ALTOONA, Pa. (WTAJ) — The Blair County Chamber of Commerce has a new initiative to help local restaurants and bars that are feeling the effects of the new mandates in regards to serving alcohol and operating at 25% capacity.
Many of these establishments feel as though they’ve been given a double whammy with Governor Wolf’s move for restaurants to move from operating at 50% capacity to 25%. This restricts the amount of business these eateries can provide, which in turn impacts them financially.
The program under its “Buy Here, Thrive Here” campaign is called, “Eat. Drink. Help.”
Eat. Drink. Help is the name of the Blair County Chamber’s new initiative to help local bars and restaurants, like Zach’s Sports and Spirits in Altoona.
This program encourages local businesses to purchase a gift card or gift certificate of a certain amount from any bar or restaurant in Blair county
Once a business purchases a gift card, they can get a free ad in the chamber’s email newsletter – which reaches about 4,000 people.
President and CEO of the Blair County Chamber, Joe Hurd says this is their way to help the businesses that have now been hit twice as hard because of the new restrictions, “We’ve kind of set up an incremental scale depending on how much a person purchases in terms of gift cards and certificates and we give free advertising in our emailed newsletter commensurate with the amount of purchase.”
This campaign encourages people to buy from a tiered system, through gift cards of $150, $250 or $500 dollars. The higher the amount purchased, the larger the ad in the newsletter.
More information can be found on the chamber’s website Blairchamber.com.