It is not always easy of being the president of a locksport organisation. I am not complaining, but it requires a lot of skills to pull it off. Take for instance the location for our bi-weekly meetings. In Eindhoven they have it covered well. Nice meeting rooms above a great cafe in the center, and they do not even have to pay rent (as long as everybody buys their drinks at the bar).
So I was happy when last year we made a similar deal with restaurant/cafe 1900 in the east of Amsterdam. We would hold out bi-weekly meetings there and they would not charge us rent for the meeting-room as long as we ordered our drinks at the bar. Of course we realized that if there was a commercial party that wanted to rent the room when it is reserved for us, the party that pays goes first. But we did manage to agree a term of two weeks notice, and if the commercial party wanted the room less then one week before the meeting we would still get it anyway (still for free).
Unfortunately ‘1900’ has a new owner and the policy changed (without notification). So when 15 people showed up for a meeting we found the room was rented to a group that was having dinner there. Not nice, especially since I went there in the morning to check if the room was reserved for us and all was still ok. And I am not even talking about the fact some Toool members travel more 100 Km to be there.
A meeting with the new owner did not went well. “You get what you pay for, and if someone wants to rent the room and pay they will always get priority over Toool”. No matter if your people have dinner before the meetings, and no matter if the previous owner made an agreement with you….
Now, I do understand that running a business in these times is not easy, so without much remorse I went out to find a new location. Thanks to Jean-Juc we found it. It is a truly amazing large basement with nice tables and chairs under a traditional Amsterdam cafe. What I mean by traditional Amsterdam cafe … you just have to see it to believe it 😉 But the atmosphere is real nice and the people seemed very friendly when I visited it.
I hope the Amsterdam Toool members will be as enthusiastic as I am when we meet there this Wednesday.
The address: Cafe ‘t Knelpunt
Haarlemmermeerstraat 159HS
1058JZ Amsterdam
Nederland (Noord-Holland)
See you there!
written agreement… it is a professional non-profit association right?
Good to hear we have a new place to meet!!It,s unfortunate that the new owner reacted the way he did,his loss to miss such a nice group like TOOOL ;-))
Dumb business move on his part. Consistent scheduled business buying drinks and food is worth more than a couple room rentals. Since it’s scheduled you can staff appropriately. It’s not like the surprise customers are gonna refuse to reschedule 100% of the time either.