When is a week longer than seven days? When it involves the relationship between college baseball, dining out and economic impact.
Starkville Restaurant Week organizers confirmed Wednesday they will extend 2015’s event to 10 days in an attempt to cash in on March’s college baseball series between Mississippi State University and the University of Alabama.
Next year’s event will begin March 13, Greater Starkville Development Partnership Special Events and Projects Coordinator Jennifer Prather said, the same Friday MSU begins a three-game home stand against the Crimson Tide.
Following the weekend series, the event’s third incarnation will continue through the duration of the upcoming week and conclude March 22.
The Partnership launched SRW in 2013 as a way to bring Mississippi residents who live within a 60-mile radius — about an hour’s drive — to the city in order to promote Starkville’s growing culinary scene the week after MSU’s spring break, a stretch of time with sluggish dining and retail sales.
That same year, Starkville reported a then-record $1.64 million from March 2 percent food and beverage tax receipts. Comparatively, the city recorded only $990,618 in receipts a decade prior.
In 2014, the city recorded an $8,300 increase from food and beverage sales from last year’s mark, as tourists flocked to town for an important baseball series against Vanderbilt University.
University officials announced a combined attendance of 26,500 fans during the three-game series last year, and organizers attributed SRW’s growth to the influx of sports tourists.
Using the same sports-favorable formula, 2015’s dates will include the three-game Alabama series and a single-game matchup against Eastern Illinois.
Prather said it was important to extend the event’s front-end dates since the Bulldogs travel out of town to Lexington, Ky., for a three-game series March 20-22.
Other minor changes to SRW could follow, as organizers are considering redesigning charity ballots in order to better track out-of-town patrons and instituting business participation fees to offset increasing costs.
In all, this year’s event yielded 16,228 certified ballots in its charity aspect as patrons of participating restaurants voted for organizations to receive cash donations.
Organizers use the ballots to track how far patrons traveled in order to eat in Starkville by asking participants to list their zip codes. Email addresses were also collected in order for the Partnership to increase its digital marketing base.
Tracking efforts, however, were convoluted as MSU students listed a university email address as their primary point of contact but said their home addresses were outside the Golden Triangle.
GSDP CEO Jennifer Gregory previously told The Dispatch a ballot redesign will include a box specifically for MSU students to check next year so organizers can better evaluate the data.
A $100 charge for participating restaurants could also be implemented next year to offset costs associated with Partnership advertising, restaurant staff training and other business-related services.
The charge is comparable to what participants in Jackson’s restaurant week pay for exposure and would help curb the cost of printing ballots and other promotional materials.
“We do so much for our retailers, but this event is our homage to our restaurants. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, owners see that it brings them a lot of business,” she said in October. “We feel like with the amount of advertising we’re doing — we print everyone’s logos on everything, big media inserts, social media pushes and advertising at State games — we promote everyone equally. In the first year, we couldn’t ask for this. I felt like we had to prove ourselves to our businesses first.”
Trend: Bazaar sales increased in the last three years
If Starkville sees an increase in December sales tax receipts, a portion of the uptick can be attributed to more shoppers spending money at the city’s annual Holiday Bazaar.
Shoppers spent about $108,000 earlier this month at the event, Prather said, which represents about a $20,000 increase from last year’s figures.
The total is expected to increase as a few vendors have yet to report their sales figures, she said.
This year’s success marks the third-straight year the GSDP-backed event grew in terms of sales. When the Partnership began tracking those figures in 2012, the bazaar only took in $70,000.
While total sales are forecast to only contribute to a fraction of what the city will take in through sales taxes for the month, Prather said they could indicate the community’s willingness to shop local through the holiday season.
The quality of wares, she said, also played a part in attracting more shoppers. The event’s vendors are approved through a juried process, and its location, the Starkville Sportsplex, limits each year’s booth capacity to about 100 simply due to size constraints.
“What is there is what people are looking to buy,” Prather said. “Sometimes you even have the number of total vendors decreasing because of others taking additional booths as demand for their products increases. We’re definitely seeing more overall purchasing occur, and it’s definite proof that our marketing efforts for the bazaar are paying off.”
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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