This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, Side Hustle School listeners. Welcome back. It's Chris Guillebeau with you. Been on the road all week, as some of you know. This morning I'm in Boston, but I won't be here for much longer.
I'm actually heading to London tonight. Gonna hop back to New York City really quick, do an event at the New York Public Library, and then get ready to change continents. Naturally, all next week the show will continue. I will be bringing you the episodes every single day, like normal. Time zones might get a little confusing for me, but the show will go on.
Now, every day on Side Hustle School, I'm telling a different story of somebody who creates an income generating project, and by doing so creates a little bit of freedom for themselves. Because ultimately that's what it's about. It's not just about the money coming into your bank account. It's about what that money means to you, what it enables you to do, or even just how it feels to look at it and see it coming in, and knowing that you made this happen for yourself. Well, today's story is about a PR consultant who launches a local restaurant week.
I don't know if you have a restaurant week where you live. They have it in Portland, Oregon, they have it in Seattle, Washington. I think they have it in Boston and New York, and lots of other cities where a whole bunch of restaurants come together and offer these prefix meals for a set price, and that price is usually pretty affordable. So it gives you a chance to go to a nice restaurant, especially one that you might not have been to before, have a great meal, and learn a bit about the experience. While these restaurant weeks don't come out of nowhere, somebody has to start them.
So if your city doesn't have one, or if it does, and you're just curious about how that process works, today's story will show you a bit of the behind the scenes. Stay tuned for that story coming right up. I often talk to you about using the skills you already have, but positioning them in a different way to create an asset for yourself and make money. Well, today's story comes from Elizabeth Boorsting in Long Beach, California. By day, she's a public relations consultant representing hotels, restaurants, and destination venues.
She's also a travel writer. She's written nine books and numerous articles for the LA Times, National Geographic Traveler, and other publications. Elizabeth stays busy. And her main side hustle, in addition to all of that, is an annual, week-long event called Dine Out Long Beach, Restaurant Week 2.0. For one week, the city's chefs and restaurateurs offer value-oriented menus, reflecting their culinary style at a discount.
A two-course brunch menu is available for $10, $15, or $20 per person, and a three-course dinner menu is offered at $20, $30, $40, or $50 per person. Which price it is depends on the restaurant, and tax and gratuity are excluded. Unlike many other cities, Long Beach did not have an organized restaurant week, and Elizabeth thought the chefs and restaurants there could benefit from having one. So in 2012, she started it with a partner. She later worked with the local newspaper to rebrand it on her own and make it bigger and better.
Since she runs her own PR firm, Elizabeth's workday entails working on various accounts. And she kind of views her own project, Dine Out Long Beach, as a client. She works with restaurants throughout the year, but really starts courting them to participate in the event from October through January. The restaurant week itself takes place in February. Elizabeth is constantly networking, so most of her sponsors continue to be part of the event year after year.
And she also adds new ones. The startup costs for this project were almost non-existent. It was all based on relationship building, and the annual profit is now about $20,000. So what if you want to start a restaurant week? Elizabeth says anyone who wants to do something like this has to be prepared to convince restaurants that they need it, that the investment they make will yield exposure and new guests.
She has to be a salesperson, marketer, trainer, problem solver, and her own cheerleader. The side hustle is successful because it taps into her natural strengths, experience, and the connections that she's built while handling PR for many restaurants in her day job. She says the fact that she enjoys good food doesn't hurt either. Teaming up with the weekly paper as a presenting sponsor has also been great, because they can get the message out not just in print, but also through digital advertising and social media. They run about 25 print ads from November through the start of the event, and they produce promotional videos and digital ads as well.
The sponsor and restaurant logos are all included in the advertising. They also promote the event through a four-week billboard, which includes sponsor logos in a very busy intersection. Elizabeth estimates it garners around 450,000 impressions. Additionally, the event is featured on LA's number one radio station and its restaurant show, The Fork Report, as well as some popular morning shows. All of this press coverage benefits the restaurants and helps to bring diners in.
Now, it's really key to make this a win-win experience for everyone. The project succeeds because diners like it. People get to try new restaurants on a budget. Presumably, if they have a good experience, many of them will keep coming back throughout the year. The restaurants like it or at least they like it once they're persuaded of the value because they are getting a lot of exposure and they are getting new guests come in.
That has to happen for this model to work. The sponsors like it because they're getting a lot of exposure. They're on that huge billboard. They're in those 25 print ads, all the digital ads, all the other press, and of course it has to work for Elizabeth too. Like I said, she's making $20,000 a year from this project, and it also seems to complement and support her day job at the same time.
If you're ever in Southern California in February, be sure you check out Dine Out Long Beach Restaurant Week 2.0. So speaking of using the skills you already have, this is a great example. Someone who has a PR career is good at building relationships, especially with a specific topic or focus, like what Elizabeth has done in terms of travel, tourism, hotels, restaurants. Here is a natural extension of that. And not only is it a great side hustle, it sounds like it also boosts her stature in the eyes of the people that she works with, from the local influencers, media, all these chefs and restaurateurs.
It really seems like the kind of project where Restaurant Week supports her other work and her other work supports Restaurant Week. It doesn't always work out that way. You hear lots of stories on the show of people doing something completely different, and they don't actually want their day job and their side hustle to intersect at all or have any kind of border. But in a case like this, it's almost a perfect fit. I'm a big fan of the Restaurant Week concept in general.
Like I said, I've been out to restaurants several times in Portland and Seattle and elsewhere when it's going on. So if you haven't been to one, maybe you should see if your city has this. You can go and get a great meal and try something different, while paying a much lower price than normal. That's what Side Hustle School is all about, giving you the best possible restaurant recommendations. I am there for you.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including links to Dine Out, Long Beach, and other Restaurant Weeks around the world, are at sidehustleschool.com/272. By the way, if you've got a comment or question for the show, we've got lots of new listeners coming in because of the Side Hustle book. Just give me a call in the Hustle hotline at 844-9HUSTLE.
That's 844-948-7853. You can also record a voice memo with your phone and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a great day wherever you are in the world. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
