Sunday, April 18, 1999
Pets package pays dividend
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Keeping eyes and ears open, we find we need applause, a send-off and cake ...
POOCH POWER: First, applause for one Marsie Newbold. Clap it loud enough, please, for her to hear in Nashville, where she's accepting an award for finding places to let sleeping dogs lie.
Newbold, a Highland Heights marketing type, works with the hospitality industry, looking for ways to goose up business.
Last year, she worked with Newport's Comfort Suites Riverfront dreaming up new amenities packages. Knowing that people who travel with dogs have trouble finding hotels, she came up with the Pampered Pets Package, a deal that welcomes pooches andbabies them with a doggie bed, squeaky toy and walks.
In Nashville she'll pick up a Stars of the Industry award from the American Hotel and Motel Assoc.: Best in the Country in the Special Events category.
“Can you believe that?” she asks. “I've never even won a beer frame at the bowling alley. I'm awed.”
CHEERS: Don't do it yet, but on May 6, wave goodbye to the BenGals. They're one of three NFL cheerleading squads invited to spend a week in Mexico at a beach games competition — volleyball, sandball, etc.
The 30-member squad will square off against those of the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles at Playa del Carmen, says BenGals coordinator Charlotte Jacobs.
They're competing for pride, no loot or anything.
Jacobs is in the throes of annual BenGal auditions. Last preliminaries are 1 p.m. today at the Gregory Center, adjacent to Bicentennial Commons. (Jacobs might squeeze in a few more hopefuls; call her at 621-3550.)
AND SOME CAKE: This is the danger of naming a dish after somebody. Someday you'll run in to the guy, he'll ask how it's selling and you'll have to be honest.
It happened to Peggy Kennedy, owner of Cabaret in Over-the-Rhine. She was on a New York theater trip when she ran into Broadway star James Naughton.
Cabaret serves light food and desserts, including a bourbon cake called James Naughton. She wrote him about it. So, when they met, he asked how he was selling. Kennedy broke the news: OK but not as well as the Mandy Patinkin chocolate cake.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
