More Ideas for Locals

So my post about the Roasterie’s menu screens ended up introducing me to Danny O’Neill (the owner of The Roasterie) as well as Will Greggory (@wgpr), who runs PR and Social Media for them, along with some other food and drink clients in town. If you follow me at all on Twitter - you’re well aware of my love for food and drink. So Will pretty much has my dream job. Anyway - I had coffee with Will at the Roasterie yesterday morning to talk about those ideas. That’s where I met Danny as well - who appears to be 8 feet tall and was a super nice guy.

We discussed the idea of setting up a new monitor on the wall that would be more of that window into social media. It could run twitterfall (or something like it) on news searches, mentions of the Roasterie etc. I touched briefly on this stuff in my last post, and it sounds like something Will is going to push for. I’ve kind of fleshed this out a little more and expanded on it, like tapping into The Roasterie’s physical network to have group tweetups centered around events and hashtags, and I will get into those soon - but I kind of wanted to jump to a different idea. It was an idea I was thinking about for a different local beverage company - that I kind of thought would work for the Roasterie too and passed on a little to Will.

A couple weeks ago I heard one of the founders of Gowalla, Scott Raymond (@sco) talk about the origins of Gowalla, as well as the future of it, at Free State Social. I was not very familiar with Gowalla* at the time as I use Foursquare and just assumed they were pretty much the same thing. They are not. I won’t get into all the details about Gowalla and why it’s different - but instead just wanted to talk about one of their features.

*Every time I try to type “Gowalla” I type “Gowallace”. They should totally change the name.

In Gowalla you can set up a trip. Basic idea - I can join 5 (or more) different locations together in a trip. You collect a badge at each stop when you check in and when you have hit all the places on the trip - you earn the trip badge. The first people I thought of was Boulevard Brewery (@Boulevard_Beer). Seems prefect for them. Not only do they have their own base location (the brewery) where they put on events - but they distribute to pretty much every bar and restaurant in town. They need to set up trips all over town and reward people for completing them. Create multiple trips. A Waldo/Brookside Trip, A Downtown Trip, on and on. Even have a massive Marathon like trip that takes people all over the city. A dive bar trip, a fine dining trip. I can stop right...you get the idea?

These are things that do not have to be accomplished in one day, but over the course of time (except for a few brave souls that I hope flag down a taxi at the end of the night). Now to make this better - when you earn the trip badge - you should get something for it. I don’t know what - that can be figured out later. What you would like is for there to be a virtual reward given on Gowalla - that could be taken somewhere to cash in for a real reward. Gowalla is just starting to play with these types of things from what I understand - so I don’t see that option yet. But I know they have experimented with things in the past like this for people. The good news...Scott Raymond, one of the founders, is from Kansas City. So maybe he can be talked into experimenting on this idea with a local company on the verge of national attention.

You end up getting some good buzz for being the first person to do this. You essentially are giving out a reward/carrot to your customers. If Boulevard did this correctly - getting on one of these trips could be good for business for these bars and restaurants. Give them a sign/decal to put in the window that they are “A Stop on the Boulevard Beer - Gowalla Dive Bar trip”. (See if Gowalla will co brand those signs with you).

So that’s that idea. I mentioned to Will that he could pull the same thing off with the Roasterie. The Roasterie is not just a Cafe, but the premium coffee brand in Kansas City (and growing outside of KC according to Will). The coffee is in a ton of restaurants and served in other coffee shops all over town. So you can do the same type of trip - one that ends at the Roasterie for a free cup of coffee. Reward the other establishments that buy from you, reward your customer for seeking out your coffee and get some good buzz along the way (pun noticed - not intended - but noticed).

Will tells me the Roasterie’s plant and Boulevard’s brewery are right down the road from each other and these two local drink companies started at about the same time. I think you could set up some great cross promo coffee/beer trips together.

Taking this collaborated Gowalla trip idea further, I saw Chef Celina Tio (@crtio) while I was at the Roasterie (sorry I did not come by and say “Hi” Celina - you looked like you were in a good conversation). Celina is a James Beard Award-winning chef that recently opened up a new restaurant in Brookside called Julian’s (@juliankc). It’s one of my favorite places in town and the crispy pork shoulder is so ridiculously good I can’t put it into words (although she tells me it’s not on the summer menu - I’ll be stopping by soon to see if this is true). Celina prides herself on serving local Boulevard Beer and uses a seasonal brew in one of my favorite appetizers there, her Bowl o’ Mussels. Celina is an avid Twitter user and gets social media. I’d like to see the Roasterie, Boulevard, Julian’s and maybe a couple other businesses in Brookside get together create a trip. A trip that ends with me getting the crispy pork shoulder preferably.

I’m done.

Update: Celina says the Pork is still on

Another Update: Turns out Celina's conversation was with Brent Anderson (@andbrent) who does her branding. He does amazing work - check him out at andbrent.com.