Two local publications are sponsoring major food-centered events in Wilmington this spring created to give their advertising clients an additional way to reach customers.

Encore Magazine’s Wilmington Restaurant Week begins April 28 and runs through May 5. StarNews Media and Wilmington Magazine will hold their third Taste of Wilmington Food & Wine Festival May 16 followed by an entire week of specials at participating restaurants.

Taste of Wilmington “started as a promotional event, a way to have a community event that tied in well with Wilmington Magazine,” that launched in 2004, explained Robyn Tomlin, StarNews editor. The first year sold out so they made the second year’s event bigger. It’s sold out too. This year’s event adds a week long program of specials at participating restaurants.

“The restaurants are excited because they get exposure to people who may live in another part of town and don’t normally go to their restaurant.” The first year’s winning chef, Marc Copenhaver of Marc’s on Market told Tomlin that his business increased substantially following the event.

Engaging the community

From a business perspective, they’ve learned “that restaurants need a different way to promote their business than the print publication,” said Pam Sander, the former editor of Wilmington Magazine and one of the creators of the event. “It’s a way for us to reach out to them, and it’s a way for them to get their name out and to get people in front of their food. Secondly, we have a push at the StarNews, as in most of our industry, to get back to community engagement, to community interaction,” she said.

Sander and Tomlin said they are looking forward to the opening of the new convention center because the venue will allow expansion of the number of restaurants and the attendees. Due to space limitations at the Coastline Convention Center, they were limited to 42 vendors last year. They hope to stretch that to 45 this year, but attendance is capped at 450. Tickets go on sale April 12, but they already have reservations from 160 people.

More than a dozen restaurants have signed up so far, including several which have never been in the event. The fee is $495 to be in Taste of Wilmington and Restaurant Week, $375 for just Taste of Wilmington and $400 for just Restaurant Week, with the fee structure designed to encourage restaurants to be involved in both aspects of the event, Sander said.

Voting is open for Top Chef. The final three chefs will compete on May 16 with ingredients specified by StarNews. In past years, that ingredient has been cactus and Duplin Wine.

Encore’s Wilmington Restaurant Week was created in the fall of 2009 and was so popular they added the spring edition and plan to follow that with another event in October. Rather than a centralized event, this week features more than 25 restaurants that have created prix fixe menus which will be served throughout the week for lunch and or dinner. Restaurants post their menus on the event website and the viewer is able to download a pass which can be presented at the restaurant for the meal. Prices are $30 or less for a three course meal and some offer other discounted items as well. The passes are good only during the week of April 28 to May 5.

Restaurant ads pull weight

Encore editor Shea Carver noted the importance of restaurants as a revenue source for the publication. “Encore has worked with restaurants as primary advertisers for years, so it’s not a far cry for us to help host the event.” Having worked as a waiter and host in several restaurants, she also knew that the fall is “normally a down time for many eateries.” That was “the impetus to launch it from the start.” They’re also teaming up with Dine Wilmington Online in October to donate a portion of the proceeds to Soup for the Troops (held in November) which features soup from local restaurants.

Normally, Carver said, a restaurant association would sponsor such an event, and many do throughout the state and elsewhere. Since we don’t have one, “we thought we could sponsor something of this nature to help drive the public out” and to capitalize on Encore’s resources to publicize the event.

The success of the first event spurred her to add a spring event. The timing, so close to Taste of Wilmington, was unintended. “We were unaware that Taste of Wilmington was going on two weeks after Wilmington Restaurant Week.

The proximity of the events, however, could be an additional boost to participating vendors. Port City Chop House won last year’s Taste of Wilmington but did not participate in the October Wilmington Restaurant Week. They’ve signed up for the spring event because of the feedback they heard from others who participated. “I think it’s really important to consider the local businesses. That’s what we try to focus on,” Carver said. “We don’t want the mom and pop shops to go to the wayside.”