Dinner with smart Tampa – November 19, 2009

[Wdhitch]

Starting this month, we’ll be partnering with Nick Petry and the smart Center of Tampa for the monthly dinner with smart.

This month’s dinner will take place on Thursday, November 19th at Tres Amigos Mexican Cantina in Brandon, FL.

Here is the address for the restaurant:
2025 W. Brandon Blvd
Brandon, FL 33511

There will be a caravan leaving from the smart Center in Tampa at 6:30pm or you may just meet us at the restaurant at 7pm if you like. Quick directions would be to take Interstate 75 to State Route 60 and head east on SR60(toward Brandon). Once on 60 head east for approx a mile to Gronto Lake… there is a traffic light with a Bank of America on the corner here. Turn right on Gronto Lake and then almost immediately left into the Sams Club parking lot. Tres Amigos will be on your left in the parking lot.

Again, we need to give Tres an idea of how many people will be coming so please let either myself or Nick Petry (npetry@courtesycars.com) know if you will be able to join us.

[Nizick]

Yay! Hopefully this will be a start to a good thing. I kinda want to get smart center Tampa's events to be a little bigger. We're kinda of trickling off the map. Granted I don't think we've ever teamed up with smart clubs. If anyone has any ideas for future dinners let me know. I'll try to work it.

I think we've all agreed at the center December might not have a dinner because a lot of people aren't in town in December.

Hopefully mid Jan. we should be able to figure something out.

[Turbo42]

They used to be big events

[Wdhitch]

Yeah... the polish always wears off after the first few times....

There are quite a few factors working against it in terms of attendance.

1. Week night... Sunday events seem to get the most attendees... seems to match work schedules in the area...

2. Location... till now they've all been on the other side of the county... if you didn't live in West Hillsborough County it was an additional 2 hours to get there and then home... then up early for work the next day? There are quite a few owners that didn't go for this reason.

3. Dealership affiliation... while somewhat undeserved, smart center Tampa somewhat of a reputation... it's something that has gotten better but the stigma remains... It wasn't until just recently that the dealership even started working with our club... we had good communication with the Clearwater and Sarasota dealerships when it came to event planning and promotion but Tampa didn't want to do or be a part of anything.

4. Specific to this thread, I'd say about 80 -85% of the owners in the greater Bay Area are not part of this forum. Most of our communication is via email or our website... I didn't expect much if any response to this thread... there has been a good response to the email that Nick and I sent out though... we're expecting a good crowd for a Thursday night.