This Saturday, nineteen businesses in downtown Salinas, California will hand out candy from 11 to 2. Families in costume will walk Main Street, a mascot from the rodeo will roam around, and there will be a 360 photo booth by the Rotary arch. It is the kind of event every downtown runs in October.

Here is what makes the Salinas version different. Before families start walking, they check in to a Trick-or-Treat Passport. Every business they visit is a check-in. Finish the passport and you are entered to win a $100 Lettuce Cash card. The Salinas City Center Improvement Association put it together with the Arts Council of Monterey County, and the Monterey Herald wrote it up this week.

The candy part is the same as everyone else's. The passport is what you keep.

Why a downtown trick-or-treat event needs a passport

Without one, here is what you know on Monday: it was busy. Maybe someone counted the candy bags. The businesses that participated will tell you it was great, or that nobody came in, and you will not be able to check.

With a passport, here is what you know on Monday:

• How many families registered, with an email or phone number for each one
• How many check-ins each business got, so you can show the bakery it had 140 visits and the bookstore it had 90
• Who finished, so the prize drawing is fair and takes two minutes
• How many of those families were new to your list

That last one matters most. A trick-or-treat event pulls in young families, and young families are the people you want on your list for Small Business Saturday four weeks later, the tree lighting, and the holiday market. Salinas will walk out of Saturday with a list of households who have been downtown, on foot, with their kids. That is not a list you can buy.

How to set up a trick-or-treat passport

In Proxi, this is a passport check-in event, the same tool communities use for restaurant weeks and shop-small days. Setup takes an afternoon.

1. Start from the template. Go to app.proxi.co/templates and pick a passport. The dates, the check-in rules, and the prize structure are already set. Swap in your own event name and dates.

2. Add your candy stops. Pick the participating businesses from your listings or add them by address. Salinas has nineteen. Ten to twenty-five is the sweet spot for a three-hour event with kids. Every stop shows on the map with its own pin, so families can see where to go next.

3. Choose how families check in. For a trick-or-treat event, the easiest is a QR code in each shop window. A parent scans it, the stop is marked, and they move on. Geolocation check-in works too, if you want zero friction. Save receipt check-in for shopping events where you want to tie entries to purchases.

4. Set the prize. One prize, clear rule. Salinas uses finish the passport, win $100 in local currency. You could also do one entry per check-in so families who only make five stops still have a shot. Ask each participating business for a $20 gift card and you have a prize bundle without spending a dollar.

5. Turn on registration. Families sign up with an email or phone number before they start. Add one custom question if you want it, like zip code, so you know how far people traveled. Keep it to one.

6. Publish and print. Grab the QR code and put it on your flyers, your social posts, and a sandwich board at the start of the route. Print a signup poster for each business window.

What to send participating businesses afterward

This is the step most organizations skip, and it is the one that gets businesses to say yes next year.

The Monday after, send each business its own numbers: how many check-ins it got, where it ranked, and the total number of families who registered. In Proxi you can message participating businesses directly from the platform, so it is one note, not nineteen. The business leaderboard shows the ranking while the event is running, which turns candy into a friendly competition between shops.

Then send the families a thank-you with the prize winner and your next event. If your Small Business Saturday passport is already built, link it. You just turned a Halloween crowd into a November crowd.

Make it the same event every year

Next October, copy this year's passport, update the dates and the business list, and publish. Salinas will not rebuild from scratch, and neither should you. The registration list carries over too, so year two starts with a text to everyone who came in year one.

If you want to see how it looks from the family's side, open the Salinas passport. Then pick a passport template and build yours. Halloween is Saturday, but the holiday season is five weeks long.