I actually asked Kathy Danielson of  Performance & Event Management why we didn’t see this and the reason was staring me right in the face.  These companies have huge pieces of equipment geared specifically for outside cooking, storage and refrigeration……something few restaurateurs have at their fingertips.  And it is no small task to staff a 4 day event that runs 11AM-11PM.  So, I get it now!  And now I understand why she asked Diningverse to be a sponsor.  Yep, the restaurants could have a presence and get some exposure without serving food…..brilliant!

Erie Rib Fest 2010

So, in less than a week, with the help of Creative Imprints Systems and Apple Creative Group we got some Diningverse t-shirts made.  We rustled up some coupons and Gift Certificates from Nelson’s Tavern, Lorie’s Wildridge, Ricardo’s and Latino’s. Alice DeGeorge of Presque Isle Printing put together our ballots in a few hours.

During the 4 day event, the Diningverse booth became the hub for supplying water to the Dance Elite Company.  We lured the crowd with handy wipes and “clean” Diningverse t-shirts.  Many signed up as new patrons using our newly launched Simple Sign-in….smooth!

The daily drawings for the dining gift certificates reaped 5 lucky winners: Michael Trayer, Bonnie Lee Mikula, Judy Brown, Jacob Stevenson and Phil Senita. Those that did not win can stay eligible for upcoming contests by becoming a patron of Diningverse.

As we enter tourist season, we want to remind people that local cuisine is never a local secret.  We want people visiting Erie, PA to be able to easily find our local independently owned restaurants. Every town has its own unique flavor, signature food or something that it is noted for.

Although it was just “Ribbers” serving food at the Erie Rib Fest, Diningverse was there promoting local independent restaurants.

A number of area businesses donated over $1,100.00 worth of goods and services to be raffled off as part of a gift basket, with proceeds going to a local charity. The contest was the brainstorm of Mark Ericson of Penn Automotive who took on the task of organizing this well received event.  In fact, it was so well received by the community that Mark had to coordinate a 2nd drawing.

Donald, our first winner, chose his gift certificate for Ricardo’s, a favorite local restaurant noted for their fried zucchini, pasta and other Italian/American dishes.

Linda has not chosen a restaurant for her $50 Diningverse gift certificate as yet.  This is not surprising; there is a pretty wide selection of suggested and recommended restaurants.

But, we think the real winner is SafeNet Center, the local charity chosen to receive the proceeds from the event.

The winner of the contest is Mike Sopp. Mike chose to receive his $50 dining gift certificate for Steel City Sandwich Co.

$50 dining gift certificate to Steel City Sandwich Co.

Steel City Sandwich Co. received a free upgrade to full restaurant profile as a part of the contest.

Once again, congratulations to you Mike. We hope that you’ll leave a positive recommendation for Steel City on Diningverse.

A big thank you goes to Mike Richwalsky at ErieBlogs for agreeing to team up with us and facilitate the NomTest at ErieBlogs.

The results of our own “September Magic” contest will be posted here shortly.

What kind of question is that? Of course you can!   And here’s how you can get some magic from the Diningverse Wizard (a.k.a. DWizard).

Get out there and recommend all your favorite restaurants during the month of September. DWizard is going to use his digital abacus to keep track of all those recommendations.

On midnight, September 30, 2009, DWizard will wave his magic wand and the digital abacus will print a report containing ONE randomly chosen recommendation.

DWizard will then send his e-Pigeon to notify the author of the randomly selected recommendation.  If you are the lucky author, you’ll get to select any restaurant listed on diningverse.com and DWizard will promptly dispatch a $50 dining gift certificate for that restaurant to you.

You guessed it, the more recommendations entered during this period, the better your chances of being selected by DWizard’s digital abacus.  Maybe invite a buddy to share in the fun….agree if either wins to split the loot and dine together!

It should come as no surprise that our High Five goes to William N. Roemer and his recommendation for Road Island Diner in Kamas, Utah, since William created a pretty good odds for himself with 44 recommendations so far. Now that’s one prolific Diningverse patron and he deserves a High Five from the entire Diningverse community and definitely from all the restaurants he has recommended.

The variety and geographic spread of his recommendations is incredible. It is worth while to read a few of them, they are truly very engaging and majority of them quite funny.

Now we wait until we hear back from William with his restaurant pick so that we can send him the $55 dining gift certificate. We’ll post his choice here as a comment.

ALSO…

We have decided to send a Little High Five to Linda Branch, who also had an incredibly strong finish and posted the 554th recommendation (and a bunch more before that). So far Linda posted 30 recommendations and it appears that she is just getting warmed up. We are going to send her a “consolation prize” in the form of $20 dining gift certificate.

Congratulations William and Linda.

Stay tuned because we are just getting started. We have a more contests in our hopper. Keep recommending and keep exploring. It’s a tasty world out there, so let everyone know.

We are still 32 recommendations short of our goal of 555 recommendations. Just jump on at diningverse.com and recommend your favorite restaurants for the chance of winning a $55 dining gift certificate.

Remember, it’s a tasty world out there!

Here is the original High Five for Five Fifty Five post for details.

The winning patron will select any restaurant listed on diningverse.com and we will send our high five together with a $55 dining gift certificate for this restaurant.

You can see how many recommendations are currently on the site by going to the diningverse.com home page and checking the quick stats (we have added this recently). At the time of posting this there were 492 recommendations (or in other words… 63 recommendations to go).

Remember, it’s a tasty world out there. So let everybody know and taste $55 worth!