Every month the Grapevine wine shop in Baxter hosts a Networking Party, but the December party will be slightly different! This time around, the Networking Party being held this Wednesday, December 2, will also be an iPhone Party to celebrate the Support Local Vendors iPhone App for Local Coupons in your area. The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. We’ve talked about Support Local Vendors on this website a lot, and encourage you to take advantage of this wonderful service!

Grapevine will be giving away one free glass of wine to any guest that can do any one of three things. The first option is to show your iPhone or iTouch SLV coupon (to do this, simply download your SLV iPhone app which will then allow you to show the coupon on your iPhone or iTouch). If you don’t have an iPhone, you can print the Grapevine offer online at Support Local Vendors. If you can’t do that there’s a third way to get a free glass of wine – just use your cellphone and text the keyword “SupportLocal” to 69302. It will work with any cell phone and your standard text messaging rates apply.

Admission to the networking party is free, but you are encouraged to let them know you are coming so they can prepare a nametag for you! Simple send a note to Melanie Sills at melanie [at] grapevinewinebar [dot] com or call (803) 802-9989.

I don’t have an iPhone (I have a boring old Blackberry), but Support Local Vendors is now offering an iPhone app that allows you to download and use coupons directly from your iPhone at various local retailers.

This is a FREE application that will allow users to find their favorite vendors with Google Maps and get an offer from the Vendor instantly. You can use the new application with your iPhone or your iTouch. Simply click on the link below to download it now. Or use keyword “Support Local Vendors” to directly download it your iphone.

Here’s the app to download. Enjoy!

This Thursday (October 1), Support Local Vendors is hosting a meet and greet at Towne Tavern, beginning at 6 p.m. In an effort to continue to introduce residents to locally owned businesses, SLV is providing a fun-filled night with FREE food and door prizes for all who attend.

This is a great opportunity to meet local business owners and tell them that that you appreciate all they do for our community. You may or may not know that the more you spend your dollars at locally owned businesses, the better for our local economy. This event is also a chance to meet the folks behind Support Local Vendors, which is a local service that provides coupon discounts to the public. Regular readers will recall that we partnered with SLV to give away a $100 gift certificate in August.

It’s official – our contest (which was sponsored by Support Local Vendors) is over, and we have our winner! We had a total of 34 entries, and as you can see by the graphic on the left (we used Random.org to randomly select the winning comment entry), comment number 11, left by Kathryn, was the winner.

All valid entries were numbered by date/time of entry, and this was the winning comment:

Kathryn, thanks for your loyalty to locally owned businesses such as Towne Tavern in Fort Mill. I will be emailing you shortly to obtain your information so that I can get the $100 gift certificate into your lovely hands!

Thanks for entering, everyone! Rest assured, we will have more contests like this in the future – so keep your eyes peeled!

Also, we have updated our Fort Mill Restaurants page to show you which restaurants are associated with Support Local Vendors. You are now able to not only rate your favorite local restaurants, but have access to valuable discount and coupons! Be sure to check out the new page!

I am pleased to tell you about a new website dedicated to promoting locally owned businesses here in the Fort Mill area. Obviously in this economy, everyone suffers, but it seems that the local Mom ‘n’ Pop shops seem to suffer the most since they aren’t backed by huge corporate dollars. We’ve seen on the news how a variety of local businesses have shut down or come perilously close to shutting down over the past year due to financial difficulties. Well now there is a website dedicated to helping local businesses get the customers they deserve! SupportLocalVendors.com is run by two Fort Mill local businessmen who are providing a way for local businesses to offer special coupons and discounts to local consumers. The site has a few coupons up already, but is really going live on August 15th. In addition to hooking up consumers with great local businesses, SLV has committed to working with such local organizations as the Boy Scouts and Move Fort Mill Forward to continue to improve our local community.

The website is currently encouraging local business owners to join the program, so if you have a business that might benefit from a partnership with SLV then consider purchasing a membership to gain that tremendous additional exposure to local consumers. They encourage every kind of business to sign up – from those who own a brick and mortar store, to artisans who sell at craft or flea markets. And through August 1, SupportLocalVendors.com will waive the one-time sign up fee of $19.95 and provide free membership for 60 days so that local businesses can check out the program. For additional information on signing up your business, you can either visit the website or call (704) 926-2495.

For consumers merely wishing to use the site for coupons and discounts, the site is absolutely free. They also plan on having an iPhone application before the end of August so that you can merely call up the coupon on your iPhone and show it to the local business to get your discount! That’s pretty cool!

As a promotion for the site, the founders of SLV have given me a $100 gift certificate which can be used at ANY of the vendors listed on their website. I will be giving this $100 gift certificate to one lucky ScoopMill reader. In addition to the $100 gift certificate that ScoopMill is honored to be giving away, if you sign up as a consumer at SLV, you will be automatically entered in another contest to win a free iPhone 3G!

SupportLocalVendors.com is just what this area needs – a way to support smaller locally-owned businesses (like Brusters, De Marcos, Alpine Agency, and Carolina Copy, just to name a few) which may not otherwise succeed in a backward economy such as ours. As an added bonus, effective August 15, I’ll be incorporating my SLV logo on my list of Fort Mill restaurants so that you can see which restaurants have coupons and discounts available for you.

PLEASE NOTE: THE CONTEST OUTLINED BELOW IS NOW OVER!!

So on to the important part – how to win the $100 gift certificate. Well, it’s pretty easy! Simply comment on this post, describing your favorite locally owned business in Fort Mill, Indian Land and Tega Cay (remember – places like Sonic on Rte 160 or a nearby Applebee’s don’t count – we want to focus on businesses that are owned by local citizens). Make sure to provide a legitimate email address with your comment, so that I can contact you if you win.

The winner will be determined using an online automatic number generator. If your number is drawn, you win the $100 gift certificate! Entries will be accepted through NOON on August 15, 2009. Be sure to spread the word to all your friends and neighbors so that they can join in the contest AND reap the benefits of signing up for SupportLocalVendors, either as a business or a consumer.

Edited to add: Please be sure to make your comment by going down to the VERY BOTTOM of the comment area to the blank form (found below all comments). Please do not hit the word “reply” found within people’s comments or else the numbering of each comment is going to get VERY tricky. Having said that, the comment order will be assigned by DATE AND TIME that the comment is made.