A Yummy Day With The LHS

This year for the second year in a row, the LHS hosted "The Taste of Laurel." This is a free event that we hold to showcase all of the wonderful food that Laurel has to offer. If you're sitting there thinking, "what wonderful food", read on!

This event is made possible because of the generous support of Main Street Pharmacy. Thank you Joan!

Beginning in the early summer, we start making the rounds to local restaurants and businesses inviting them to bring the best of what they have to offer to share with the community. Sometimes it is a hard sell, particularly if businesses have never heard of the Historical Society.

The point we try to explain to the businesses is: we are trying to provide a venue for them to show off their specialties. We want the Laurel community to know just how great our business community is and how much we have to offer. We want people to know what we already know about Laurel--There is a thriving small business community in Laurel, ready and willing to serve them!

What I find most difficult about convincing people of this is that we, a small historical society, would like to help them--a local business. I think it's hard for people who have never thought of a historical society taking on that role to conceive of why we would want to do that. They tend to think of us as the people who tell them whether or not they can hang a neon sign, but remember, that is not us!

The next step in the planning process is telling the community about theTaste of Laurel. We invite the Laurel community to attend this free event to sample local food and meet local business owners. As most people know, the idea of free food is an offer that will usually draw a good sized crowd, no matter the venue.

But as one of our vendors explained to me after the event, the people that attended really seemed to care about their community and care about the places they patronized. They are the type of people that quickly become regulars and support businesses because of how they are run, not just because of prices and quick deals. Which is great, because this is exactly the type of crowd we were hoping to attract!

And our crowd this year was big--we had over 100 people attend and 8 vendors participate. Aunt Susan's Kitchen, Fruit Flowers, Kafe Kabob, Main Street Sports Bar and Grill, Mango's Grill, Nuzback's, Toucan Taco, and Red Hot and Blue all brought their best food for visitors to taste.o t

Visitors had to visit the Museum first to collect tickets in order taste the free food. Tickets could be earned by walking through the door, completing a scavenger hunt of the current exhibit, entering a free raffle, and in several other ways.

Although we may have tricked them a little with the offer of free food, most visitors were happy to visit the Museum first. Many visitors who usually attend special programs and events at the Museum were happy to look through the exhibit closely. The West County Gazette has an article by Elizabeth Leight in which she quotes a visitor, Brennita Swan, who said "We come here all the time, but this scavenger hunt really helps us focus on certain things we may have missed."
Overall, I believe most people were happy to visit the Museum in order to get a taste of Laurel.

But this successful day, like so much of what goes on at the Museum, is only the tip of the iceberg for all of the planning and hardwork that went into putting the Taste of Laurel together. Thank you to all of LHS' wonderful volunteers for their hard work.

And if you own a local business and you'd like to take part in next year's Taste of Laurel, contact me soon!

How do you hear about our programs?

About once or twice a month we try to do something a little exciting. Sometimes we have lectures, sometimes we have kid's days, sometimes we do something creative like a film series or our Taste of Laurel.

No matter what we do, we have to make sure people know about it.

This can be more challenging than you might think.

We try to use a number of different ways to spread the good word about the LHS. They include flyers, press releases, website updates, facebook events, and sometimes...our blog.

But how does all of this happen? We don't have a magical easy button from Staples. (Sometimes I wish we did, but if we did I bet I'd end up with less brownies in my tummy---read on).

Instead we rely on the efforts of many different volunteers and our very small staff here.

Flyers are usually developed by myself or our wonderful board member, Karen Lubieniecki.

They then have to be copied---in very large numbers with a very testy printer. Most times I try to make some of the copies myself, but usually end up ready to throw a brick at the machine. To save the life of our valued copier and my sanity, Shari Pollard or Monica Sturdivant will usually step in.

Some of these flyers are then placed at locations throughout the city by a dedicate Joan Fitzgerald. We hope that people then find them at the Libraries, Community Centers, etc.

Then they need to find their way to your mailboxes. This magic is coordinated by Margie McCeney who has mastered the complicated bulk mailing system at the post office. She usually enlists Carole Montesi to help fold and stamp. They then grab whichever lucky volunteers are on the schedule the day they are doing their mailing to help. (Here's a little secret---they often bring goodies like orange brownies and blueberry muffins, so it's good to be here when they're working on a mailing.)

Sounds easy, right?

Our press releases are a little bit easier. The always wonderful Elizabeth Leight is generally in charge of making sure press releases are sent all over--from local newspapers to regional ones to web publications and more.

The rest--website updates, facebook events, and blog are even easier. I get to update them all and thankfully they are all VERY easy to update.

So, as you can tell, it is not just enough to have events. You then have to TELL people about them.

So the next time you receive one of those bright blue flyers in the mail from us, thank all of the people who helped us get that information to you!