Visit Sac Pres & CEO Mike Testa on Tower Bridge Dinner To-Go

Listen: Visit Sacramento's President and CEO Mike Testa

Enjoy the Tower Bridge Dinner To Go

Celebrate America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital while supporting our culinary and agricultural community by ordering Tower Bridge Dinner To Go!

From Sept. 12-19, 2020, restaurants and caterers across the Sacramento region will be offering their take on the famous Tower Bridge Dinner menu. Diners can enjoy locally sourced, multi-course meals that are paired with regional wines, beers and more…right from home.

All proceeds go directly to participating restaurants and caterers. One lucky diner will receive two tickets to the next Tower Bridge Dinner in 2021!

Visit their website here to learn more: www.FarmtoFork.com

A message from Mike Testa:

To our valued partners,

As I said to my team on a Zoom call earlier this week, I’ve waited nearly six months to write you this letter. Last Tuesday, Sacramento’s City Council voted to grant Visit Sacramento our requested CARES funding. To put it plainly, this funding is the lifeline we have needed to get our organization back on track to ensure that tourism will play a lead role in Sacramento’s economic recovery.

When we all were last in the Visit Sacramento office together on March 13, I never, in my wildest imagination, thought we would end up here. Of course, none of us did. The drastic hit to our funding, the permanent loss of longtime and wonderful team members, the cancelation of all of our events, the inability to gather in the office together…the list goes on. But that was where we were. Today, we are standing in a different place and it’s time to look forward. So that’s where I’d like to start from.

As of today, we are a new Visit Sacramento. Tuesday, the staff who had remained on furlough rejoined us full time. This includes critical members of our convention sales team, who got together Wednesday (at a safe, masked distance) to tour the massive progress on the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center construction project. We are thrilled to have all of our sales managers and directors back with us to ensure we are capturing as much business as possible to fill the convention center for years to come.

At the same time, our Sports Commission Director Dave Eadie is busy finalizing an infrastructure study to identify where key sports fields and facilities could be placed to bring a new and lucrative stream of overnight visitors to the market. Simultaneously, Dave and the team are close to booking several major sports events that would bring much-needed visitor support to the community in 2021 and beyond. Our partnership staff have also rejoined us, immediately putting into action plans to support our hospitality businesses as we weather this storm.

Speaking of supporting our hospitality businesses, Visit Sacramento is launching an important initiative this week that I hope you will consider taking part in. OurTower Bridge Dinner To Goprogram invites restaurants, caterers and food trucks to create their own spin on the Tower Bridge Dinner menu and offer it to their customers from Sept. 12-19. As you may remember, the Tower Bridge Dinner celebrates what makes our region special: our second-to-none agricultural production that helps to feed the rest of the U.S., our incredible list of farmers and their diversity of crops, our exceptionally talented chefs, and our culinary leaders whose voices continue to resonate and educate across the country. Now, more than ever, offers a great opportunity to celebrate those things in our community. Restaurants are critical to the fabric of our community, so it is vital that we do what we can to keep them in business.100% of the proceeds from Tower Bridge Dinner to Go will go directly to the participating eateries.

It’s no secret that our organization, like yours, is operating in a new reality. Our team may look different. Most are still working from home. And without question, much of our work and short-term focus looks different, too. But I would also venture to say that our purpose has never been more vital or clear. Visit Sacramento exists to ultimately make Sacramento a better place for the people who call it home. We take that role very seriously as an organization and we are committed to doing just that.

In closing, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you to all of you who made calls, wrote letters and spoke in support of Visit Sacramento. Thank you to our elected officials and City Manager for understanding the impacts that Visit Sacramento has on Sacramento’s economic prosperity. Thank you to the small but mighty Visit Sacramento team who has been working for the last six months to keep this ship afloat. We know that the work ahead won’t be easy but believe me when I say that Visit Sacramento is standing beside you, doing all that we can to preserve the Sacramento we all love.