By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
Robert Briseño and his sister Deanna Troupe are Vallejo natives, but they were still surprised to learn “the scope of events going on around us”—something they didn’t find out until they started producing Local Happenings Magazine, 10 years ago this month.
“I never gave it much thought, but now that I see them on a regular basis as we deal with our calendar, it is just amazing to see the depth and breadth of various events around us every day,” Briseño said. “We are really blessed in the fact that we have SO much to do every week, regardless of our interests.”
Printed and distributed every two months, Local Happenings Magazine is the brainchild of Troupe and Briseño, the founders and owners of BB&B Business Group and the magazine’s publishers. Four of the six Briseno siblings are involved in various aspects of the magazine’s production, they said.
The idea for Local Happenings Magazine came from the siblings’ desire to find an affordable, simple, and effective way to publicize events for local nonprofits, they said.
“It’s a labor of love more than a revenue stream,” Briseño said. “We all work at other things, also. This pays for itself, but it wouldn’t make financial sense if we counted on it for our sole income.”
The magazine grew out of a graphic design business Troupe started in 1987, but she immediately took over a Benicia publication from a business colleague who was dying of cancer, she said. The monthly publication, titled In and Around Benicia, started it all, but soon parlayed into In and Around Vallejo, Fairfield, Suisun City, and Vacaville, which she and her brother Larry produced for at least a decade, she said. These were sold and Troupe started ‘etc. Magazine’ for Benicia, Vallejo, Fairfield, and Vacaville that published every two months, even as she continued doing graphic design and marketing for the likes of the Solano County Fair as well as other various mid-size companies.
“At that time, other advertising options cropped up, like the Weekender and Grapevine, so I saw an opportunity to stop publishing and to focus more on public relations and marketing and then, enter my brother, Robert, who came back from Atlanta where he was working after college,” Troupe said.
Briseño said he came back home right after 9/11, to be near family.
The siblings said they decided to pair her marketing and consulting expertise with his financial management skills, and formed BB&B Business Group, which started to take off before the onset of the Great Recession in 2008.
“We had to reinvent ourselves; and at that time, a friend of ours was trying to create a beer and wine event at the Fairgrounds, and the conversation led to advertising options for the larger area. We found there was nothing like that,” Briseño said.
“So, we started this, to be an affordable regional vehicle that looked good and told local community stories,” Troupe said.
“We produce a forward-looking, as opposed to a rearward-facing, publication,” Briseño added.
The family is also deeply involved in nonprofit groups like Rotary, Vallejo Executive Lions, Vallejo Community Arts Foundation, GVRD, and a host of others throughout the years like Vallejo Main Street and the Humane Society of the North Bay. Local Happenings Magazine was created with those organizations also in mind, they said.
“We wanted to create a vehicle that highlights local events, free for nonprofits,” Troupe said. “It’s meant for an audience within an hour radius from Vallejo, Napa, Benicia and Contra Costa County—a regional vehicle.”
The calendar section is free, and paid for with advertising, with a web component added later, they said. That was 10 years ago, and it’s exploded since then; with thousands of copies in circulation, most of them are mailed directly to homes and businesses, including 13 Chamber of Commerce offices and other gathering places, the siblings said. They also use a local, Bay Area printer who uses “green” materials, they said.
BB&B Business Group produces the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce’s magazine as well, which shares most or all the same handful of writers and contributors.
“Our goal is to help provide a place to learn about and advertise events of all sizes. More importantly, we would like to help connect the community more effectively and provide a place to learn about the things that are going on around us, so that we can all enjoy life a bit more,” as you read on the Local Happenings Magazine website. “We welcome your comments and suggestions. We expect this site and our magazine to evolve and grow with the demands of the community, so please visit often.”
The past decade has not all been smooth sailing, Briseño said. There have been rough patches.
“The scariest thing is the same things that I imagine every business owner must face,” he said. “Guiding the publication through the rough seas of business and life: the ebbs and flows of money and resources impact us, and I have always sought to grow this out of cash flow. It has seemed to work fine over the last 10 years of the magazine and almost the entire 30 plus years of our businesses, but there have been times that it has given me a sleepless night or two and made us wonder if we are on the right path or not.
“Sometimes it is just not pumping my blood to work on the magazine, but the deadlines still come,” he continued. “Working through those days can be a drag, but, as in sports, you push through the wall and then you feel great about what you are doing and have done.” The positive far outweighs the negative, though, he said.
Troupe said she was made aware of a conversation in which an advertiser told an acquaintance that Local Happenings Magazine is the place to advertise.
“The advertiser said, ‘you have to be in Local Happenings because it’s everywhere; I go to the ferry building, and it’s there—any coffee place, when you come off the ferry, or when you go to the Empress—so, we have to be in there,’ and that was nice to hear,” Troupe said.
“The best thing is all the people we have met and all the interesting things they do. It is easy to fall into your routine and stay within your circle of friends and family and forget to appreciate all the other circles of lives all around you,” Briseño said. “Being able to explore that has been eye-opening and interesting. There’s so much happening in the Bay Area, and we’re only covering a tiny slice of the pie. We hope to continue growing, and who knows where we will end up . . .”
And here are some photos from over the last decade:
Rachel Raskin-Zrihen is a Vallejo-based, award-winning, veteran journalist, columnist, and author; a wife and the mother of two grown sons, and mother-in-law to two grown daughters-in-law, presently working to wrap her head around the idea of eventual grandmother-hood.
