Southwest Flavor Ep. 151 - Kristen Sharp, Chris King

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show for you today. And I have my buddy Ron Kirk from Arcadia Landscape co-hosting with me today. Good morning, Ron.

**Ron Kirk** (0:11)
Good morning, good morning. Nice weather today.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:14)
Yeah.

**Ron Kirk** (0:14)
It's gonna be hot.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:15)
It's gonna be hot.

**Ron Kirk** (0:16)
Yes, it is.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:17)
We like those hot days.

**Ron Kirk** (0:18)
Well, for some people.

**Kristen Sharp** (0:21)
It's good for business.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:22)
It's good for business.

**Ron Kirk** (0:23)
It is, especially my business, yes.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:25)
And our first guest is Kristen Sharp from Oro Valley Chamber.

**Kristen Sharp** (0:27)
Good morning.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:28)
Good morning. How are you doing? I'm well.

**Kristen Sharp** (0:31)
Thanks for having me back.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
Good, yeah. Thank you. You're always welcome to come on.

**Kristen Sharp** (0:34)
Thank you. It's always fun. And to chat about what's going on with the chamber in Southern Arizona. So much.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:40)
Yeah, there is. And you guys have your summer program going on right now to help the restaurants out there.

**Kristen Sharp** (0:46)
Yes, we sure do. So we, our chamber, this is the second year that we've done it.
We called it Locals Eat Local. And we really try to encourage local people who stay here for the summer to patronize our restaurants. And so I made a joke, Ron, good for business. But it's really not good for restaurant.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
It's not good for restaurants.

**Kristen Sharp** (1:12)
Yeah, the heat is not good for restaurants. And so to help them, we put stickers in 24 restaurants throughout Oro Valley. We have 25 stickers. So our office is the 25th location. We are not a restaurant. So we can give you like a beef steak or a little granola bar if you come in. But we're not going to be able to feed you. But so we have 24 restaurants who are participating.
And we had a local artist. Her name is Ashley White. And she created 25 different stickers with kind of an art nouveau theme. They're very pretty. And she has done murals throughout southern Arizona. There's two in Oro Valley right now. She did the one at James D. Cray Park. And then she also did the one at the Community Center.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:59)
That's the same artist from last year, right?

**Kristen Sharp** (2:01)
No, it's actually different. So we are moving around, utilizing different artists and different themes, because we want each year's collection to be very unique in and of itself. And so that way it's a limited edition, one time collection. You're never going to get these stickers again. So 25 stickers that you can collect.
The stickers are free. You can go into any participating restaurant who has a sticker and pick up the sticker. But the goal is to support the restaurant while you're there. So we also have a trackable portion of it. So there is an app, it's called Explore Oro Valley, and you can download the app. And if you spend $20 at a restaurant location, we have a QR code for you to scan within the app, and it'll put a little check mark off. And once you've hit five check marks, it emails the chamber and tells us, hey, we have a challenge completer, and you can come into our office and get a prize.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:02)
Very cool.

**Kristen Sharp** (3:02)
Yes, and the prizes this year, we've had great feedback on them. They're super cool. So one of them is, you know those like Trader Joe's, like those little mini Trader Joe's totes? Yes. Sure. It looks like one of those, except it's insulated and has a zipper top. Nice. So it's like a little cooler, a little lunch box, but very stylish. And it has Oro Valley Local on the front of it. And then we also have, it's kind of like a stackable bento box, stainless steel, and there's three of them that stack, and it comes in its own little carrying case as well. And also it has like Oro Valley Local on it.
So five restaurants, and you get to pick your prize. We are going to have t-shirts and hats. We just don't have those quite yet.
But the two cool prizes we have. So we already have, gosh, I think almost $3,000 in-

**SPEAKER_1** (4:00)
In trackable sales?

**Kristen Sharp** (4:01)
Definite trackable spend. And we've only started June 1st.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:05)
Wow, fantastic.

**Kristen Sharp** (4:07)
I know, super exciting. So last year, we did three months. We did June, July and August. And so we had, I think, $14,700 in trackable spend.