Meet Allante Whitmore, a black female engineer, educator, and co-host of theHappening, one of Detroit’s first pop-up business brunches in the city.
Whitmore and her partner, Seun Oyewole, search around the city to find dope venues to bring native Detroiters and transplants to experience a great time of brunch, business, and booze.
theHappening is full of good vibes, music, food and a place to discover resources for all corporate attendees and entrepreneurs.
Partying, exposing people to new places, in an exchange of love and synergy is what’s in store for those who attend the pop-up brunch.
Whitmore shares with City.Life.Style. how the idea generated, and what to expect from an experience at theHappening.
City.Life.Style: How would you describe an experience at theHappening?
Allante Whitmore: It’s being around really dope people, with cool vibes who are all doing amazing things, and not only professionally but outside of their professional careers. They are creating amazing platforms or businesses that feed into the Detroit economy. There’s also great music, great food, stronger drinks, all the things that make for great vibes and waves.
CLS: What should your attendees expect from attending the pop-up brunch?
Whitemore: When you come to the brunch, you can expect first to be greeted by someone who’s super friendly, who’s happy to see you, then it’s a really fashion forward type of scene and people who are super cool and relaxed in a way of that they’re very approachable. It’s networking, but not that stuffy feeling that you can get sometimes. And you can meet people from all types of industries. It’s not just a corporate space. There’s tech people, engineers, artists and singers
CLS: Do you have a target audience? If so, who is it and why?
Whitmore: People who are out of college, upwardly mobile, but not in that “stuffy” way. Just very interesting, wavy individuals who have a lot going on. It’s like inclusive with this exclusive feel. It is for everybody, but at the same time, the people who we draw in are exactly the people we want there. We initially want to break these social cliques in the Detroit. You can be something, but all of your friends don’t have to be the same thing. There’s something you could learn and leverage from, from someone in a different industry.
CLS: How did the idea of a pop-up brunch generate?
Whitmore: It started from we each invited five people, and there ended up being 15 people at the first brunch. And that was very intentionally, us inviting our close friends, people we wanted to get to know better. Since then, on its own it has grown. We started 15 people two years ago, and now we average 75-100 people per brunch. So we literally want to provide a space for people to meet, because we can do a lot if we leverage our resources and come together.
CLS: How does one benefit from this experience?
Whitmore: Learn about a new and emerging Detroit-based business while partying. Entrepreneurs of black-owned businesses can come and give an informal pitch on their business, and they to ask, then the attendees can they give a resource or contact, some sort of feedback on what they’re doing. That is something that usually draws people in.
CLS: How can readers keep up with theHappening?
Whitmore: Essentially, we only communicate through our Facebook page, our Instagram which is both @Thehappeningdet and our email list. You can also go to the website, which is thehappening.wtf and sign up. That’s how we let people know what we’re doing.
CLS: What’s the future vision of theHappening? Will you expand into different events?
Whitmore: We don’t know what the future holds, but we definitely want to expand in some way, some meaningful way. We’ve been moving in a very calculated way so that we stay true to why we started. We do pool parties once a year, a bonfire in the fall, but beyond that we encourage everyone to sign up on the emailing list.
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