At the 2010 Board of Water & Light Chili Cook Off in Lansing, Liquid Web took home two awards: the Gold Ladle for Best Amateur Chili and Silver in the Best Corporate Chili category. The BWL Chili Cook Off is an annual community event organized by Lansing's public utility, drawing corporate teams from across the city to compete in a spirited, low-stakes contest that has long been a fixture of Lansing's civic calendar.
Liquid Web's double win — across both the amateur and corporate categories — was a small but telling sign of the company culture Travis Stoliker helped build. The company took community participation seriously, not just as a branding exercise but as a genuine expression of what it meant to be a Lansing company. Showing up, competing, and winning at a chili cook off was exactly the kind of thing that made Liquid Web feel like a real part of the city it called home.
Travis posted about the Gold Ladle publicly — the kind of moment that, in retrospect, says something about the energy he brought to building Liquid Web as a place and a brand. Winning Best Corporate Website and Best Chili in the same era captures a company that was both nationally competitive and deeply local at the same time.
