Bloomington-Normal loves to eat out. There are lots of options, and those options change from time to time. It can be hard to keep track.
A marketing firm wants to make that easier.
Business marketer Amanda Jones has created EatLocalBN.com. The website features a comprehensive, searchable directory of more than 400 restaurant and food-related businesses throughout McLean County.
If you still can't decide where to eat, the site lets you spin a virtual wheel of restaurants and it will select one for you.
Restaurants can post basic listings for free. More detailed information comes at a cost. Jones said she hatched the idea early on during the COVID pandemic when she created a spreadsheet of restaurants that had reopened.
“I thought it would be really nice if there was one place they could go and find all these resources,” Jones said, adding she tracked the analytics and saw interest from the community.
For Jones, eating local is about more than just food.
“It’s sort of a way of living and a way of being, encouraging people to eat local,” Jones said.
Jones said she moved to Normal to attend Illinois State University and intended to leave once receiving her degree in communications, but fell in love with the area and decided to stay.
“It’s the mix between the big and small, it’s a great community,” she said.
Jones said she hopes to use an already-vibrant restaurant scene, among the highest in restaurants per capita in the U.S., to connect even more people, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.
Jones acknowledged the busy life of a restaurant owner. Having worked in the industry herself in high school and college, she understands that “whatever they intend to go out and do that day most often probably doesn’t happen, and it’ll change and be something different.”
This can make it difficult to get into contact with the most important people in the business, but for Jones, it’s all about the partnerships waiting to be built.
She hopes Eat Local can take some of the burden of marketing off of the business owners, and in the process get people out, together, and enjoying themselves.
The website also includes restaurant promotions and job listings.
