Is The Training Room at Colony Park a good deal?
We think so! Here’s why...
When EMDR & Beyond was formed in 2014, what Bonnie Mikelson and her business needed most was a reliable, cost-effective training room. After 35 years as a national trainer, she had trained in her fair share of inadequate facilities and experienced a range of issues renting training rooms, including:
Ineffective seating arrangements making it difficult for the trainer to address participants
Lighting issues making it impossible for participants to see slides or videos
Sound issues disrupted the presentation or put it to a halt altogether
Technology issues that delay or disrupt the training
Deceiving capacity numbers (claiming to seat 40 people, but can barely hold 25)
And the kicker - most of these venues required a minimum purchase of food/drink services, which increased her training costs significantly! Even if she got the room for “free” - she still typically had to pay $12 - $15 per person for a morning spread of pastries, and the same for afternoon snacks, $25 or more per gallon for coffee — which ate up significant profit margin for a training. For a 40 person event, she was spending as much as $1,000 to $1,400+ per day on food and drinks alone!
… Does that sound familiar to you?
At The Training Room at Colony Park, we believe you should be able to bring your own food and drinks as long as you clean up after yourself. This enables you to save considerably on your events. And although you can bring your own food, we know it can also be helpful to have someone else take care of it for you. If instead you would like us to provide catering for your event, we are happy to do that too! Check out our catering menu for options and pricing.
These days, Bonnie buys food and snacks from Costco for her trainings whenever she can. This not only saves money, but allows her to provide healthier options for participants, which they really appreciate! She’s even had participants say that they’d attend more trainings if she kept offering certain treats - ha!
If you’re interested in what kind of food and snacks Bonnie likes to buy for her trainings, we’ve got you covered! We’ll be following up with an entire post about Bonnie’s favorite items to buy for trainings, so stay tuned!
Cost Breakdown
To illustrate the savings difference, we’ve compared Bonnie’s actual costs of renting a hotel conference room (who will remain anonymous) here in Des Moines to renting The Training Room at Colony Park for a 40 person training.
In her first 1-day training at The Training Room at Colony Park, Bonnie spent ~$5 per person on food, not including a little labor for shopping and delivery. In contrast, she averaged ~$25 per person at the local hotel conference room and was limited to the menu options, which lack the variety and quality of snacks and beverages you can buy on your own.
* Costs used for this comparison were extracted from real invoices of Bonnie’s past trainings. (Thanks for sharing, Bonnie!)
Conclusion
Bottom Line: Yes, we think it’s a pretty darn good deal.
The ability for Bonnie to bring her own food put over $1,000 back in her pocket and kept her guests happy!
With more affordable rental fees and the ability to bring your own food, you can save some serious money on your next training compared to going with a local hotel conference room. We hope this is too good of a deal to pass up!