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explore<br />
Enjoy Your Life.<br />
Adventurous<br />
Mitch Martin, co-owner of The Marquee, with a few of his creations.<br />
Keeping Spirits High at The Marquee<br />
By Adrian Kolbo<br />
Early last year, just before the pandemic<br />
shutdowns, many event spaces and restaurants in<br />
<strong>Siouxland</strong> had just closed the books on a banner<br />
year and were expecting more of the same.<br />
One relatively young live music venue on Historic 4th<br />
Street, The Marquee, had been humming along since<br />
their opening in May of 2017. “We were just cranking ‘em<br />
out, national shows, regional shows, local shows, I had<br />
everything booked up until about August 2020,” says The<br />
Marquee co-owner Mitch Martin. “Normally we book 3<br />
months out. At that time I was booking out 6-8 months in<br />
advance and everything was looking great,” Martin said.<br />
At the time there was really no way of knowing what was<br />
in store for this community, and certainly no idea of how it<br />
would affect the events industry.<br />
“Come February 2020 we started hearing rumblings of a<br />
global pandemic. And then I remember hearing that New<br />
York (had) shut down, and then Illinois shut down, and<br />
then it was like, we’re on our way here,” he explained. It<br />
was clear that the shutdowns were moving inland.<br />
“Then on March 17,” he continues, “which is historically our<br />
second busiest night of the year - St. Patty’s Day - we got the<br />
word that we had to shut down by 12pm. I shouldn’t have<br />
been in shock because I had been watching it happen to<br />
other states, but I was just in shock.”<br />
As I write this it is officially just shy of one year later, February<br />
2021, and Martin now stands behind his bar in a black<br />
hoodie with a matching buff around his neck. He asks me if<br />
I would like a glass of water and I accept with appreciation.<br />
I can see that it’s been a challenging year for him, but I can<br />
also tell that he’s proud to be where he is right now.<br />
After what has now been a full year of unexpected twists and<br />
turns, it’s safe to say that major shifts are now just par for the<br />
course. Martin and his co-owners, Kelly and Nikki Quinn and<br />
Martin’s wife, Emily, have all had to act quickly, decisively and<br />
with intention in order to keep things afloat.<br />
“You have to be able to diversify and pivot, to recognize<br />
that we have to do something different if we are going to<br />
survive,” he explained.<br />
And pivot they did. Shortly after the shutdown it was<br />
announced that the state of Iowa would relax their liquor laws<br />
to allow drinking establishments to sell pre-batched and togo<br />
cocktails. This presented a new revenue opportunity for<br />
The Marquee and others with similar business models in<br />
town.<br />
“We’d been doing these Ultimate Bloody Mary’s with our<br />
house mix since we opened in 2017. Probably around fall<br />
of 2019 is when we did our first MitchSlap (Bloody Mary<br />
Mix), and then the shut-down happened and we were really<br />
looking for a source of revenue, we had nothing coming in,”<br />
says Martin.