Café brings live music the Utah State community
Since it’s opening on Aug. 1, the European Connection Café has remained active with the Utah State University community.
The European Connection Café specializes in European crepe wraps and is located on 505 E. 1400 North.
For it’s grand opening the European Connection conducted a fashion show and had live band performances. The fashion show participants were members of USU’s Black Student Union.
Johnathan Abebe, a senior computer science major, is the president of the Black Student Union at USU.
“I really liked the fact that they [the European Connection] wanted to involve a minority group,” Abebe said. “A lot of people don’t know that the BSU exists out here, so we don’t get asked to participate in a lot of things. I thought it was really good and the fashion show went really well. The food was good and they were good to work with. I was impressed with their eagerness to work with BSU. I eat there all the time.”
The owners of the Logan European Connection are husband and wife Becky and Greg Driggs.
Greg said, “The fashion show that we did with the Black Student Union will actually be an annual thing, and the European Street Festival is something that we plan to continually involve USU with. We really enjoyed working with the Black Student Union. They were great. We have also tried to work with the French Club and the Art Club from USU. In the Spectrum the European Connection has their own concession stand and we were there for football season. We’re staying really busy.
“The European Connection company itself has been around for three or four years and there are about 10 different locations in Utah,” he said. “We have a wide variety of customers. During the lunch hours, we got a lot of the business community, but we want the college kids to come as well. I know that a lot of students say that they don’t have a place to hang out where there is live music. Our goal is to have live music six nights a week and right now we have live music four nights a week.”
Ashley Lennon, a freshman psychology major, said, “I have been to the European Connection a few times and I really like it. It’s pretty close. It’s not too expensive. I like the atmosphere. I’m always seeing advertisements for things that they are doing and I like the way that they stay involved with the community.”
The European Connection, KVFX radio and KSM Guitars sponsor a music contest called “Going Solo.”
“We’ve already done one, and we just finished the second round of the second contest and it should be done on Saturday night. We usually sponsor the contest every couple of months and all the acts are local acts,” Greg said.
Jane Thatcher, an undeclared freshman and contestant, said, “I played last Saturday and I am playing again this Saturday. I don’t get paid to play, because it’s a contest. But the person that wins gets $100 in cash. They also get to play one night a week for three months and will get paid for every night that they play,” Thatcher said.
“I have been playing the guitar about two and a half years and I think that the contest is a really good opportunity for students and people in the community,” she said. “There’s no where else in Logan where you can really have live music and it’s a really good atmosphere. It’s a good little coffee shop type hangout. It’s just fun and I think that it’s really good for the restaurant and it’s good for the artists too.”
Any questions regarding the contest can be directed to Greg at 787-8255.