- September 14, 2024
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Guy Clarke knows it might evoke some eye rolls to say he had a vision about starting a Naples restaurant week. But that’s exactly what happened back when he was running BaconFest Naples.
While he was overseeing the Kiwanis Club of Pelican Bay fundraising event one year, a friend asked him why Naples didn’t have a restaurant week the way places like New York, Miami, and Orlando did. And that’s when it happened.
“I had a vision from now into the future, and I felt it in my bones,” says Clarke, 54. “I knew. And I literally went to the board of BaconFest and said this is the last year I’m doing this and I’m going to start on this thing called a restaurant week.”
He threw his first event in November 2016, with 26 Naples-area restaurants offering dinner deals. In 2024, there will be 114 restaurants in Collier, Lee, and Charlotte counties participating in the event now known as Sizzle Dining, which runs from Sept. 5 to 25.
“Last year we had a record-breaking 95 restaurants, and I thought that was amazing,” says Clarke, who runs the event with his wife, Erin. “It’s been a fun journey for sure.”
The journey’s required shifts, pivots and a pause during the pandemic. Clarke hasn’t been afraid to seek advice from others along the way; Steven Haas, founder of the Miami Spice restaurant month, has been a mentor. In fact, he’s the one who told Clarke to give the Southwest Florida event a name that stood out for better branding.
A founder of Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining has been another mentor along the way, and Clarke’s wife has been alongside him to help shape the event as Sizzle Dining keeps growing. “I knew what it could become,” says Clarke. “My wife has really guided me. I’m an entrepreneur where I’ll risk everything; she’s a little bit more like, put on the brakes. She’s really helped guide this event over the years. It wouldn't be what it is today without her.”
And what it is today is pretty impressive. In 2023, 48,884 Sizzle Dining dinners were sold. According to Downs & St. Germain Research in the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau’s September 2023 monthly report, restaurant spending by visitors was up 32.1% in September 2023 over September 2022, an increase “likely due to the expanded 2023 edition of the Sizzle Dining event.” That spending not only put money in restaurant owners’ pockets during one of the slowest times of the year — it also kept restaurant staff employed and making money and had a major economic multiplier effect.
“Most people don’t even realize how deep it really goes,” says Clarke. “The chefs, staff, and dishwashers even get extra hours in the worst month of the year. Linen companies, produce companies, all of the little companies that are part of the entire industry feel that trickle. To me that is mind-boggling. It really goes deep.”
When Clarke started the restaurant week event in 2016, he did it twice a year, once in the spring and once in late fall. After the pandemic put a pause on things, Sizzle Dining shifted to September in 2021, and it’s taken place then ever since.
“We talked with the restaurants, since the event is really for them,” says Clarke, previously food editor for the Naples Herald online newspaper. “We had a lot of discussions and asked them, ‘What’s best for you? How can this help you the most?’ The majority of them said September is the worst month of the year, and that would be the time to do it. We immediately shifted to ‘let’s do it once a year but make it three weeks long.’”
Participating restaurants offer two-course lunches for $19 or $29 and three-course dinners for $29, $39, or $49. Restaurants pay a $1,450 fee to participate in Sizzle Dining, and the majority of that money is used to advertise and market the event.
“We give assets to the restaurants to help them market their participation in the event, so they can feel proud of participating in the event and promote it to their following,” says Clarke. “Then we just buy a ton of advertising.”
This year, that includes billboards on Interstate 75 and an airplane pulling a banner advertising the event flying over the beaches from Marco Island to Boca Grande during Labor Day Weekend. Full-page ads in newspapers and magazines, social media advertising, radio campaigns and an email list of more than 80,000 are other methods for getting the word out about Sizzle Dining. Any leftover funds are how the Clarkes make money from the event; Guy is also a fractional chief marketing officer in the restaurant industry, and Erin works as a restaurant manager.
Clarke admits he often worries leading up to Sizzle Dining if he did “enough advertising to get enough eyeballs to get enough butts in seats,” he says. “That haunts me until the last day of the event, when the restaurants start telling me what their numbers were.”
Last year’s success should help to assuage some of those fears. Clarke says the 2023 event’s top-performing restaurant, for example, sold 2,563 Sizzle dinners at $49 each. “So that’s $125,587 before costs,” he says. “I would say that’s a good ROI on $1,450.”
Tony Ridgway, owner of Ridgway Bar & Grill in Naples, had participated in Sizzle Dining in earlier years, then took some time off from the event. In 2023, he got back involved.
“We were very pleased with the response,” he says. “I would say it was a significant increase in business from the prior year. It was a great conclusion to the summer and kickoff to the fall.”
Jamie Stalowski, owner/operator of La Fontanella Ristorante in Bonita Springs, participated in Sizzle Dining for the first time in 2023. “We did it last year to try something new, and it was such a fantastic experience,” he says. It was so good, in fact, that the La Fontanella location in Fort Myers and Stalowski’s other Fort Myers restaurant, Blanc, will also be participating this year.
“We got to meet so many new customers that in turn became regular customers simply because Sizzle drove them in for the first time,” he says. “And the people coming in, a lot of them were foodies. The deal drives them in, but they’re still looking to get a nice bottle of wine and indulge in dessert.”
The La Fontanella staff also benefited at a time of year when they’re used to decreases in hours and earnings. “This sudden influx in spending just helped everybody get through, and it made such a world of difference,” says Stalowski. “The servers were probably close to triple what they were making in June, July, August. And in my world, keeping employees happy is one of the best things that we can do.”
“It’s heartwarming to hear from restaurants that the small mom and pops could keep open an extra day or two a week or that staffers didn’t have to get laid off,” says Sandra Rios, PR and communications manager at the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It gets them over that bump and that hurdle that’s always such a challenging time in this industry. Especially when it’s hard to find good staff and you want to retain them.”
The event also has a charitable component, with one dollar from each meal purchased from the Sizzle Dining menu donated by the restaurants to the Southwest Florida Chapter of Blessings in a Backpack. In the past three years, more than $90,000 has been raised from the event to help the organization fill backpacks with food for thousands of local food-insecure students to eat over the weekends.
It’s a cause close to Clarke’s heart. “I grew up with a single mom, and I remember coming home from middle school, opening the fridge, and there not being a lot in there,” he says. “If you’re going to go out and eat at these amazing restaurants in Southwest Florida, it just made sense to give back to the kids. It’s really helped the mission and is so easy to get behind.”
For 2024’s Sizzle Dining event, the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau developed a marketing campaign to support the event and market it to culinary enthusiasts outside of Collier County, after doing similarly for the 2023 event. “When they came on board last year, it was a ‘we made it’ moment,” says Clarke. “It became real in a way. When tourism people are spending money on something you’re doing, they have enough faith that your product is real and making an impact.”
“We want to bring people here to Naples to dine and have the culinary experiences we offer,” says Rios. “We want them to come here for a week and stay or come here for an overnight stay.”
To that end, the CVB reached out to its local hotel partners about offering their own related promotional deals. Naples Grande Beach Resort, for example, has a Sizzle Dining rooms offer that includes a 15% off savings plus a one-time $50 dining credit for stays Sept. 1 to 30. Edgewater Beach Hotel’s Sizzle Dining deal includes savings of up to 30% off a two-night stay and a $75 dining credit. Its Coast restaurant is also participating in the event.
“This is always a very slow time of year, so anything we can do to drive additional business to our restaurant and hotel is beneficial,” says Laura Radler, general manager of Edgewater Beach Hotel. “We’re always looking for ways to try to keep occupancy up so we can keep our team employed.”
She takes advantage of Sizzle Dining herself, especially since dining out during the winter season in Naples can be challenging. “It’s a good opportunity for families and local residents to get out and explore some of the great restaurants that we have,” she says. “I know my family always takes advantage of it. There might be a restaurant we’d never typically go to, and we see something interesting and say ‘let’s give it a try.'”
And even though Sizzle Dining is doing well, Clarke isn’t slowing down. He’s cooked up some new ideas for the 2024 event to help keep things interesting. That includes six one-of-a-kind themed pop-up brunches (working in conjunction with Cora Bolds, owner of Brunch & Such) and four chef demo lunches (working with Ashley Martinez, the events coordinator at Corkscrew Weddings & Winery in Estero).
He’s also letting restaurants take part in the event for lunch only this year, a change from previous years. That’s allowing some new spots to come on board, like The Eatery by Ryan and the much-loved Brooks Burgers.
“I’m just not going to stop until it’s at a point where it’s so big,” says Clarke. “I’ve got too much on the line.”
