Hello all, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, probably brought to you by Crockett Sceptic for
this July 8th, 2025.
Have your host, James, joining you right now.
We're joined by our good friend, Promise Bach, and she is with the Heart of Wisconsin
Chamber of Commerce.
They're marketing communications director over there.
Promise how you doing?
I'm doing good.
How are you?
Doing good.
Good to have you in studio.
Good to have you with us, as always.
And so many of these great events that we get to talk about are so much fun and energizing.
We kick off with one of the big ones and one of our favorite ones, of course, Lunch
by the River.
Yeah.
So Lunch by the River happens every Thursday at Veterans Memorial Park from 11.30 a.m. to
1 p.m.
You know, and this is a great way to get out of the office for a little bit and come see
what's going on down there.
This week's sponsors are Nikolay staffing and would trust banks so you can stop in and
visit their booths and check out their swag that they have going on down there and any
kind of promotions that they have.
I would imagine that Nikolay staffing would have like some employment opportunities on
that too as well.
And the entertainment this week, why I'm really excited about this one, it's the Lincoln
High School and Mary Archie Band.
It's so awesome.
Have you heard them before?
Yes.
Yeah.
They're very good.
They happen to be down there once, actually, when I was down there and, yeah, they're
amazing.
They're really good.
They're very talented kids.
And it's really, you know, lunch in a show.
Yeah.
It's really what you get with this one.
Yeah.
We have a variety of food trucks every week.
We have them listed on our flyer, but sometimes due to scheduling and stuff like that, some
of them aren't there, but most of the time they're all there.
So we're pretty excited about that.
We've got quite a few new ones that are joined us this year.
And then, yeah, so then this week too, I wanted to say thank you to our presenting sponsor
Enbridge.
They've been a huge support of lunch by the river this year.
And of course, our Royal Flush sponsor, Crock Acceptic.
It's so good.
We need Crock Acceptic down there with their border pride.
So thank you very much.
Yeah, a big shout out to both those companies, putting a lot into our community and appreciate
them.
When it comes to, I just go back to the food trucks a little bit.
One of the things that I've heard so consistent, especially in recent years, is the variety.
Yeah.
There's something really, there is something for everybody down there.
And I don't mean just like different types of food, but different quantities.
If you're, you know, I'm a grazer, you know, I don't eat a ton of lunch or anything
like that.
So they got smaller items down there.
And then, you know, if you want a big meal, they got a big meal down there for you.
They got a good variety of stuff.
Check out lunch by the river every Thursday this summer, 1131, over at Beautiful Veterans
Memorial Park.
Speaking of great events and beautiful locations, we've got a couple more to talk about here.
Gather by the, the band shell is going on tonight.
Yeah.
Gather by the band shell today, from 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Rome Town Center.
This one is presented by Visit Rome and our sponsors for the night are Ho Chiang Gaming
Nakuza, a mid-state technical college.
So I'm pretty sure if you head on down there, you know, Ho Chiang Gaming Nakuza, might have
some rewards play there.
Yeah.
I think they're going to bring their little spinner wheels here.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you have to let us know if they can.
Yeah.
That's a good, let's go.
Yeah.
And then the pig pen is going to be down there for food and then duology for the entertainment.
And so, gathered by the band shell is like really expanded this year, thanks to Lacey.
You know, she's put some extra effort into making that, you know, a little bit more kid-friendly.
So you can bring your kiddos out.
We have some yard games out there and I've been here in great feedback about this one this
year.
Same.
Yeah.
And it's so cool to see.
It's really good that, not only, I do and I don't know how hard you guys work.
I don't want to pretend I know, but I know you guys work hard over there to see that
being, you know, the rewards of that and people of the community responding to it and everything
really well.
And this one, you know, we only get a couple of these every summer, you know, with this
one in particular.
It's a little different than lunch by the river.
Right.
So we really encourage you to attend these and share your support with the chamber.
Let them know how much you're appreciating these, enjoying these and enjoy some great food
from the Big Pen, which is a great name, got a lot of that name.
And a big fan, I will admit, journalismistically, huge fanatology, Ben and them, great guy, great
people.
They've been on the air with us before.
It's a really entertaining band right there.
You're going to have a lot of fun tonight, everybody.
And then of course, we want to send a big shout out to their season sponsors, of course.
Oh, yeah.
Our season sponsors for Gather By The Banshell is San Valley and Colwell Banker Advantage.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, appreciate them.
It's like we've mentioned already that I've been putting into the community like Ho Chiang
and Midstate or San Valley and Colwell and so many other great ones.
And if people want more information and they want to reach out, they reach Lacey for
this one.
Is that correct?
Correct.
Yep.
Lacey Alling and you can give her a call at 715-422-4859.
And we want to wrap up as far as the kind of summer location events and everything with
the rendezvous in the park.
Yeah.
And the rendezvous in the park, excuse me, is on July 16th from 5.30pm to 7pm at the
Riverside Park in Nicosah.
This one has been going on for quite a few years as well and it's doing really well down
there.
We have food for the 16th is chatterbox.
I love their food.
That's so good.
I'm a huge fan of the food.
And the entry payment for the night will be the Shanti Towners.
So I haven't heard them yet.
I haven't either.
No.
I love the name, though.
They already got me with the name.
Yeah, that sounds like a fun band.
Yeah.
And then so the sponsors for the night are Ergo Worldwide and DomTar Industries.
So go head on down there and check out their booths.
I'm sure they're going to bring their swag down there too and give you some information
about what their industries do for our area and our communities.
Yeah.
And then I also wanted to thank our season sponsors to the spot by Chikobi and the city
of Nicosah.
Yeah.
A big shout out to everybody involved with that one.
That one's another one that's just gotten more popular and gotten stronger over the
years.
One of the more beautiful locations you're going to find Riverside Park in Nicosah.
I just love it over there.
I love that.
Yeah.
The 42nd annual Lucky Summer Golf Classic is around the corner coming up at the end of
the month promise.
And I just, I apologize, but I studied, I knew what we're going to talk about today,
but I see that 42nd annual again.
And it still just is surprising to me.
It's so cool to see and I can't believe how long this has been going on.
Yeah, this is one of our, this is one of our bigger events of the year.
And we gain a lot of traction with this.
A lot of people register teams and come on out and have like a day out of the office
and just do around a golf and there's going to be raffles and there's going to be food.
There's going to be beverages.
It's a great way to network with other companies in the area too.
And it's a really relaxed way of networking.
There's going to be games on the golf course from our whole sponsors, but this one's on
July 22nd.
We're having it at the ridges this year.
So 9 a.m. registration and with a 10 a.m. shotgun start.
And it's like 18 holes of golf and it includes lunch and a lunch and dinner buffet.
And then we're still looking for a few sponsors, raffle baskets, wine liquor, swag bag items,
you know, those types of things.
It's, I'm excited.
There's going to be 50, 50 raffles, basket raffles.
It's just a huge day of fun for, you know, people that want to get out of the office and
do a little bit of team building, you know, maybe reward your team and then have some food.
You, you, you never know the relationships or the conversations you can have with an event
like this when you put businesses in the same, you know, area together and some of that.
You also don't know necessarily like how far your business can reach until you do things
like this.
This event is actually a really good example of what the chamber does on a day to day basis
of getting, you know, your business, hopefully it's doing well.
Have you reached everybody you could reach or you're reaching different audiences or, you
know, people that, you know, different town over or something like that.
There's, there's a, a wide group of people out there that your business may not be
hitting, being a part of these kind of things when they see your logo as a, as a whole
sponsor or something like that.
More than likely there's going to be people seeing that that may have not seen it before.
It may be not be familiar with their business.
So the advertising angle of this is unparalleled.
You, I don't know, now you put a price on that as far as marketing and some of that goes.
And you know more about this stuff than I do promise, but that's a tough one to put
a price tag on for the amount of people that are going to see that they might not have
seen it otherwise.
And you mentioned the team building, the fellowship.
You don't know what kind of memories or kind of things you can create there with your
team, but you know, you bond over it.
You get stronger from these kind of things.
And it's golf and people love golf in this area that love golf.
Definitely do.
Yeah.
It's a fun one.
If people want to find out more about that, we'll let them know when we wrap up.
How they can contact you guys.
Yes.
Networking at night is another one I want to make sure we send some time on.
That's coming up on July 28th.
Yeah, July 28th from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The host for this one is the current young professionals group.
And they're going to have this at Lucky's on second since they don't have their own
building right now, which is great.
I love Lucky's.
You know, it's a great bar.
The appetizers are going to be provided by Milton Coffee Company.
I'm super excited about that.
That's cool.
The entertainment will be provided by WAM Incorporated.
And this is just one of those events where it's, you know, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. had on out
after work.
Grab a couple of co-workers and come and check it out.
You can network, have a drink, get to meet new people.
It's going to be a great opportunity to have like a laid back environment where you
can kind of, you know, dip your toes in the water.
Even if you aren't a member of the chamber yet, this is a great way of just kind of,
you know, getting on the scene a little bit and getting your face out there.
And then, you know, learn about the benefits of the chamber itself, things like that.
There's going to be gravel prizes.
It's free to attend.
And we are also almost booked up for 2026.
So if there's anybody interested in being a host for 2026, we have two months left, two
months to fill.
So if you want to get on that list, you got to get on it soon.
I will race all you businesses there, everybody, because that's, that's really good to know
probably.
But yeah.
And I second everything you said there, I couldn't say it better.
It's not only is Lucky's a great spot.
It's great to see Milltown coffee.
We've been talking about them a while.
They've been sponsoring our pet of the week.
And we're really excited for them to get up and running and getting moving here more
and more.
When I'm incorporated is another subsistence of, you know, quality plus printing.
And Phil joins us every Wednesday, whether we could also word and some of that.
And our audience knows how entertaining those people are over there.
So that's going to be great entertainment.
All of that being said, what Promise said, I think is maybe the biggest highlight, the
biggest headline of all of this, of the, the relaxed business atmosphere.
Right.
You know, it's almost business casual in a way where you're going into this and we want
you to have fun, enjoy yourself.
But we all know how work and how these things can work.
And you know, you get talking to somebody and business may come up and you just don't
know what kind of relationships you can build from something like that.
And at the very least, you get out of the house like you've been saying and you have
some fun to get, you know, let your hair down a little bit and all that.
It's a fun night and it's coming up July 28th.
Oh, another thing I wanted to note, the current young professionals, that is something
that's gaining steam and something I grew up, I'd like to learn more and more about.
And I know the audience would too.
So here's another great opportunity for that.
Yeah, definitely had a down there and they'll be able to fill you in on all the things
that they're trying to accomplish with that group this year.
And while you're down there, you're going to run in the chamber members.
And encourage you to find out more about the chamber.
If you're not a member already, I think that was a really good point.
Yeah.
This is a great opportunity to learn more about it and kind of it's testing the test of
water a little bit.
Yeah.
Yep.
Okay.
And we wrap up with Network at Exchange for Safety Professionals.
That is coming up at the end of the month promise.
Yep.
So Network Exchange for Safety Professionals is happening on July 30th over at
Midstate Technical College from 11 a.m. to 1230 p.m.
Registration closes July 23rd for that.
So make sure you head over to our website at WisconsinRapidsChamber.com to register and attend this.
So our speakers are going to be Zach Stablowski from Ocean Spray Cranberries.
And he'll be talking about, you know, the effective techniques for safety and
training, policies and procedures and how to effectively, you know, train people in safety.
And what kind of policies you should have for your company, whether you're a small
organization or a large organization, you know, what kind of OSHA rules are
you supposed to be following, you know, are you supposed to be wearing hard hats or
steel toes, you know, those different types of things for your business.
And then it's free for Chamber members.
There's just a $10 fee for non-members.
And then lunch will be provided by Midstate Technical College that day, too.
So you don't have to worry about missing lunch, especially since it's from 11 a.m. to 1230.
You guys are so good at that.
You guys think about all those things.
I don't know.
It's really insightful.
That's really smart.
It's also a great opportunity for this.
This is information you what you need to have.
Right.
This is stuff.
Before you even open your doors as a business or if your doors are already open, this
is information you should already have.
Right.
It's really important stuff.
And it's coming from somebody in the industry that knows what they're talking about.
Zach is a great speaker.
So you get that opportunity not only to hear that information like that and, you know, face
to face.
But also if you have questions that occur, you know, there you go.
There's the resource right there to be able to ask those questions.
And I would think, too, with something like this, you attend it.
Say you leave it and, well, okay, I knew the majority of that, or I pretty much knew
all that.
That could be just as valuable and be in confirming, okay, I'm doing the right thing
here.
Yeah.
Sometimes that's just as much of a blessing to a new business or just anybody out there,
even if you've been since this has been around a long time.
Yeah.
This is a really good one, too.
So if you are a smaller organization, you don't have a person staffed to fill that, you
know, safety role, yet you can just send anybody in there that is kind of like, where's
multiple hats for your company so they can get, like, refresh your course on some of these
topics as well.
There's been so many wonderful and successful businesses that haven't survived because of
things like this because they didn't do the homework on this stuff.
So it's important to do.
And it's a great opportunity, too, from a great environment, too.
That's going to be fun.
It's going to be a good night.
Promise we've talked about a lot today.
There's a lot of things going on with you guys.
And we have even gotten to August.
When it comes to all this, if people have follow up questions, they want to know more and
maybe register for the golf event or any of that, how can they reach you?
How can they get in the hole?
Do you guys?
Yep.
They can definitely call our main office line at 715-423-1830 or visit our website at
wasgasterrapishchimber.com and all of our contact information is on our contact us page.
Yeah.
Courage you to do that, everybody.
Share their posts on your page.
You just never know who might see it otherwise.
And of course, you can find out all of this at their wonderful website was constanrapishchimber.com.
Head on over there.
Bookmark that page and buy local support local.
We appreciate your promise.
Say hi to the staff over there for us.
And thank you, everybody, for joining us here for another edition of WFHR's Rapid Support,
probably brought to you by Crocodceptic.
