Helloooooo Boston, and welcome to the Whole Grains Dine Out!
Each year in September (which is always Whole Grains Month), the Whole Grains Council does something different to help spark excitement and interest in whole grains. This year, in addition to our national consumer contest (more on that here), we decided to act locally by checking out the whole grain scene in Boston area restaurants, diners, cafes, and farmer’s market food stalls. Our feeling is, if you’re already taking a stand for healthier whole grain options by serving them to customers, we should give you the recognition you so richly deserve — and see if we can’t help drive some business your way in the process!
Many wonderful restaurateurs already offer whole grain options on menus, and at a few places, we’ve been thrilled to learn that whole grains are the norm and not the exception. Whatever the case, we called this year’s effort the Whole Grains Dine Out, and the premise was pretty simple…
Restaurants: What You Can Do
Already offer whole grains every day? Great! We invited restaurants to tell us what they were serving and if there was a particular day/week in September when they wanted us to “promote” their standard whole grain menu options.
Thinking of serving up a unique whole grain dish in honor of Whole Grains Month? Awesome! We urged them to let us know what new whole grain dish they planned to offer and when – whether it was on the menu only once, for a whole week/weekend, or the entire month.
WGC: What We Did
Social media is our friend! We blogged (WGC blog and Oldways Table blog) and tweeted (follow us on Twitter) and otherwise featured participating restaurants, doing everything we could to drive more customers their way. After all, participating locations in this month-long event were doing the real “hard work” by preparing and serving tasty whole grains. Increasing foot traffic and sending hungry health-minded customers to their doors was our way of congratulating them for being on the whole grain bandwagon.
Here are some of the great Boston area restaurants that participated:
Dine Out Participants | Location(s) |
Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Dedham, Hingham | |
Boston | |
Boston’s South End, Central Square in Cambridge, and Fort Point Channel | |
South Boston | |
Cambridge (and Portsmouth, NH!) | |
Just opened in Union Square in Somerville | |
Cambridge | |
Boston area farmer’s markets | |
Cambridge | |
Norton | |
| Uno Chicago Grill | Boston, Cambridge, and suburbs |
| Vapiano | Boston |