing.
UI still hadn't got the power up when Linda and Anna headed down to the pavilion, but the beach waits for no technician.
Somewhere buried deep in the spaghetti, a piece of a broken plastic fork was laughing at us.
We never managed to retrieve it, and no one reported finding a surprise in their spaghetti, so we'll never know. But it was there, somewhere.
Besides the spaghetti — provided by The Flying Dish — and the aforementioned beans and pasta salad, we had chicken wings from Archie Moore's, sausage and peppers (lots of sausage and peppers) from Cinzano's and Sacred Heart University, a veggie salad from Health in a Hurry, potato salad from Garelick & Herbs and cookies (yum) from The Pantry.
Super Duper Weenie showed up with their weenie truck and proceeded to serve up any kind of hot dog you could imagine, made to order. Mo's Wine & Spirits and the Greenfield Liquor Shop provided the beer, wine and infamous Penfield Beach Bash Rum Punch, and our beach party menu was complete.
Our crowd ate to their hearts' content and we still had leftovers. Lots of leftovers. You really shoulda been there.
The Rise, last year's popular source of musical entertainment, once again rocked the pavilion with every
kind of music known to man, with the possible exception of Gregorian chant. Most of our people were enjoying the beautiful weather and beach-side views outside on the patio, but the band had no trouble making itself heard.
Sue Cadwell's gang of insane decorators festooned the place with beach-themed balloons and highly unique table centerpieces: wide glass bowls with a bed of seashells covered by water, goldfish — yes, real live goldfish — and floating candles in beach-appropriate shapes.
It was a brilliant concept, but like the band, the goldfish were stuck inside the pavilion while everyone else was having fun out on the patio. At least they could swim to the beat, or whatever it is that fish do for entertainment. ("Fishbowl par-tee!" Rock on.)
Regina Madwed of Capitol Photo.Interactive has lots of pictures in her latest dotPhoto slideshow, so make a point of checking out the sights. (This applies to the poor schlubs who weren't there, and also to the folks who were there but don't remember a whole lot of it. We can sympathize.)
And if anyone spots that renegade piece of plastic fork, I believe the authorities have a few questions they'd like to ask.
With our webmaster on the run from law enforcement authorities (details are sketchy, but it has something to do with illegal use of pork products), we're playing catch-up here at ChamberWorks. But rest assured that we'll bring you all the news our lawyers will let us print, plus the stuff they don't know about.
Arts & Crafts Show…? Oh, Yeah. That One
Someone just reminded the ChamberWorks staff that we did our annual Arts & Crafts Show back in June. It hasn't quite been a full month since then, so we're not too terribly late on this one. But anyway. Look — we've got pictures!
This year's show had a new twist, as we recruited a bunch of farmers and other food-type people to show off and sell their fresh veggies, homebaked breads, seeds and herbs amidst the usual gang of artists and crafters. So there were edibles on display alongside things you wouldn't be advised to eat, like jewelry.
Speaking of food, the Kiwanis were grilling hamburgers and hots dogs, and they made sure everyone knew about it. Our longtime Kettlecorn Guy was there as well, and Saturday we provided our exhibitors with breakfast goodies from The Pantry. Needless to say, the muffins and coffeecakes and wonderful pastries disappeared real fast. (Out of the goodness of its heart, the Chamber took in some orphaned bagels.)
The weather held up all weekend, but a number of exhibitors (some of whom had seen tents blown over at a Hartford-area show) asked to leave early on Sunday when the sky turned threatening. Naturally the sun had come back out by the time they finished packing up, but there you go. Those who stuck it out until 5:00 benefited from the reduced competition.
Our first experimental "Arts, Crafts and Farmer's Market" was a successful one, so expect more bigger and more better at next year's show.
Advertise in the 2009 Guide at 2008 Prices
Work is underway on the 2009 Membership Directory and Resource Guide, and we've got a deal in store for you. Well, several deals.
Advertising rates are the same as last year — it's like 2008 all over again! Reserve your ad and pay in full by Sept. 5, and you'll get 10% off on any size ad. And members get special discounts, of course.
Design your own ad or let our award-winning creative agency design one for you, free!
The Membership Guide is a magazine-style publication that we distribute free to area businesses, residents, town offices, libraries, universities, realtors and Chamber members — thousands of copies all over Fairfield and beyond, all year long.
More deals for members: Buy a 1/4-page ad or larger and get 10% off on exhibitor space at the 2009 Six-Chamber Business Expo!
Advertising in the Membership Guide helps support the Chamber's critical role in the business community. And it'll make you look good, too.
Ad space is first-come, first-served. Watch for the flyers in our August mailing — but if you can't wait, contact MKDesign at fairfieldchamber@masonkichar.com or call 203-389-3500 today.
Memberpalooza
It started innocently enough: a couple of our members sent word that they'd made the winner's list in Fairfield Weekly's 2008 "Best of Fairfield County Readers' Poll."
With nothing better to do, our Editor in Chief started browsing the Reader's Poll results and noticed a lot of our members winning their categories — sometimes multiple categories — and picking up 2nd or 3rd place in others.
That's how a short blurb in Member News & Events turned into a monster. If we missed anyone, please let us know.
So you can call us the award-winningest chamber in Fairfield County. (Our editors aren't too good with numbers, so we may in fact not be the winningest chamber. But it sounds good and we're sticking to it.)
You Weren't There? BIG Mistake
To those of you didn't come to Patriot National Bank on June 25, we have one word for you: food.
No, make that three words: food, food and FOOD.
With The Flying Dish catering the event, Patriot pulled out all the stops and served up an entire dinner for the price of admission to our June Business After Hours. They even opened up their conference room to let folks sit down and get serious with the eats. And serious eats they were.
Our own Patricia Ritchie had this to say about the menu: "Oh, we had free-range chicken marsala ... flat noodles and a red meatsauce ... brisket of beef with horseradish (melt in your mouth — not a stick of fat on it) ... and green beans with garlic, a garden salad and mashed potatoes."
But wait, there's more. "Trays of hors d'oeuvres — brought around by waiters — including a seafood tart and other stuff I don't know the name of. Additionally, wines red and white, soda and water. Best of all, some lucky people got doggie bags to take home.
"Moral of this story: Never miss a BAH put on by a bank."
There you heard it, right from the horse's mouth. (No, Patricia is not a horse. It's just a figure of speech.) So those of you who missed one of the best Business After Hours in recorded history have our explicit permission to feel guilty as all hell.
You can see what you missed in Regina Madwed's second-ever dotPhoto slide show — watch for the food tables and heaping platefuls — but you can't taste it. Nyah-nyah.
The Penfield Beach Bash is getting underway even as we type this, and we do expect to see you in September for our next BAH extravaganza. Watch this space for details ... but make sure you set aside enough time to feel guilty while you wait.
Editor's note: If this newsletter had sound effects, "guilty" would echo all around your head in an Edgar Allan Poe kind of way.
Chamber Adopts Strategic Plan
Meeting at an undisclosed location, the Chamber's Board of Directors convened at an undisclosed date and time to construct a Strategic Plan. We don't know what this Strategic Plan contains, but when we cornered a high-ranking Chamber official in an undisclosed parking lot, he described it as "strategic, very strategic."
Expect more details about the Strategic Plan when we start blackmailing random board members and kidnapping their Chia Pets.
The Annual Annual … Annual Thing
We showed you Regina's pictures of the Annual Meeting and Awards Reception last month, but we neglected to tell you what a great event it was.
Food stations, wine and beer on the patio, Renard Boissiere playing guitar, door prizes, goodie bags for everyone and member-created centerpieces that we auctioned off ... a grand evening to mark the passage of another Chamber "year." (A Chamber "year" is approximately 5.8274 human years and ends in June when no one is paying attention.)
This Chamber "year" ushers in Jason Hyde as Chairman, and we have new faces joining the Board of Directors and some chairpeople positions that never even existed before, like Wiener Dog Chair. It's shaping up to be a great new "year" indeed.
