If you missed it, last Friday we had our grand opening party here at Stormfront Productions. Greater Lafayette Commerce and the City of Lafayette really did a nice job helping us put this together.
Earlier in the morning I noticed snow flurries on my way into the office, but come 3:30 the weather cooperated with us for the most part outside of it being a bit chilly. But that is to be expected here in February!
I enjoyed introducing our staff of 7 to the city and let everybody know how excited we are to be a part of the great downtown community here in Lafayette. I hope more businesses in the future will consider using downtown for their space. It really seems like a great, tight-knit community.
The party was a blast and I can't say enough how happy and excited we all were to see so many of our clients, friends and family make it out to the event. My unofficial count had the evening at just over 100 guests in and out of our doors. We ended up with over 70 signatures in our guestbook alone!
I also cannot say enough about how great of a job Eric Cox and his catering company, Centerplate did with the food, staff and presentation. I know everybody really enjoyed the asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with a balsamic reduction sauce. It's probably not exact, but I did locate a recipe for these guys online that sounded pretty close. You can see it at Epicurious.
The best part for me personally was to finally show off our new digs and all the work we put into it over the long months of December, January and February. While the third floor still needs a use for the main area (our future sales and marketing space) it served great as a wine bar for our event! The production room looked great and thanks to Clines Carpet & Blinds in West Lafayette so did the carpet.
One of the biggest hits of the evening were the three photos I had printed out from the Tippecanoe Historical Society of our building. The first shows the street view from 1915-1916 when our building was known as the "Royal Restaurant". From the second photo, you can see the large vertical sign on our building facade spelling out the "Grand Union Tea Company" which puts it around 1918-1919.
The third shot is still a mystery to me. While it offers the best view of the building, all I can make out on the sign is "$3.50". I believe it was taken in the late 20's or early 30's when the Lafayette city records has this place listed as a shoe store. Yeah, I know it's not that exciting, but before 1915 when this place was a restaurant it was used as a saloon that I was able to track back to the 1860's.
I hope all of you that made it out had a great time and enjoyed the food, wine and good company.
We hope to have everybody out again sometime to celebrate yet another milestone in the young company. Until then best of luck with your endeavors!