Hey, Mr and Ms. Restaurant Owners, before you go writing a check for $750 to buy into Seattle Restaurant Week, consider some other interesting ways to build business.
Take, for starters, that mailing list you've been compiling from the business cards your customers drop into a bowl at your hostess stand, the email addresses you've wrested from the comment cards your customers fill out, the requests of your servers for the email addresses of your most loyal customers, and so on. (If you haven't been doing this, you're beyond help.) This is your very own, proprietary gold mine: your customer base. Doesn't matter if it's 50 names for a mom & pop or 50,000 names (Salty's), your list is your leverage to a better tomorrow.
Those customers provide you with the base for your promotion. At Cafe Presse on Capitol Hill, it started with a couple of shelves devoted to modestly priced wine bottles ("Vin Presse"), originally meant for off-premise sale. The promotion: during the month of April, the wines are available for on-premise consumption.
It's called Vin ExPresse, and it runs from 4 to 6, Monday through Thursday. Any wine on the list at much lower, "to-go" prices. At the same time, the Cafe Presse kitchen will offer wine-friendly snacks for special prices. The word goes out by email to the Cafe Presse mailing list, on Facebook and Twitter, and on the Cafe Presse blog.
So chef Jim Drohman and wine director Joanne Heron have created a welcome silk purse out of their existing wine inventory. They still sell the wine (albeit at a more modest markup) along with a few additional kitchen items. They bring in a few more people, and they create genuine good will with their customers. All this without the financial commitment or the unrewarding distraction of Restaurant Week. See how simple it is?
Café Presse, 1117 12th Ave., Seattle, 206-709-7674 
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