How restaurants can market each other in small towns

How can local food businesses work together to attract more diners? Here’s one practical idea. Photo M&M Cafe, Monticello, Wisconsin. Photo by Becky McCray

I loved this restaurant marketing idea from the Texas Downtown Association:

Collaborative Marketing for Local Restaurants
In order to compete with new chain restaurants, a group of Longview restaurateurs decided to band together to form a local marketing collective to help encourage people to “Chews Longview”. The marketing campaign urges people to support local businesses that give the community its unique flavor.

Now, Longview, Texas, is a small city at 80,000+ population, but I think smaller towns could adapt this idea.

You don’t have to do a fancy group website. This kind of promotion is perfect for a social media campaign. A simple hashtag is enough to start. Even one local person could start taking pictures and posting positive comments online with a message of “chews local.”

Get more collaborative marketing ideas, for service and retail businesses

In the just-released video from SaveYour.Town, Deb Brown and I share more cooperative and collaborative marketing ideas that any business can use to better reach local customers. It doesn’t take a formal organization or big funding. Anyone can put them into practice right away. Learn more about Cooperation Creates More Customers here.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband own a retail liquor store in Alva, Oklahoma, and a small cattle ranch nearby. Becky is an international speaker on small business.

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