Photo by Asia Morris.
Dine LBC – Long Beach Restaurant Week has announced the launch of its Dine LBC Originals marketing collaborative along with its first quarterly sale of value Dining Certificates, which became available earlier this month.
Diners can purchase Dining Certificates to participating Long Beach restaurants at 30 percent off their original value until Friday, August 5, with the revenue to go toward funding a collaborative marketing effort to support the local restaurants year round. The certificates are valid for one year, and will be offered only four times a year.
Following the third successful Dine LBC – Long Beach Restaurant Week, which wrapped up in May, organizer Terri Henry began to brainstorm how she could offer continued marketing and PR support to independent Long Beach restaurants throughout the entire year without going over their budgets.
Henry came across a business model that she saw was being used successfully in other markets across the country, where participating restaurants commit to $650 worth of dining certificates per quarter, and the revenue generated is then channeled back into a collaborative marketing fund.
“With minimum wage and cost of goods price hikes and other challenges facing restaurants, marketing budgets are dwindling and this is an affordable, trackable, collaborative solution for our valued independent restaurants,” said Henry in a statement. “The more restaurants on board, the more we can do, but we will also need support of local sponsors to really make this a dynamic, knock-it-out-of-the-park program!”
Restaurants participating in this initial launch are The Sky Room, Buono’s Authentic Pizzeria, Cesar’s Bistro, The Federal Bar, Restauration, Café Sevilla, Kihon Sushi & Japanese Tapas and Berlin Bistro.
With no out-of-pocket cost to eateries, Henry decided independent restaurants could benefit from the marketing model, in an effort to compete with chain restaurants who typically have more sizeable marketing budgets.
Restaurants participation in the program will also have their registration fee for next year’s Dine LBC – Long Beach Restaurant Week covered, which will take place August 5 through 13, 2017.
Dine LBC Originals Dining Certificates will be offered for three weeks each quarter. They can be purchased by visiting the link here and are emailed to the purchaser, who can then print out the tickets to redeem at the participating restaurants.
Restaurants interested in becoming a Dine LBC Originals participant for the upcoming quarterly sales can visit the website here. Companies interested in becoming a sponsor of Dine LBC Originals can visit the website or email [email protected] for more information.