Downtown Dining Wishes

Happy Restaurant Week! Share some thoughts on DTSB dining?

Last fall we posted I wish this was... stickers in the windows of vacant storefronts in downtown South Bend.  This project was a fun way to offer more community members a means of sharing their ideas for revitalization efforts downtown . We also sought to plant seeds for further civic engagement and broader ownership of the South Bend Renaissance. We got a lot of really great ideas (so many Trader Joe fans out there!) and a few that we can’t mention in decent company.  We were excited to see the ways people interacted with each other through the stickers, reminding folks that there WAS in fact a card shop in DTSB when it was suggested, for example. 

Several people responded that they wished for Vegetarian , Gluten Free or other specialty restaurants catering to  their dietary restrictions & preferences so this seemed like a great place to start in conjunction with Summer Restaurant Week. In taking the sticker information and actually DOING something with it we take another step closer toward our goal of creating a more dynamic downtown where everyone can find something that fits for them.  After talking to a few of the restaurateurs and some of the people who contributed this response, we realized that more information is required to really determine what the needs may be.  Some of the questions we’ve considered are; Is there a dearth of options available to vegetarians, vegans and gluten free diners, OR do we need to do a better job of identifying the options already available at restaurants? How do South Benders as well as visitors to our community find these options? And other questions as well. 

To that end, we’re kicking off a DTSB dining preferences survey in conjunction with Restaurant Week to get more information from all of you and your friends and family. This short survey looks at dietary needs and restaurant preferences. It also gives you a chance to share your contact info if you’d like to be further involved in implementing projects aimed to make the downtown dining scene easier to navigate for vegetarians, vegans, and gluten free folk.  We’ll follow up with a survey to the restaurateurs and figure out what options and systems are already in place. Then we’ll make recommendations for moving forward toward accommodating the needs identified through the surveys.

This is an exciting opportunity to figure out how to get more people eating downtown as our City continues to undergo a Renaissance of awesome proportions. Head over to:DTSB Dining Preferences Survey shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Please also share with your friends and family, we want all the diversity of South Bend to be represented in the data, whether you eat meat or not!