Why are all the restaurants closed on Monday??
Every town I’ve visited, you tell me you want more places to eat. I understand. We all get tired of our limited local choices.
Maybe this describes how it is in your town:
There are only a few places to eat in town. They’ve been basically the same for a long time. They close early in the evenings and are all closed on Mondays. When you talk about bringing in food trucks, town officials oppose it because they could hurt the few existing restaurants. No one has tried opening a new food place in years.
The Idea Friendly alternative looks more like this:
Food trucks are just one of many ways locals experiment with new restaurant concepts. Existing restaurants that used to be closed on Monday now let aspiring chefs use their space on Mondays to try out whole new menus. The lunch-only sandwich shop downtown shares its existing space with a new dinner-only place, and in the mornings a bakery is trying a pop-up in that same space to test pastry sales. An existing commercial kitchen in a church or an old school building is re-certified by the health department for meal prep and commercial cooking so would-be pop-up restaurant owners can cook there and serve anywhere all over town. Now temporary restaurants may pop-up inside any existing business, like a furniture store or an insurance office. Empty buildings get used for one-night-only dinners hosted by local farmers and producers. Food trucks are joined by food scooters and push carts at special events. Every year, lots of people try out new food businesses like this. The local food scene has never been more exciting.
Becoming an Idea Friendly community takes a long time. The alternative is spending that time watching the long slow decline.
Keep shaping the future of your town,
Becky
PS – Feeling burned out? Struggling to find volunteers? That’s the challenge Deb and I take on in our next webinar, Finding More Volunteers. If you’re one of our Megaphone or Insider members, you have early access to the video starting now.