 All right, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ryan Coleman. I'm the Economic Development Director for the City of Columbia and welcome back to the Divine Street District. We are back again twice this week in one building, two ribbon cuttings. Very exciting. It is my pleasure today to welcome you all to the official grand opening for Soe Steemers here in Columbia. Today's remarks, first, we will have Mayor Daniel Rickman, who will provide our welcoming remarks, followed by District 3 Councilman Will Burnett. He will be followed by Ms. Jennifer Suber from the Divine Street Association. Then we will have the founder of Soe Steemers, Mr. Robert Sullivan, and finally our esteemed guest of honor today, Mr. Michael Stuckey, owner of the franchises here in the Columbia region. So with that, it's my pleasure. Can you start with Will? Here we go. Mr. Burnett. We'll switch up on the flower. We're not scared to do that, right? You got to try something. So what a great turnout today. Columbia is on a nice little hot streak, a steam streak, right? It's very exciting to see all the buzz that's going on in the city, and it's even more exciting to see the buzz that's going on in District 3. I'm so proud to be the District 3 representative for this hot streak of ribbon-cutting, small business incubation. We are growing our city. Our little economy here, it's booming, and I couldn't be more proud. You know, we gave the goal to our economic development team to go out and recruit, recruit, recruit, recruit wonderful businesses, innovative businesses to Columbia, whether it's a hotel, restaurants, go spread the word, tell our story here in Columbia, and I think they succeeded going up to Greenville and recruiting sully steamers to come down here. So thank you to our team. I see you over there, Spencer, Ryan, Grace, keep up the good work. Keep the wins coming. We really appreciate it, but we couldn't do it without local investment in the Stuckeys. I just want to thank y'all so much for your investment, your belief in Columbia and your vision and your trust to know that we're going in the right direction. So really appreciate it and I'm going to hand it over to the mayor who is making all this happen. We got a good thing going on City Council and in this city and we couldn't be doing it without Mayor Rickman. So Mayor, come on up. I just feel like saying ditto after that. Will did such a great job, but it's exciting to be on Divine Street again. In 1994, I opened my first restaurant down the street and so Divine Street is always a big part of my heart and I always like to see it grow and every time I ride down there's something new, something happening and it's so great, but people are discovering Columbia as a jewel and that's what's so exciting. You know, for a long time people skipped over us and they didn't realize how I'm at what a great city and how we as citizens support small business. In Divine Street, the mecca of small businesses, I think Jennifer Craigmear on 95 percent of the businesses here are small on Divine Street and so it's so exciting that we're here. I got to be here for one of the friends and family days and I think we left with a bag full of steamers and it was so funny is when I told people, I said I brought you something at City Hall to try, they're like a steamed bagel and then now all of a sudden it's become an addictive sandwich and who would have thought but it really is incredible but having the local ownership tied to it, a great franchise, a great franchise or who stands behind his franchise, he's what makes it makes it possible so Robert thank you very much for for allowing us to have one of these great great locations and excited about it but I'm going to pass it off to Jennifer who has a whole lot more to say about Divine Street. Hi everybody, ditto ditto I guess from what Daniel was saying but we are super excited to have another business here on Divine Street. We've been so blessed to have really great positive growth small business owners wanting to come in here not a lot of chains like big chain restaurants but those people who believe and keeping things local as you guys know we're sandwiched in between two amazing neighborhoods and so there's a lot of walking traffic there's a lot of people that live here and work here and so we're so excited to have them have another option of places to eat we're up to I believe 14 restaurants on the street now which is super exciting love to have that but couldn't do it without the investment of families and also with the help of the city and also with the developers that make this happen with the states that had the vision to say like there's this little plot of land and there's nothing on it and you know what we should do build it to suit and build it so that we could get in the kind of businesses that we want to see here on Divine Street so we'd like to thank them too so we'll give credit to Matt that's right he's standing over there yes thanks to his states yeah okay and now I'm excited to turn the microphone over to people who make us good food all right thank you thank you you know we opened our first sulleys 10 years ago in greenville south carolina and this is our seventh store now and when we're looking to expand the number one thing that we're looking for is is just the right community and the right kind of people that we want to partner with and I cannot tell you how lucky we feel to partner with the kind of people that are here right now and especially the stuckeys they're they become the prototype for the kinds of people that we're looking for and we're really finding that with everybody that we're dealing with here in colombia from Matt the developer and James the our builder and my new friend the mayor as well just everybody we just couldn't be more grateful so thank you for welcoming us so much it's been an incredible welcome and you guys it seemed like we weren't sure if we were gonna have much name recognition when we got here but people were ready to go and we're really really pleased with that so thank you very much and again thank you to the stuckeys for just being the ideal franchisee so far we're really excited to continue to partner with you guys okay I'll be quick on this one thank you and thank the Devon Street Association for welcoming us here most of mine is a list of thank you's Matt first off Matt Mundy thank you for building us this beautiful building and giving us a chance to go in here James Weathers thank you for teaching me everything about building buildings that there is thank you to Sully and the franchise team it the best support I could have ever asked for and then thank you of course to my staff and team who some of them are over here y'all make Sully's what it is every single day and then of course my wife Brittany my two daughters and then my parents over there because none of that could have been possible without their support so thank you all much for coming out and we appreciate it we'll see y'all soon