Beyond The Grape
Great Wine is Yours for the Making
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A Very Exciting Evening!
Posted by Michael Druce, January 19th, 2010 | 0 Comments
Every once and awhile if you are good at what you do, you get recognized for the hard work and effort that you put in to get you to that point. That happened for Sandra and I on January 15th at the Red Robinson Theater. We were there for the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce 2009/2010 Business Excellence Awards Gala. Sandra and I were just honoured to be nominated for the Small Business of the Year award and even more honoured and humbled to be chosen as a finalist.
The nominees are combed through by a group of business owners that are part of the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce to find the finalist then again to select the winners. This is one of the most prestigious business events in the Tri-Cities. Sandra, Priscilla and I were siting with a city councilor from Port Moody, a city councilor from Coquitlam, a couple of executives from the Crossroads Hospice, and a few other business people from around the Tri-Cities. We at least knew one of the councilors and one of the executives from the Crossroads Hospice so we were able to have a couple good conversations with them and got to meet a few new people and do the "what do you do" conversations with them.
The Chamber of Commerce really did a great job on putting on such an event and the Red Robinson Theater did a great job on the food. Coming from me that is saying a fair bit as I always have very high standards when it comes to events and functions like this because of my hotel and restaurant background. But that is not the point of this blog. So the awards start and Sandra and I are sitting on pins and needles to see who the winner is in the category we are in and almost out of the blue we realize they called Beyond The Grape as the winner. We were warned to have a speech ready just in case as winging it isn't the best idea, so Sandra had typed a small one out as I said I would not do it, as it is her business but she refused to go up and get the award without me. While she was reading the speech I held the trophy, then we head to the back for pictures and we get told a neat story about how our trophy doesn't have a name plate yet as the business that was doing the trophies (The Trophy Centre) was one of the finalists in the same Small Business of the Year category and they didn't want to give away the result so they didn't have them make the name plate yet. As we are posing for the pictures Sandra and I are both having a hard time keeping our smiles as the adrenalin starts to make our mouths twitch from trying to be held in one place.
The rest of the night goes by as a blur and I can't remember a whole lot about the rest of the night until we got in the car to go home. Then almost together we say Jim would be proud and our excitement drops a little realizing he isn't here to share this with us and the whole night became bittersweet. So Jim, we did it and wish we could have shared it with you in person, we know you were there in spirit. (For those who do not know, Jim is Sandra's husband that passed away in September 2007 at the Crossroads Hospice from Cancer)
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