In May 2017, I launched the Southern Flair Happy Hour Club. This was a way for me to take my readers OFFLINE and to meet-up in person. It gave us all an excuse to get out more, have some drinks and make new friends. You know… the whole “live your best life here in Baton Rouge” mentality. The older we get, it’s so easy to get stuck in routines and hard to make new friends, so the SF Happy Hour Club was all about trying new things and creating on-going relationships!
Since we started the club over a year ago, I haven’t written a single blog recapping our events, so I wanted to share some photos and things we’ve been up to and encourage you to join us if you haven’t already!
- What Is The Happy Hour Club?
- How Did It Start?
- What’s the Purpose Of the Happy Hour Club?
- Who Can Join?
- Etc.
Today, our group now has nearly 300 local ladies in it!!! How awesome is that?!
We communicate mostly via our closed Facebook Group — request to join us here! We use the group to make meet-up announcements and just get to know each other in between meet-ups.
We strive to meet monthly — and we’ve stayed pretty consistent give or take a few months where we got off track. But each month the Happy Hour Club continues to grow!
What I LOVE About The SF Happy Hour Club:
1- Every single girl that comes is a BADASS! You know why? Because she doesn’t know anyone and she showed up to an event ALONE to MEET people. She got herself out of her comfort zone and that makes her a badass. I love that I’m surrounding myself with girls who are strong, independent and not afraid to show up solo to meet random strangers!
2- It’s not gross networking. No one is there to get ahead. No one is there to make sales. No one is there for the reason other to make new friends. And I think that’s awesome. No one has a hidden agenda — it’s just girls having drinks and having a good time. And girls who truly do want to make connections and lifelong friends.
3- REAL friendships have happened outside of meet-ups! Girls have become gym buddies. Girls have made more plans to get together — whether that’s for drinks, dinner, a festival, a game day, work out class, etc. And SPIN OFF clubs/groups have happened with girls who have other things in common. I personally have made SO many new friendships from this experience.
There are so many things I love about our crew, but those have to be my top three. As a bonus, I love that each meet-up always brings in NEW girls to our group. It really is SO awesome!
OK, so now here’s a quick recap of some of the meet-ups we’ve had!
Past Meet-Ups!
Our first meet-up ever in May 2017 was at Binn 77 at Perkins Rowe!
Next, we met up for wine at Kalurah Street Grill. Then, we headed to The Bulldog to watch some LSU baseball!
Last August, we hit up BRQ for frosé!
In October 2017, we had frozen daiquiris at Cane Land Distilling Co!
Oh, and we also started our own Fantasy Football League last football season!
We took a break for the holidays and picked it back up for a Galentine’s Party at Blend downtown! We had shopping, wine and a curl bar!
Once the weather was nice again, we brought our pups to The Bulldog this spring!
In May, The Royal Standard invited the Happy Hour Club to a private shopping event. We got to shop their spring sale early + sip on wine and special cocktails from The Crowne Bistro.
We kicked off summer with a meet-up at Olive or Twist for adult snowballs!
Our most recent meet-up was at Flambee Cafe this August!
They created a special cocktail just for us — Le Fizzy Flair — and they’re keeping it on the menu for the entire month of September with proceeds going to Friends of the Animals.
The Happy Hour Club got to vote on a charity to support. We had so many great suggestions and I hope we can continue to support charities through our meet-ups!