Both owners and diners alike could see changes to next year’s Starkville Restaurant Week as organizers are considering redesigning ballots in order to better track out-of-town patrons, instituting business participation fees to offset increasing costs and again scheduling the event in conjunction with a home baseball series.
Greater Starkville Development Partnership CEO Jennifer Gregory confirmed the potential changes Thursday and said the minor adjustments could allow the event’s third year of operation to improve its main goal of making the city a restaurant destination for tourists.
The Partnership launched Starkville Restaurant Week in 2013 as a way to bring Mississippi residents who live within a 60-mile radius — about an hour’s drive — to the city in order to promote Starkville’s culinary scene during the week after Mississippi State University’s spring break, a stretch of time with sluggish dining and retail sales, and entice future trips.
The city reported an $8,300 increase in 2 percent food and beverage receipts in March compared to last year, as tourists flocked to town for the event and an important MSU baseball series against Vanderbilt University.
In all, this year’s Restaurant Week yielded 16,228 certified ballots in its charity aspect as patrons of participating restaurants voted for organizations to receive cash donations.
Event organizers use the ballots to track how far patrons traveled in order to eat in Starkville by asking participants to list their zip codes. Email addresses were also collected in order for the Partnership to increase its digital marketing data base.
Gregory estimated that about 70 percent of the almost 16,000 ballots cast originated from local residents as they listed the Golden Triangle — Oktibbeha, Lowndes and Clay counties — and peripheral areas, including Webster and Winston counties, as their home address.
Convoluting the process, however, were MSU students, faculty and staff who listed a university email address as their primary point of contact but, especially in the case of students, said their home addresses were outside the Golden Triangle.
Gregory said the Partnership will include a box specifically for students to check on the ballots next year so organizers can better evaluate the data.
A clear measurement of Starkville Restaurant Week’s tourism aspect is difficult to produce, she said, because not all visitors filled out ballots, and even then some votes were disqualified because the Partnership only counted forms completed with email addresses and zip codes to help prevent ballot box stuffing. About 200 incomplete ballots were tossed out of the vote-counting process this year.
Other factors also influence the data, including patrons’ unwillingness to participate in the charity aspect all together and instances where restaurants ran out of ballots on busy days.
Despite the difficulty to fully track how the event’s tourism push unfolded in March, Gregory said the raw sales tax data speaks for itself on the week’s impact to the economy.
“(Having 30 percent of patrons from outside the Golden Triangle and its periphery) is really good. It’s all new money,” she said. “That’s a lot extra in our community during a time that’s normally slow for most businesses, not just restaurants.
Not only did this year’s Starkville Restaurant Week produce an increase in participation from patrons — total certified ballots increased by almost 6,000 from 2013 — but the Partnership also increased its own advertising levels, restaurant staff training and other business-related services to help make the event a success.
But those increased efforts could come with a steeper price tag for participating restaurants next year.
Gregory said the Partnership is toying with the idea of charging those businesses with a $100 entry fee for 2015’s event. Organizers previously received in-kind donations from the entities in the form of gift cards, which were then marketed by the Partnership’s social media accounts as a way to engage potential customers.
The $100 fee is comparable to what participants in Jackson’s restaurant week pay for exposure, she said, and would help curb the cost of printing ballots and promotional materials for Starkville’s event.
“We do so much for our retailers, but this event is our homage to our restaurants. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, owners see that it brings them a lot of business,” Gregory said. “We feel like with the amount of advertising we’re doing — we print everyone’s logos on everything, big media inserts, social media pushes and advertising at State games — we promote everyone equally. In the first year, we couldn’t ask for this. I felt like we had to prove ourselves to our businesses first.”
When asked about the increase Thursday, many restaurant owners did not specifically say they were willing to pay the money but did note the event’s success in marketing Starkville as a whole.
“(Starkville Restaurant Week) has definitely been good to us and the city,” said Brian Kelley, who is a co-owner in Chef Ty Thames’ various eateries. “Like any other business decision, we’ll obviously take a look at (the potential fees) if they’re enacted and go from there.”
While the Partnership mulls fees and other procedural changes, organizers say they definitely want to again piggy back the event with a major MSU baseball home stand.
The university announced a combined attendance of 26,500 fans during the three-day series in March, and those crowds helped push Starkville Restaurant Week into record territory as the Partnership eclipsed the event’s inaugural ballot count with two days left in the weekend.
Next year’s event will definitely occur after MSU goes on spring break from March 9-13, but Gregory said the Partnership is still awaiting the release of the university’s baseball schedule and could consider pushing tying the event in with a Bulldog weekend series against a Southeastern Conference foe.
“(The MSU-Vanderbilt series) drew so many people from so many places across the state and outside of Mississippi. That was absolutely key for us,” she said.
Last year, Starkville reported a then-record $1.64 million from March’s 2 percent food and beverage receipts. Comparatively, the city recorded only $990,618 in 2004. Those taxes are split between various entities, including Partnership tourism initiatives, MSU student programs and Starkville Parks and Recreation. A percentage also returns to city government-specific coffers.
State legislators are expected to address a renewal for Starkville’s 2 percent food and beverage tax next year.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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