We’re looking for restaurants, cafes and food trucks that are excited to highlight local food on their menus to be featured during the month of September. Experiencing local food through the creative lens of our local chefs is a great way to get the community more curious and invested in what our food system has to offer. In addition to being heavily promoted on our website and social media channels, featured restaurants will be listed in our Eat Local Month guide and listed on our website event pages for the entire month of September. Eat Local Month will be advertised locally and will also be advertised in the Greater Seattle area, Spokane, and Vancouver, BC to entice visitors to participate.

See the guidelines below.

• Must be a member of Sustainable Connections
  • To participate in Eat Local Month you must be a member of Sustainable Connections. Not a member yet? No problem! Membership starts at just $15.89/month or $190 for the year (based on annual revenue). To learn more about membership and to sign up, check out our website. https://sustainableconnections.org/businesses/membership/
• Eat Local Month Specials
  • Create one special Eat Local Month appetizer composed of 50% or more locally sourced ingredients.
  • Create at least one special Eat Local Month entrée composed of 50% or more locally sourced ingredients. You can keep the same special all month, or change it as often as you like. Perhaps you will want to highlight seafood during the final week of Eat Local Month for Seafood Week!
  • *We define local as food grown, caught, harvested, or made in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan and Island counties.

• Promotion
  • A huge portion of the success of Eat Local Month is directly tied to our local Producers and Buyers actively promoting one another.  We know that farms are proud to be featured in local restaurants, and local restaurants are proud to be able to tell their local-food-seeking customers exactly where the kale in their salad came from, or that the cheese on their pizza was crafted within a 20 mile radius! We need our participants to be committed to telling the story of their local sourcing in the following ways:
    • Commit to highlighting locally sourced menu items with the fork symbol. (We will provide graphics).
    • Commit to having something on each table for the month of September that tells the consumer where you sourced the local ingredients in your Eat Local Month specials. This can be on your menu and/or a table tent.
    • Commit to making sure all of your Front of House staff are aware of the Eat Local Month Specials, and will be able to tell customers the farms you are featuring to create them (i.e. “We have two Eat Local Month Specials going!  A caprese salad with basil and tomatoes from Twin Cedars Farm, and Mozzarella from Ferndale Farmstead…” etc.)
    • Commit to using your social media channels to co-promote your featured farms, and Eat Local Month throughout the month of September. (i.e. one post a week to Instagram/ facebook to tell consumers about your locally sourced menu items, and/or highlights about why you source from the farms that you do).
    • Please know that the Food & Farming team will be generously supporting you in the months prior to, as well as during the entire month of September. We will provide plug & play content and examples for you so that you don’t have to spend time creating content if you don’t want to!  Most businesses report a huge sense of value and connection when they make the effort to co-promote each other – It’s pretty special!  (Click here to see some examples from previous Eat Local Month promotion successes).
• Set up a short meeting with Food and Farming staff
  • Prior to Eat Local Month, restaurants agree to a short meeting either in person or virtually so Food and Farming staff can check in about the specials you’re offering and make sure you have all of the information you’ll need to share the love of local food with your staff and customers.

If you’d like to participate, please fill out the Eat Local Month participant application before June 16th

Not a restaurant or farm but want to participate in Eat Local Month? Have a food/farm-related event that you want to co-promote? Send Jessica an email at jessicag@sustainableconnections.org! We’d love to work with you to support and promote all things local!