BRENTWOOD — The Downtown Brentwood Coalition is launching a new, gamified mobile savings and experience pass that will be free for residents and visitors. The We Love Local, Downtown Challenge officially went live this week.
The goal of the pass is to help locals find their way to new experiences and offerings from the small business community in and around historic downtown Brentwood. The Downtown Challenge inception goes back to January of 2022 when the Coalition was searching for new ways to engage the community as the world braced for “the new normal” post-COVID-19 pandemic life.
“Communities like Brentwood saw how beneficial locals supporting local can be, and they also saw how challenging it had become to run a mom-and-pop business when residents had been cooped up and ordering online for nearly two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.” says Executive Director Amy Tilley. “Downtown has seen an influx of new businesses signing leases and purchasing buildings downtown over the past year.” Tilley adds, “Something we hear at almost every event we organize is, “Wow, I never knew some of these businesses existed!” and we realized we needed to do even more to help connect the community with the small businesses who offer so many high-quality goods and services right here in downtown. So we explored various digital tools and found that this mobile passport was the best fit for our locals, visitors and our small business members.”
The simplicity of the mobile passport is the beauty of it, she said.
The pass works on virtually every type of smartphone, and it does not require an app or a subscription of any kind, Tilley said. The pass can be easily added to the passholders’ home screen to be used again and again with a simple tap. Passholders can easily find participating shop hours, websites and even get directions to their desired stop as the pass is connected to Google Maps.
New businesses will be added throughout the year as they join the Downtown Brentwood Coalition and sign up to be a part of the challenge, Tilley said.
The pass rewards visitors who “check-in” at participating shops and stops and gives users a chance to earn prizes like sweepstakes entries, gift cards, and Oktoberfest tickets, among other events. Many of the businesses will offer special discounts and deals to passholders, and passholders will gain bonus points for redeeming those special offers as well. The way locals and visitors can find the pass will be plentiful.
The Free Pass can be found on the Downtown Brentwood Coalition’s website under the We Love Local Tab. In addition, the DBC plans to collaborate with Harvest Time members at the local U-Pick farms to provide visitors with a QR code so they can quickly grab a passport and find their way to nearby restaurants and shops, Tilley said. The QR code will be placed at dozens of Downtown Brentwood Coalition member businesses, and can be found on the nonprofit’s website and social media pages.
“We want the ‘We Love Local’ pass to be a fun and interactive way for locals to explore and enjoy Downtown and nearby,” Tilley said. “It’s called the Downtown Challenge, because we are challenging visitors to check-in at as many places as possible, and earn rewards for doing so. The challenge begins this spring and will end on Nov. 1. We hope to introduce our community to lots of new experiences and encourage them to celebrate supporting local, regularly. Keeping it local means a better community for us all.”
The Downtown Brentwood Coalition is a nonprofit organization, formed in 2008 by small business owners in the downtown area with the intent to create an atmosphere of warm family fun and a welcoming attitude to the residents of Brentwood, as well as surrounding communities. For more information on the coalition, visit www.brentwooddowntown.com
