Viewing posts from : October 2015



October 28 / Uncategorized

Celebrating 50 years of Excellence at Durham University Business School

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Celebrating 50 years of Excellence in 2015, Tanabi CEO and Founder Euros Jones-Evans co-teaches entrepreneurship with Dr Mathew Hughes.

Through lectures, courses taught in partnership with faculty, and a variety of other forums, Durham’s guest lecture and visiting speakers series provides invaluable real-world insight into critical entrepreneurial management issues.

On Tuesday 27th October 2015, an informative and interesting co-lecture on entrepreneurship was conducted by Durham University Business School’s (DUBS) Dr Mathew Hughes and Tanabi CEO and DUBS Entrepreneurial Fellow, Euros Jones-Evans, who followed the talk with a hands-on live business challenge workshop as part of the ‘The Entrepreneur’s Environment’ module of the School’s Masters in Management postgraduate degree programme.

Whilst Durham students benefit a great deal from hearing from leading business figures, the speakers themselves also benefit from the experience – speakers have the opportunity to hear the thoughts, reactions and ideas from an international group of highly motivated and talented individuals. This can lead to new initiatives being taken or a re-think of existing practices by the company.

“These talks can not only open your eyes to what’s going on across various sectors, but serve to ultimately support your professional development and help you build your network of contacts,” explained Jones-Evans.

“The Entrepreneurial Fellows are members of the School’s Centre for Entrepreneurship and are important to the work that we do in teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs and informing our research. The students thoroughly enjoyed the session with Mr Jones-Evans, gaining insight into what it’s like to create, run and grow a successful international business,” said Dr Hughes.

October 3 / Community

Ohana: Luau by the Sea debuts at Ft. Lauderdale’s world-famous Mai-Kai

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FT. LAUDERDALE, FL 02 October – Ohana: Luau by the Sea dubbed the, “biggest little event in tiki,” debuted this week at the World-Famous Mai-Kai Restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale; Ohana is a three-day charity event held in several locations in and around Fort Lauderdale from October 1st through 3rd, 2015.

In Hawaiian culture, ‘Ohana’ means ‘family’ in an extended sense of the term, including blood-related, adoptive or intentional. Ohana: Luau by the Sea is organized by the Fraternal Order of Moai (FOM), an organization that serves as the premier fraternal organization and social network for all men and women interested in tiki culture and the Polynesian pop era.

Famous for the annual “Ohana: Luau on the Lake” summer event at The Tiki Resort on Lake George in upstate New York, these tiki time travelers have finally set their sights on creating a spin-off event in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on the first weekend of October. Locations include Kreepy Tiki rum bar, World-Famous Mai-Kai Polynesian Restaurant, and the Grand Ohana Luau located at the Sheraton Ft. Lauderdale Airport & Cruise Port Hotel.

Friday evening was host to a special dinner and Polynesian Islanders Review show (the world’s longest running show of its kind) at the World-Famous Mai-Kai Restaurant with a special happy hour for Ohana from 7 – 9 pm in both the Molokai Lounge and on the Lanai.

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(L to R) NYC super couple Nicole and Joe Desmond (proprietors of the secret Rhum Rhum Room) and Mai-Kai owner Dave Levy – pictured with the potent (and inexplicably smooth) Pina Passion (Source: © Tanabi Group)

The Mai-Kai, having last year been added to the National Register of Historic Places, has this year been officially crowned ‘the best tiki bar in the world’ by a recent poll.  The midcentury modern Mai-Kai, built in 1956, is not only a tiki mecca for fans of Polynesian pop, but is the longest-running tiki theme restaurant in America. Tanabi was happy to celebrate this much-anticipated event with Mai-Kai owner Dave Levy and friends.

While the accolades keep piling up, 2016 will see the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the annual Hukilau (another larger-scale and seminal tiki event for fans of the genre) in addition to the Mai-Kai celebrating it’s much-anticipated landmark 60th (yes, 60) Birthday.

Tiki is more a state of mind – an “escapist’s fantasia, if you like, an exotic place where the trapdoor to life is seemingly pulled out from beneath you,” explained one fez-adorned reveler. With widespread events like Ohana, The Hukilau, Tiki Oasis, Texas Tiki Week, and many other regional rum-soaked gatherings (for example, Miami’s annual Rum Renaissance Festival), so too have restaurants and bars been popping up all over the place (a notable example being The Golden Tiki in Las Vegas) in similar fashion.

However, while the tiki ‘revival’ has been in full swing for the last 5 years, at the center of it all is American craft cocktail culture itself, a renewed interest in rum as a spirit, and the banal trappings of everyday life which has sent people desperately searching for a more ‘immediate’ and romantic escapist fix.