For Tabitha and Noah Armstrong, date nights always meant eating out.
But the Glover couple repeatedly found themselves driving to a restaurant they had heard about, only to find it had permanently closed.
“It’s really hard up here to get the word out about your restaurant,” Tabitha Armstrong, 32, said of the Northeast Kingdom.
So three years ago the Armstrongs launched a website: NEKEats.
The site hosts a directory of about 130 restaurants spanning the Kingdom’s three counties, with hours, addresses and contact details for each. Entries include write-ups of the businesses highlighting their specialties, and users can search through establishments by type, food offered and location.
The website also features full-length reviews. The focus isn’t always just how great the food is, Tabitha Armstrong said. “It’s about what’s unique. We have some interesting places. We have some great chefs in the Kingdom.”
A unique feature might be a restaurant’s location near a snowmobile trail, or the fact that the chef only uses local produce, she said.
Tabitha and Noah, 37, have backgrounds in digital marketing and web design, and they wanted to use their skills to help solve a visibility problem in the Kingdom.
Local leaders have pegged a lack of connectivity as one of the biggest barriers to growth in the region. The Kingdom’s counties have some of the worst broadband access in Vermont. Advocates have talked about building directories and networks so residents can more easily find resources.
One hurdle is that not every business or local government is on the web in the first place.
“We have a very suspicious demographic,” Armstrong said. “They’re a little suspicious of technology.”
NEKEats started as a way to fill a knowledge gap, and after a year the Armstrongs added another feature: advertising. They felt too many restaurants in the Kingdom were behind the times and missing out on customers.
One reason why restaurants don’t have much digital presence is slow internet speeds. Customers would log off a restaurant website before all the photos and offerings were downloaded.
So NEKEats also offers online advertising, which gives eateries an easy entry to the web. Armstrong said she and her husband have about 10 clients right now. Restaurants don’t pay for reviews.
One client is the Hardwick Street Café in Greensboro, which the Armstrongs have reviewed.
The cafe’s general manager Julie Parker talked with Tabitha about a new chicken supplier and the Glover woman gave her new leads.
“She just totally stepped up and was giving me contact information,” Parker said. “I found that really, really helpful, and that was a really unexpected benefit.”
Parker found it easy to call the Armstrongs and discuss updates to the restaurant’s offerings on the website.
“Because they’re local, you can have that conversation — they can come out, they can explain what they do,” she said. “That’s why I find it to be very valuable. It’s much more user friendly for us local businesses than the larger things that you find that we’re listed in.”
Parker said it’s been difficult to promote the cafe because it’s housed inside the Highland Center for the Arts. And outside of the Hardwick-Greensboro area, she doesn’t have many contacts for food suppliers.
NEKEats has helped in both respects, she said.
Armstrong said part of the project is about connecting communities beyond food, too.
“Because the restaurants are usually kind of a gathering place, we’re able to use what we do to help a restaurant to help other businesses,” she said.
That would include local bands featured in cafes, artists whose works hang inside eateries and farmers who provide food.
“The Kingdom has really begun to create this culinary culture, and it’s based on more than just a restaurant,” she said.
In the future, she and her husband want to add a directory of farmers and growers to the site.
