DBC looks to boost small businesses

Downtown Challenge mobile pass will be free

From Staff Reports

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 small businesses in and around downtown Brentwood.

The initiative is gamified in that it’s game playing as a web-based marketing tool to promote a product or service.

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,” said Executive Director Amy Tilley. “Downtown has seen an influx of new businesses signing leases and purchasing buildings downtown over the past year.”

The beauty of the mobile passport is its simplicity, 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 passholder’s 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.

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 Free Pass can be found on the Downtown Brentwood Coalition’s website at https://www.brentwooddowntown.com/ under the We Love Local tab.

“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.”