Today we’d like to introduce you to Terri Henry.
I’m Orange County born and raised but never felt comfortable there. Moving to Long Beach in 1999 just felt right. It was where I belonged and where I wanted to do good.
After 25 years in the corporate restaurant marketing arena (and commuting from Long Beach to Woodland Hills – UGH), I stepped down after 12 years as VP of Marketing for Grill Concepts, owners and operators of Daily Grill, The Grill on the Alley and Public School restaurants to start Terri Henry Marketing, my own restaurant marketing and PR firm in 2011. In 2013, after scratching my head for a couple of years wondering why Long Beach didn’t have its very own restaurant week, I headed up the launch of the very first Long Beach Restaurant Week in 2014!
The 9-day event has evolved a bit since those first years. Dine LBC these days is more than a restaurant week and more of a year around advocate for the overall restaurant community in Long Beach. We work with restaurants and chefs all year on all kinds of community projects that result in positive publicity for our restaurants: We organize a quarterly “Chefs Serving Shelters” initiative, where 4-5 chefs and/or restaurant owners prepare and serve a breakfast or lunch to a local senior center or homeless shelter. We work with local elementary schools and arrange a local chef to present during their annual career day, and we organize an annual “Kids in the Kitchen” tour, where a group of 4th graders visits one of our restaurants for an after-school hands-on experience with the chef.
We also work with local chefs that do pop-up dining experiences in unexpected spaces around the city. Most recently, along with a couple of local restaurants, we’ve headed up the #nostrawlongbeach movement in our city. Our goal is to educate restaurants and servers on the environmental repercussions of “auto-strawing” in beverages and encouraging making plastic straws by request only, Being a beachside city, plastic straw pollution is a huge concern here, and there is so much we more can do.
But of course, Dine LBC – Long Beach Restaurant Week that takes place in August is what started it all. This event is great for the city – and for restaurants – that face minimum wage increases and cost of goods increases, and most of which have limited marketing budgets. We give participating restaurants an advertising, marketing and PR campaign valued at almost $100K, something they could never afford on their own.
Long Beach has really come into our own culinary-wise in the last few years, no longer taking a back seat to Los Angeles and Orange County, and I’m so proud of the work Dine LBC has done to support our restaurants and get butts into their seats! I have to give a shout out to my husband/business partner Gregory Sabin, who continues to support my mission of supporting our valued restaurants and chefs.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh. My. Gawd. Smooth road? What is that???? It’s a struggle all the time, either getting sponsors on board with dollars to support our mission or getting restaurants to trust that you have their best interests at heart. In five years, this initiative has taken hundreds of hours every year and has resulted in pretty much zero profit.
Hopefully that will change in the future, but for now, it’s a passion; a “labor of love” if you will. I tell my husband that I love what I do so much, I would do it for free. He is quick to remind me that “Honey, you ARE doing it for free!”
Dine LBC – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I launched Long Beach Restaurant Week because I love Long Beach, I love food and dining out, and this was an overdue initiative for the city. We are a great city with awesome restaurants, chefs, and a progressive culinary community.
With a 25-year restaurant marketing and PR background, I understand what it takes to get media attention and press coverage. I pride myself on coming up with creative angles to present to the media so they will cover Dine LBC – Long Beach Restaurant Week as a newsworthy story and keep our restaurants in the news.
What sets Dine LBC apart from other restaurant weeks is that Long Beach restaurants KNOW us. We dine at their restaurants, we spend money at their restaurants. We’ve developed relationships and trust with our local restaurant owners. I’m immensely proud of that.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Oh boy. Tough question. Again, I’m very proud to be respected and trusted within the Long Beach culinary community. All Long Beach restaurants know that Dine LBC has their back!
Contact Info:
- Address: 65 Pine Avenue #200
Long Beach, CA 90802 - Website: www.DineLBC.com
- Phone: 5625724770
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @dinelbc
- Facebook: /dinelbc
- Twitter: @dinelbc
Image Credit:
Miguel Barillas Photography, Erin Yuen Photography
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
