January 2020 – 11th ANNIVERSARY “Waffle Cake” (created by Town & Country Market), based on Lori Swanson’s BBC Logo graphic design…                                           —and then came the plague.

The Cake-cutting! Renowned local chef and caterer Rachelle Thornburgh, who knows what she’s doing with a cake knife, assists unknown BBC Regular, who seems rather confused (photo courtesy of Steve Kersten). Here’s Rachelle’s brilliant poem, Ode To The BBC (PDF doc).

NOTE (April 2018): Special thanks to Lori Swanson for capturing the “Waffle” essence of our BBC’s roots in brilliantly designing our new logo. NOTE (June 2023): All content on this website is human generated; no content is the result of generative-“AI” activity.

BBC Beginnings – 2009

The First BBC was held on Friday, 9 January 2009, at the Blue Ocean Café, graciously hosted by Dave Beck. (Sadly, the Blue Ocean closed its doors a year later on March 1st 2010.) We were called BISBER back then: “Bainbridge Island Small Business Entrepreneurial Roundtable” — happily later shortened to BBC. After the Blue Ocean, we met downstairs at the Pavilion, then at Local Harvest (which latter discontinued serving breakfasts, finally closing their doors in 2012), then a couple times at the wonderful coffee destination Roosters Café, then at the excellent florist shop Flowering Around, finally to settle at our present, most gracious location of OfficeXpats Coworking & Conference Center so very kindly hosted by Leslie & Jason.

Below is an early BBC (aka BISBER) newsletter header & announcement. You can see our first tagline was “Bainbridge Island Chamber Of Commerce Outside The Downtown Core.” From the start the B.I. Chamber supported what we were doing. Now we’re just: “Free, Fun, Friendly!”

_________________________ BBC 14 Years Ago ________________________

BISBER At the Blue Ocean Café – Friday, 20 February 2009
7:30-8:00 – ½ HOUR SOCIALIZING over coffee, free waffles, etc.
8:00-8:30 – ½ HOUR BISBER MEETING – Dave Beck Hosting and Leading
8:30-9:00 – ½ HOUR PERSONAL NETWORKING

____________________ BBC – Ten Years Old – 2019 ___________________

The History Of BBC – 10th Anniversary PowerPoint Show:  BBC_10thAnniversary_BIMA_11Jan2019

___________________________ BBC NOW __________________________

Bainbridge Business Connection Today

Free – Fun – Friendly        The BBC meets ever Friday Morning at

BBC_presenter_tips (pdf doc)

The BBC is a Creative Strategy Roundtable offering local storefront and home-based business owners and managers a focus group for strategy testing, honest detailed critique, and community support.

The BBC is a weekly gathering for vision sharing, critical analysis, referral networking, and new ideas assessment.

The BBC focuses on people-to-people relationship-building, making new connections that encourage one’s business in positive ways, including strategies on how to evolve within an ever-changing marketplace and a constantly-shifting clientele.

The BBC offers its members the opportunity to build connections of trust between each others companies and services, sharing skills and specialties, and critiquing professional copy.

Here one can try out and assess new ideas, brainstorm new strategies, share visions that may overlap one another’s target markets, and seek to avoid product and service redundancies. In such a community of respect, each can be efficiency experts for one another, each can be one another’s trusted market analysts and testing laboratory for new ventures.

Join us!

NOTE: BBC cannot accept unsolicited presenter inquiries. However, local business persons and community non-profits are always welcome to visit the BBC (meeting every Friday morning, except holidays) and consider BECOMING A “REGULAR member” OF the BBC community. if one findS BBC a valuable Business group, they may then consider presenting/sharing at some point their business story, activities, and events. BBC “regular members” may also invite non-members to share/present business and community non-profit related content by notifying bbc steering committee volunteers. The BBC is not EQUIPPED to host individuals running or campaigning for political office; but we often do have elected officials presently in office come and speak about business related subjects impacting the business community. the BBC is open to anyone who has an interest in business.

DISCLAIMER: The Bainbridge Business Connection (BBC) is an informal gathering of individuals with a common interest in business support and business related topics which meets every Friday morning (except holidays). The BBC is run by volunteers, and all support of the BBC community is on a voluntary basis. Presenters/speakers at BBC receive no payment or honorariums. BBC neither endorses nor warrants the content of anyone who speaks or presents at BBC meetings. There is no formal membership in the BBC; individuals who visit or attend BBC meetings more than two or three times are referred to as “BBC Regulars.” The BBC has no incorporation papers or documents and no formal relationship with any other existent entities (or non-existent entities) such as WA State, City Of Bainbridge Island, Bainbridge Island Chamber Of Commerce, Planet spirits, or aliens from outer space.