There are plenty of guides on recruiting restaurants and setting pricing. This one covers what comes next: the technology that makes people actually show up, visit more than one spot, and come back on day four when the initial buzz fades.

Once you've committed to running a restaurant week, the question becomes: how do you make it actually work? How do you get people to visit more than one restaurant? How do you prove to sponsors it was worth it?

The answer, for most organizations running it well, is a digital passport. Here's how to set one up.‍

Watch the recap!

Build your restaurant map

Start by creating a map with each participating restaurant as a location. This does two things. First, it gives your community a single place to browse every participating spot -- their hours, what their special is, where they're located. Second, it gives restaurants a visual presence in your campaign that feels more like a real event and less like a coupon mailer.

In Proxi, each restaurant gets its own listing on the map. You can add their logo, photos, a description of their restaurant week special, and a direct link to their menu or reservation page. Restaurants can update their own listings if you give them access, which means you're not chasing down menu changes the day before it starts.

The map is also your best marketing asset. Share it in every email, post it to social, embed it on your website. It's the one link that shows people everything at once.

Set up QR code check-ins at each location

The passport works because visiting restaurants earns something. Each participating restaurant gets a unique QR code -- printed and posted at the host stand, front door, or bar. When a participant scans it, their visit is logged automatically and their passport updates in real time.

No app download required. Participants scan with their phone camera and check in instantly. Restaurants don't have to do anything except point people to the code.

This matters because it removes the friction that kills most passport programs. Paper punch cards get lost. Honor systems don't generate data. A QR check-in takes three seconds and creates a trackable record of every visit.

Turn on the leaderboard

This is where restaurant week goes from a promotion to an event people talk about.

Proxi's leaderboard shows participants how many restaurants they've visited and where they rank compared to everyone else. It updates in real time. For competitive people, that's all it takes -- they will come back just to move up the board.

There's also a business leaderboard, which shows which restaurants have the most check-ins. Post that publicly midweek and you've given every participating restaurant a reason to promote the event harder, because now there's something at stake for them too.

If you're giving prizes to top finishers, announce them before the event starts. That one detail changes how people engage with the whole week.

Use email and SMS to push momentum midweek

Most restaurant weeks front-load their marketing and go quiet after the launch. The second half of the week is where participation drops off -- and where a well-timed message does the most work.

Send a midweek email with the current leaderboard standings. Remind people how many restaurants they still have left to visit. If you have prize tiers (visit 3, visit 5, visit all), tell people exactly how close they are. Urgency and progress are the two things that get people off the couch on a Wednesday night.

Proxi's email and SMS tools let you send directly from the same platform where you're running the passport, so you're not copying data between systems or guessing who's opted in.

Pull the data when it's over

When restaurant week ends, you should be able to tell your sponsors and stakeholders exactly what happened: total check-ins, check-ins by restaurant, number of unique participants, and how engagement trended day by day.

That data is your sponsor report, your board presentation, and your recruiting pitch for next year's restaurants all at once. "Here's what happened last time" is the most persuasive thing you can say when you're trying to get restaurants to sign up again.

Proxi tracks all of this throughout the campaign. Export it when it's over and you're done.