We were lucky to catch up with Zach & Shawnna Brunner recently and have shared our conversation below.
Zach & Shawnna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How has Covid changed your business model?
Prior to COVID, our business focused on working directly with community associations & HOA’s; providing custom events structured specifically for these individual communities. Once COVID hit it shut everything down & forced us to completely restart & restructure. These community associations & HOA’s opened up their parking lots to the food truck owners to serve their community directly & keep themselves a float & it did absolutely amazing things for these business owners.
However for us it forced a pivot & began opening up new opportunities & events across the Valley. As of today. we have continued bounced right back & have found our groove again, working directly with our own community now, providing one of this Valley’s newest & best events coming April 1st!
We are so excited to announce our ‘ 2023 That’s My Jam Festival – An Epic Battle of BBQ, Bands & Homemade Jams’. In partnership with our hometown, Avondale, AZ – we will be delivering this event to the local community annually on the first weekend of April. This year it will be April 1st, 10am – 4pm at Alamar Park in Avondale, AZ!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Determined Events was established in 2017 through an opportunity to build a business providing the most inclusive, family-centric events possible hosted all over the Valley. We are dedicated to delivering you the best events, food, music & entertainment options – we do it all! We are an Avondale Arizona based, family owned & operated small business with a love for our community as well as our local food & retail small businesses, beginning in 2017 we realized this passion deserved to benefit all the hungry people of the greater Phoenix Metro Area…& so it began!!
From day 1 we realized the need for the area to have more diverse opportunities to enjoy lasting & memorable experience worth sharing with their loved ones. Determined Events organizes family oriented vendor & food truck events – bringing the best food, fun & family back together…one event at a time!
For our company as well as our family; our sole Mission is to provide the most unique opportunities possible for the local community & local small businesses, mobile chefs & street food specialists that make up our Maricopa County mobile food & vendor communities. Helping add to their brand recognition & spreading the reach of their businesses even further around the Valley.
In doing this we are also able to provide our local community the very best food trucks, vendors & overall event experiences. Bring your family, friends & pets to enjoy music, kids activities, backyard games, giveaways, raffles, & more, All while shopping & enjoying your meal with your loved ones!
What sets Determined Events aside from the rest is our strong stand on the quality of service we provide & the attention to detail that allows our events to stand out in the memories created by the amazing people we involve & the communities we serve. Now as always, Determined Events stays dedicated to the concept of community & keeping the love & passion of homemade, local, diverse street food easily accessible & even more over; always memorable!
Determined events is most proud of our Determination & perseverance through an ever changing industry, that has allowed our company to find a pathway that allows us to do what we do best, right here in our hometown! The main things we want out fans, followers & clients to know about us, our brand & our work is that we serve their best interests over anything else! Our events are always structured to allow for the best experience for everyone.
Our motto is & always has been #CommunityOverCompetition. Despite the differences between us & any one else in this industry, we all serve the same purpose of creating the absolute best experiences for the people we serve, the businesses we involve & the communities we touch!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Determined events has always prevailed, & we always will! Just like many small businesses, COVID was our biggest test of resilience, shutting down our events & altering the entire dynamic if the industry & how events & venues operated.
Our focus when we started was always to target specific communities we wanted to work with most & provide them a unique & personalized experience built just for them & their specific community. At the time we had a reoccurring events out of a local HOA park, an annual Battle of the Barbecue we hosted in differing cities across the valley & several corporation & small businesses we brokered food truck options for.
COVID shut everything down & forced us to completely restart & restructure coming back in 2021. As we started out opening up new opportunities & events across town & brought back our annual Battle of the Barbecue, we were yet again hit with one hurdle after the other, losing thousands of dollars & man hours throughout the year to only end the year rained out of our BBQ Festival last minute & left with zero (0) profit & nowhere to go bt back to the drawing board.
Fast forward to today & as we have continued to #StayDetermined, adaptable & persistent, we have persevered like we always do & bounced right back up & right back into doing what we do best! We are so excited to announce the return of our Battle, but bigger & better than ever! Come April 1st, 2023 we are bringing our ‘ 2023 That’s My Jam Festival – An Epic Battle of BBQ, Bands & Homemade Jams’. In partnership with our hometown, Avondale, AZ – we will be delivering this event to the local community annually on the first weekend of April.
Also, on March 2nd the City of Avondale will be presenting our company with a Community Award for our involvement in building events within the city.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
Luckily for us, we are not just partners in business, we are also husband & wife! We have been together for 19 years, married for 15 years & have owned Determined Events for what will be 6 years this year!
I was in Georgia finishing college & she was working in town. One of my teammates had to be taken to the hospital & while waiting for him to be placed in a room, me & another player stopped to eat before & she was my server. Since then we have been together & continue to push each other to grow & be the best versions of ourselves, each & every day.
in 2017, Shawnna had an opportunity to help a local event/venue manager start up a small market out of her shop. After managing this event for a few months they gained an additional opportunity to deliver vendors & food trucks to a local HOA, which Shawnna spearheaded as well. However, shortly after the scheduled date of the 1st event at the new venue – the event manager closed her doors & her business. With the event being such a success, the venue reached out to Shawnna to continue the event & so ‘A Determined Mind” was born. Later rebranding to Determined Events, we stay strong today to our original mission of focusing on #CommunityOverCompetition & serving the local community as best as possible, each & every event.
Contact Info:
- Website: GetDetermined.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/determined_events/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeterminedEvents