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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Andrew Tellijohn
November 2006

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With siblings scattered,
second generation takes
over Minnetonka Orchards

The second generation is taking over their parents’ operation, Minnetonka Orchards, even though only one sibling lives in town.

“We have people from all over the country trying to run this family business. My brother in Seattle can log in. My sister’s in Texas. We just go to the wiki,” says Jay Schaper, general manager, who lives in the Twin Cities but often dials in to work from his home office.

The wiki is their collaborative tool, which functions as an intranet and was supplied by Mindtouch Inc. in St. Paul. “It’s a server. It looks like a small desktop computer” that costs about $3,000 to $5,000, Schaper says.

“We use it as a depository for our media assets,” he says, including interviews on the radio, public relations clips, brand colors, photos of their walking trail and so on. Outside vendors can log in as well.

Schaper says he and his siblings decided to try to grow the business to see if one of them could make a living from it. “We wanted to keep it in the family. It’s working really well.

“We’re doing a brand refresh now. We’re doing the full Monty out here. My parents are 70, 71. We’re trying to take it to the next level,” he says.

Jay Schaper, Minnetonka Orchards: 612.825.6994;  jay_schaper@hotmail.com; www.minnetonkaorchards.com