Sizzle Dining is turning up the heat on its annual restaurant benefit that starts this week in Southwest Florida. More than 100 restaurants are participating in the annual promotion during three weeks in September that benefits local restaurants in the slow season, diners taking advantage of prix-fixe discounts and the Blessings in a Backpack charity through the dine-with-purpose fundraiser.
“We have 114 restaurants on board this year,” said Guy Clarke, who started the local restaurant week promotion eight years ago. “I have to laugh when I say it because this was always a dream back in the day starting with 20-something restaurants. We’re blessed. It’s a little stressed, but we’re blessed at the same time.”
The record number of restaurants participating in Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties is not the only factor that’s new this year to Sizzle Dining.
“We have six pop-up brunches,” said Clarke, noting that Naples participants include Del Mar on Fifth Avenue South and The 239 at Mercato. “Each one’s themed. It’s really something different this year. We wanted to make Sizzle more than just lunches and dinners.”
Diners may participate in the local initiative as many times as they want from Sept. 5 to Sept. 25, dining at restaurants with special menus from Babcock Ranch to Marco Island. They can revisit longtime favorites or try something new.
“It’s really simple—three easy steps,” Clarke said. “Go to our website—sizzledining.com—take a look through all of our amazing menus. All of the prices are either 29, 39 or 49 dollars for dinner. Some amazing restaurants put together three-course meals for a set price. So, you basically are eliminating the price. You just go up there and look what’s on the menu, find a place that you haven’t been to before and, just like a normal night out at a restaurant, you go out and order the meal and you pay for the meal there. No tickets to buy or anything.”
For instance, Bayside Seafood Grill & Bar in Venetian Village has $49 three-course dinners where entree choices include Teriyaki Glazed Salmon, Florida Pink Shrimp Pasta, Pan-Seared Pompano, Surf & Turf, Crispy Mahi Mahi or Grilled Vegetables & Risotto Cake. First-course choices include salads as well as Chilled Watermelon & Ginger Soup, Pan-Seared Crab Cake and P.E.I. Mussels Puttanesca. Dessert selections feature a key lime tart, flourless chocolate cake and coconut cake.
Black Forest German Restaurant in North Naples has three-course menu options for both $29 and $39 per person. Entrees on the $29 menu include a variety of schnitzels, Hungarian goulash, sauerbraten and a specialty sausage platter. Entrees on the $39 menu include the Black Forest Platter, beer-braised beef short ribs, roasted duckling with black cherries and Veal Jäger with mushroom sauce. Diners also have choices for a first course and dessert.
In Collier County, the restaurant menus on Sizzle’s website are grouped by location: Downtown Naples, Greater Naples, Marco Island, Isles of Capri and Immokalee. Tabs for other cities in the region include Bonita Springs, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Boca Grande, Captiva Island, Sanibel Island and Babcock Ranch.
One dollar from each meal purchased from the Sizzle Dining menu will be donated to the Southwest Florida Chapter of Blessings in a Backpack.
“In the last three years, the restaurants have been able to raise $91,000 for Blessings,” Clarke said. “They feed local food-insecure elementary kids every Friday. They let them go home with a backpack full of food, so over the weekend they have something to eat. On Monday, when they come into school, their bellies are full, they’re ready to learn.”
Record reasons
A combination of different factors may be responsible for why Sizzle was able to sign a record number of restaurants to participate this year.
Ironically, a glum marketplace may have played a role in increasing restaurant participation.
“I think the economy being the way it is, the restaurants have said, ‘I need something to get me through September.’ This has been a really rough year for restaurants from the feedback that I’ve gotten. It’s probably on par from where we were in 2008,” Clarke said. “They know Sizzle works and they need help getting though until season kicks in.”
Sizzle Dining also builds on the success and strength of the event itself.
“The team we’ve been able to put together in the last three years has really helped catapult the event. It went from being just me to now I have a team of several people.”
Different team members are dedicated to duties such as social media management, photography, graphic design, marketing and menu creation.
“Having this team effort, I think, has really allowed us to compound the good that we’re doing,” Clarke said. “Restaurants have seen this collaboration, and they want to come on board.”
That collaboration includes a partnership with the county’s Paradise Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau, which started promoting this fall’s Sizzle Dining event Aug. 19 in an effort to drive overnight stays in Collier through September. The campaign’s goal is to grow the local event into a Florida destination.
“We need to get people to stay,” Cyndy Murrieta, vice president of integrated media for Paradise Advertising & Marketing Inc., told the TDC this month. “So, all of our promotion was done outside of Collier County and we are targeting specifically foodie enthusiasts who are able to plan that short trip. And so, it was Florida-wide outside of Collier County.”
The promotional effort includes paid social media, paid online searches, a mobile display ad campaign, e-mail marketing and digital audio and video. The campaign is designed to reach people who have foodie and dining interests.
“We’re being very intentional and looking for people who are searching for food festivals, dining, restaurant weeks, restaurant months,” Murrieta said.
The Sizzle Dining promotion will even be on Spotify music and podcasts that are related to travel and food content, targeting audiences that have those particular interests. “I’m kind of excited about this,” Murrieta said. “We are going to be running and streaming on Food Network, Travel Channel and HGTV, all over the state of Florida in their streaming programming, but also on their websites and doing video and banner ads there.”
In addition, the Paradise Coast relationship has provided a valuable mentorship opportunity for the Sizzle team. Talking and working with them has helped the event to grow, Clarke said.
“On the advertising and marketing side, they really know what they’re doing,” he said. “They’ve been doing this for so long. It’s amazing what they can pull together.”
In the end, Sizzle Dining pulls together scores of restaurants, providing them an opportunity to thank locals and attract new customers during the slow season.
“There are some amazing deals,” Clarke said. “Don’t forget to tip. Help the servers out.”
This story was published in The Naples Press on Aug. 30.
