Home and Leisure Show a showcase of local businesses

By Jeremy Appel on October 21, 2017.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com @MHNJeremyAppel

The Medicine Hat Chamber of Commerce’s Great West Home and Leisure Show began Friday at the Cypress Centre.

Trade show manager Paula Stodalka says the event’s goal is “to connect businesses with consumers in a face-to-face manner.”

“Businesses pay a fee to exhibit in the show,” she said. “We have some that return year after year, and we contact other ones who we think would be a good fit for the show and would be interested in benefiting from this type of exposure.”

About two-thirds of the businesses are new to the show this year, she added.

Ken Forbes, co-owner of VR Junkies, a downtown Medicine Hat virtual reality arcade, billed his product as the future of entertainment.

“What we do here at VR Junkies is we take you off the couch and put you inside of a video game,” said Forbes.

“It gets you interactive. You’re actually up, you’re moving, you’re not sitting on your couch watching Netflix.

“It’s actually a little workout. At the end of the day, you come in, you spend half an hour, you’re sweating (and) you feel good.”

He said his latest product, which will be launching Nov. 1, is virtual racecar driving.

“You can pick any high end car and do a certain track. You can race by yourself or with buddies,” Forbes said.

“You escape from your reality and get into a different one for the time being.”

There were also numerous food vendors at the show, including Skinny’s Smokehouse.

Sous chef Shae-Lee Solhein says the event provides an opportunity for people who don’t live near the Riverside-area restaurant to try their meat.

“The low-and-slow beef brisket is everybody’s favourite,” she said. “Not many other places in town do really good beef brisket,” she said.

Skinny’s is moving soon to a fully-licensed location near the Canalta Centre, so Solhein said this is also a chance to let the public know.

“All the locals really love it being in their area, but in order for us to get bigger with our building, we’ll have to move out,” she said.

The show continues today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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