Thank you to everyone who attended a Buffalo Open Coffee Club in 2023, it has been a big year. We moved from Hansa to our new home at Seneca One, added a great new co-organizer in Yelenna Cichocki, and introduced our first sponsored month with our friends at Seneca Holdings to celebrate Native American Heritage Month.
Community powers Buffalo Open Coffee Club and in 2024 we want to continue the growth of the event, consider this letter the first Ask from Gives and Asks of 2024.We want to keep up our engagement with the Startup community in buffalo as we feel our connection to the morning people of this community is strong and growing. We hope to make connections to the new 43 North cohort as they arrive in Buffalo, and participate in Startup Events with Bootsector, WNY Venture association and UB. If anyone knows anyone in the Startup community who doesn’t know about Buffalo Open Coffee Club please let them know lu.ma/bocc and will see them on a Tuesday
We have a number of great UB students that come from campus, but we would like to increase our participation onto UB’s campus to connect with students who might not be in traditional business programs to show them what is out there in the modern economy. We also want to land and expand onto other campuses in the area such as Buffalo State, Canisius, Daemen, and ECC. If anyone has any connections onto these campuses please reach out so we can connect with these students in the Buffalo area.
Students and Startups make up two of the S’s of the Buffalo community but a third we want to target are Small Businesses in the area. Small businesses create a robust economy in WNY, and we want to find ways to talk to these owners and employees to bring them into our Giving First community. We will be engaging with chambers of commerce in Buffalo and surrounding towns, but if there are other ways we can connect to this population please let us know.
In 2023 Buffalo Open Coffee Club started accepting sponsorship to cover the costs of the event, and allow it to thrive. We are expanding this to a full program in 2024. If you are an organization that is looking to connect with Buffalo Open Coffee Club’s attendees, please put us in touch. Initial response has been incredible and 5 of the 12 months of the year are already spoken for.
In 2024 we will be launching a new web page for Buffalo Open Coffee Club to help with our growth and expansion. Keep your browsers locked onto 716.coffee. Our new page is being designed and powered by Daniel Chan, and should be launching in Q12024. For now please check out our page on LinkedIn and help us crack 800 followers
Buffalo Open Coffee Club has found a new home at Seneca One and we have no plans at this time to change the venue or the time/day of the event. However, we have heard the feedback that mornings don’t work for everyone so we are trialing the first Buffalo Open Coffee Club Afternoon Edition. Save the date for the afternoon of Feb 4th 2024, it the first weekend without meaningful football so spend it with your Buffalo Open Coffee Club crew.
In the Startup space you have to dream big and Buffalo Open Coffee Club has some stretch goals that we’re looking for input on.
We would like to add another community to the group which are folks who have been out of the workforce for a while and are looking to get back in. Maybe they were on parental leave, fighting off a long term illness, out of the country or something else? We want to introduce these folks to our amazing community and help them make connections they can use to break into our community of folks building things in WNY. As this is a diverse community we’re not sure exactly how to connect with this group so if you have any suggestions we’re all ears.
We also want to make Buffalo Open Coffee Club a space that is open to folks who have children. We’re thinking about ways that we can offer some sort of child care to allow parents to attend the event. Both for younger kids during the school year, as well as older kids as schools get out during the summer. This is still just an idea at the moment, but if you have ideas please let us know.
Thanks for taking the time to spend Tuesdays with us, and to read this letter. We can’t wait to see you all again at Seneca One on Tuesdays!
Yelenna and Zack