Welcome to “Way To Go Local”
We invite you to enjoy a gathering of restaurant listings — all locally owned by people that live in your community. We started this website 10 years after moving to the area. Anytime we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out, all we could easily locate were national chain restaurants. But we wanted more than that. We wanted to dine in a restaurant owned by local residents, restaurants that used fresh ingredients and family recipes. We started keeping a personal list, but then decided to make our list available to you, our neighbors.
Watch this site as it grows. We found a lot of these restaurants on our own, others were recommended to us. If you know of a great locally owned restaurant located in Florida, please feel free to add it by clicking here. Once we verify that it meets our qualifications of being locally owned, we will gladly add it to the listing.
Thank you for visiting our site, and happy dining!
Why You Need to Support Local Restaurants
When you consider how many small businesses surround you in your everyday lives, it is impressive to think about the amount of time, commitment and labor these hard working individuals contribute to make their businesses both come to life and stay alive.
Yet, many Americans frequent chain restaurants without considering their local restaurants or other small business options.
Customers assume that pricing will automatically be higher at a small business vs. a corporate owned restaurant, as well as they dismiss the perks that many small restaurants offer such as customer care, quality of food and community support.
Local restaurants owners are more likely to give back to your community.
Beyond actual dollars being kept within your local community – which is significantly higher when dollars are spent at a local restaurant vs. a chain restaurant – small restaurant owners are also more likely to “do good” for your community, as well.
Small restaurants deliver community character and economic advantages to the town they are positioned in, but also strengthen partnerships among neighbors, residents, other small business owners, community leaders and even schools by offering social and economic relationships. Many also support local causes, creating even more good within a community.
