Balanced Breakfast is currently located in 21 cities, and sprouting up in new cities on a regular basis. We started at a small diner in San Francisco in 2013, with the goal of bringing some friends together to talk about life. We didn’t know at that time we were establishing the first steps to creating community in the music industry. Suddenly BB existed in Oakland and San Jose, quickly we realized we could create a tour network up and down the West Coast.
Creating breakfast in cities like San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego came with minimal effort. However, as we attempted to traveling North and build BB in the Northwest, we discovered it was going to be much harder than we had previous expected. Breakfast meetups have always been something that needed to happen organically. Forcing a Breakfast to exist in a city that didn’t want it was not part of our strategic plan.
It took us three years to get a strong BB meetup in Portland Oregon. It took us another year to make it to Seattle. Thus when we booked our first meetup on May 12th at KEXP it felt like a huge accomplishment. It was a weekend filled with landmarks for BB. We were cultural partners with Upstream Music Festival and Summit and we were starting a relationship with KEXP, a major radio station in Seattle.
First meetings always have an energy that can’t be contained and is super hard to describe. The music industry has a reputation for being exclusive and non-inclusive. Thus when we invite people to join us for an inclusive breakfast people start out pessimistic of our agenda. However, after an impromptu guitar jam session by one of the attendees, a discussion designed to celebrate each attendee’s individual success and an opportunity to promote upcoming shows, we won over everybody at the first Seattle Meetup.
Check our list of current cities to join us. Or contact us directly to start a BB Meetup in your city.
