Marketing Houston: Breakfast Klub goes on the road
The Chronicle's David Kaplan checks in on the latest efforts to market Houston in New York:
Bureau officials hoped that along with all the other attractions Houston has to offer, having [Marcus] Davis and his staff dishing out Breakfast Klub fare would help dispel such notions.
And so on a wing and a waffle, they flew to the Big Apple.
The theme of the party was "Bringing the soul of Houston to the heart of New York."
The invitation tugged even harder at the Houston-New York connection, noting that "The marriage of wings and waffles has deep roots in New York City dating back to 1938" when the Wells Supper Club in Harlem began serving chicken and waffles as an after-concert meal.
Held at Penthouse 15, a reception hall in Manhattan's Garment District, the event also featured jazz performed by four musicians trained at Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts who are now working in New York.
Served along with wings and waffles were strawberry-basil margaritas made from a recipe borrowed from the Volcano, a Rice Village-area bar.
A highlight of the night was a welcoming talk by Davis, who runs the Midtown-area Breakfast Klub with his wife, Mel Davis, and brothers Tony and Jerry Davis.
He spoke of how the Houston Breakfast Klub and the Harlem Wells Supper Club of old share a chicken-and-waffle connection and how this kind of food is able to transcend cultures and bring people together as it does in his restaurant.
A wings and waffle-themed event makes sense because it plays against the Houston stereotype, said John Keeling, senior vice president of PKF, a hotel consulting firm.
"Outsiders think they know Houston, but they don't," he said, "and what they think they know, they don't like.
Houston can't compete with first-tier convention cities Orlando, New York, San Diego, Anaheim, Chicago and Las Vegas, but it can hold its own against its second-tier rivals San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, Denver and Seattle, Keeling said.
Although Houston has nice convention facilities, as a tourist destination it probably isn't as appealing to most people as San Antonio, Miami, Seattle, Denver, or Washington. But certainly Houston should be able to compete for scraps in that second tier, along with Dallas and Atlanta.
And that's fine with me. Houston has a lot to offer the people who choose to live here. It's not the end of the world (for me, anyway) if Houston will never, ever be a major convention player.
What say you?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/08/07 02:45 PM | Print |
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.