Awkward start-up move No. 47: Throwing parties at Whole Foods

(Credit: DietOut)

When I was in San Francisco earlier this month, I witnessed firsthand the unwritten rule that new start-ups have to throw their debutante balls at the bar-gallery-event space known as 111 Minna, packed right into the dot-com-friendly neighborhood of SoMa. Here in NYC, our enclave of tech companies tends to cluster around SoHo and into the northern edge of Chinatown, but the sizes of properties around there are way too small to accommodate substantial crowds--let alone live music or DJs.

(Case in point: when a TreeHugger/Apartment Therapy/MoCo Loco party a few months ago during New York Design Week packed the Crosby St. space known as The Apartment so full that a line of wannabe attendees stretched all the way around the block...and those in-the-know snuck over to Gawker Media's headquarters next door for a shadow party.)

Blame it on the innate compactness of Manhattan. So I guess companies out here have to be a little bit more creative when they choose an event space. This one might take the creativity cake, though. I was reading on Gawker (speak of the devil) that a yet-to-be-launched start-up called DietOut is throwing some sort of soiree at...upmarket chow hub Whole Foods. To be more specific, the party on Tuesday night will be at Whole Foods Bowery, the recent arrival to a neighborhood that was once known for bums and bar fights and is gradually turning into glass-walled luxury-hotel-and-15-dollar-martini-land. (It's bittersweet.)

DietOut, for future reference, appears to be a sort of neighborhood-based community site with restaurant and shopping information. Based on its choice of venue, and the fact that it has the word "diet" in its name, the crowd it's targeting is going to be more yoga than Yelp.

New music is cool, and hyperlocal start-ups are so hot right now, but really, Whole Foods? Okay, so maybe that means the free food will be flowing like milk and honey, but any event taking place at a major supermarket chain probably shouldn't mark up its invitation with a cool-kid slang theme consisting of "play/rewind/forward/flipside." Fellow New Yorkers, I think we're in need of somewhere that our downtown tech companies can throw big events without looking, well, slightly toolish.

[innonate]

It's the Bower WF, not Nolita.

I dont know why I think it's so funny they put Nolita on the flyer instead of Bowery (which is what the market is called). Is Nolita cooler? Nolita is even a made up neighborhood. Bowery is cooler.

[caroline.mccarthy]

I know, seriously

Nolita is just shorthand for "one-half LES, one half SoHo, and twice as expensive." Besides, even if you do consider it a real neighborhood, doesn't it start on the west side of Bowery anyway?

[acnatta]

It's getting tough though

It is getting harder to find places to do launch parties across the country when you're trying to do something different. I'm currently trying to figure out how to pull off a launch party here in Birmingham, AL for a new online publication, The Terminal. It's becoming more and more difficult to do something that will be relaxed enough for the readers. With everyone trying to one up everybody else it's tough to just get the message out about the site or the publication for many of us nowadays, at least I feel that way.

I don't even want to know how hard it would be if I tried to do it in New York.