NBG Merchant Discount Program and How it Will Make the Streets Safer for Cycling

To make our Lodging Program successful, there is a symbiotic relationship that must be actualized - there are three other key programs that are interdependent - NBG Merchant Discount, NBG Membership and Public Relations. In this chapter, we will talk about the Merchant Discount program. We talked about NBG Membership in a previous chapter. And yet just as our Lodging Program feeds off the strong Merchant Discount program that we will be showing you here, merchants, hoteliers and future members will all also need a hard hitting Public Relations program. An integral part of making the NBG real, our PR plan is discussed in a long upcoming chapter. 

Nor is our NBG Merchant Discount program an afterthought, a membership add-on that we included because that is how many memberships are structured. Not so. Our Merchant Discount program is an important part of broadening the influence of our message, building us into the local social fabric, and increasing the size of our family. It gives a large number of businesses a stake in our safely being able to get to their front door.

It is so important, in fact, that we have written this whole chapter about it. Once you read it, you will have a better understanding of how the price reductions we are asking our vendors to offer will, among the many benefits that go both ways, also make our Anchor City streets safer for cycling, as we will explain. This, as it also makes it easier for us to sell a broad cross section of merchants into a larger stake in our other programs (POI map, website, and Biking Report Card advertising, etc).

Because our Indianapolis-like Downtown Greenways will make it safe for families, and all levels of cyclists to be able to enjoy our Anchor City centers of commerce, a whole different population of people will fill the downtown streets. During the daylight hours, bicycles will replace cars as the preferred way to get around. In a way in which everyone wins, merchants and shopkeepers will structure their businesses so that they are attractive to these new types of visitors. Bike racks will abound and businesses will orient themselves to the new customers they can expect. For the purposes of security, more and more picture windows will crop up to make bicycles visible from inside the places of business. Many vendors will have bike locks available to borrow for use.

Menus will also change. Because many cyclists are more aware about how food affects their performance, restaurants will include offerings that will replenish lost energy stores. Some will even make it possible to carbo load for a longer ride that may be in the cards for the next day. Hydration offerings will also expand to include sports drinks and high protein meals will be set apart and made available. Our diners will even be able to buy energy bars they can enjoy for desert or take with them for the road.  

Businesses that are not on the Downtown Greenway itself, will push for their city leaders to make it easier for cyclists to get to them from our supporting hotels. This will result in more of a city’s streets being made safe for cyclists. It is this that will usually happen from April through the end of October, a period of seven months. During the other 4 to 5 months of the year, when the weather forces people inside, our Anchor City shopkeepers, will return to the car-centric business model that has kept their doors open during the 20th and 21st centuries. 

During the colder part of the year, by revealing themselves to our bicyclists when it was warm, this will make it easier for them to be found when the weather is less friendly. It will make it easier for locals to find them during the non-cycling season. It will help them build a path from our hotels as well as other locations in the city to their own front doors all year round.

Because of the buzz, our PR firm will create for cyclists all year round, we will be the new cool merchants will want to appease. They will want to put their best foot forward for us because they will have also been made aware that bike riders represent a wide cross-section of society. When they come to learn that legitimate card-carrying NBG cyclists are the leaders of the two and three wheel way of moving oneself about, NBG merchants, wanting to be in step with the times, will then want to be seen as supportive of the National Bicycle Greenway. 

Not only will Anchor City streets be safer when purveyors of goods and services discount their offerings to NBG Members, but our cyclists will feel safer on the road too. This is so because they will know they are wanted as well as accepted by the local business communities through which they ride. When a business offers our members a discount to get them into their door, by default, they will be taking an interest in making it safe for cyclists to get to them. The honor and support these merchants will be communicating to the cyclists who use their roads, will also cause our NBG Members to want to be able to return the favor with their support.

As a PR Firm helps our numbers grow, merchants along the way of our Downtown Greenway and corporations from all over America will take added notice. Growing membership counts will make it easier for us to bring larger numbers of money generating concerns into our programs. The name recognition a large associateship will guarantee for us, will also make it easier for us to sell higher priced business memberships. And as we will show you in the chapter we will have written called “Owning a Part of the Greenway”  in Book II, a large membership body will also make it easier for us to sell corporate sponsorship of Greenway Miles, Donor Bricks, Benches, Kiosks and all the other ideas we have for how large enterprises can support us.

When our PR Firm reminds people that a different city has become the result of merchants and hoteliers joining hands to make it possible for more bicyclists to be downtown, there will be a measurable feeling of pride amongst the local citizenry. As such, it will also be proud NBG Anchor City residents who make it easier for us to advance our agenda on many levels.

By showing the happy success that results for our cities when biking is made easy and fun between lodging purveyors and merchants, our PR Firm will, as we keep saying, be making our Anchor Cities friendly to human powered propulsion. Said in another way, they can use our lodging and the merchants who support them to show anyone who is exploring travel, that visiting our cities on a bike is an affordable way to keep their vacation excursions closer to home. 

As they show all that is new and exciting in this country, instead of the vacation paradises found in far away lands, travel magazines will be selling the USA. They will make it an American thing to learn about their native land. They will make it desirable to be able to compare notes with their colleagues and friends about what they found here in ours, the Land of Liberty.

By celebrating our Anchor Cities as bicycle heaven like sanctuaries, our PR Firm will have kept people from feeling like vacations always have to involve ocean crossing plane trips. By minimizing intercontinental travel, they will also be lowering the cost the planet is forced to endure when jet travel is built into the equation. They will have made prospective travelers aware of the wonder that can be found here in America, here in our NBG Anchor Cities. 

Because the byproduct of this will cause Americans to take an interest in their fellow countrymen, it will be our PR, Lodging, Merchant and Membership programs, that will have helped to heal some of the divisions that presently keep us apart. As a growing number of NBG Members learn about their fellow American brothers and sisters, there will be a greater understanding and empathy for those whose geography in this country, is different from their own. As a critical mass of NBG Members move about under their own power to slow down the pace of our cities, we will get to know one another. And as we do, we will come to realize our own needs, wants and desires are all so similar.

As the purveyors of food, drink and other services and merchandise make discounts to our members, it scales the size of the city down for our cyclists. Their doing so makes large bustling cities familiar to our members. It makes them feel like small villages where they will know where to go at 10 mph to have all of their needs happily met.

When restaurants start seeing that our cyclists are more interested in the actual food than they are in atmosphere and ambience, those who ride in will become their preferred customer. When lighting, wall adornments and furniture styles become less important to their customers than what they are eating, the eateries themselves can place more emphasis on what they serve. 

In terms of how they will be taking an active interest in making it safe for cyclists to get to them, as we noted above, they will push their elected officials to make the roadways in their various jurisdictions safer for cyclists. This as they also build cyclists into their own awareness as they themselves use the roadways in their cars. They will be more mindful of us when they are in their motor vehicles, There will be a trickle down effect of this consciousness that they will pass along consciously and even subconsciously to their customers and staff.

By making it possible for us to enjoy their goods and/or services at a discount, they will be making us a part of their family. This will have the effect of giving merchants and all the people they touch yet one more reason to be on the lookout for us in a way, that keeps us safer on the road. It is here that we will not be seen as strangers rolling through their streets, but as a part of their extended family. 

Soon cyclists everywhere will not be seen as impediments to transport, but as mobile bank accounts who can contribute to the well being of the various economies of the regions, through which they pass. Because they won't be feeding parking meters and paying for parking space, they will have more money to spend on food and drink and on the various other merchants’ offerings. Their visits will be welcomed as way is to make the cash registers sing. 

As for our presence amongst other vehicles, in the same way traffic schools teach motorists that their purpose is to share the road, because all the businesses along the way want our money, they will remind motorists to help the bicyclist get to them. The ways they do so will be subtle. There can, for example, be little images of bikes parked in front of their place of business in their advertising, even on their menus. There can be teaser lines on their food guides that read ‘how many cyclists did you pass today?’ Similar to how car operators are taught that at freeway on ramps that they must make it easier for their fellow drivers to get on the road with them, this thinking can be extended to include cyclists. By reminding their customers that we are their friends, we will accepted as being a part of the traffic flow no matter where a car driver may happen to see us.  

Nor will it take internal combustion users long to learn that bike riders must be treated differently than their fellow motorists. That pedal pushers must be seen as having special needs. Instead of irritability, and sometimes anger, there will be a respect and compassion for the cyclist’s inability to move as quickly as they do. 

And as our Anchor City residents see they are being celebrated as worthy of a two-wheel visit, the businesses will notice this as well. As a result, local merchants will feel they're helping to sell their city by being a part of our programs. Toward this end, they will much welcome the work of our PR firm.

It is here that our PR firm working with our Lodging, Merchant and Membership programs can return America to the simplicity of a more cheerful and innocent time. By bombarding the mainstream media and the social media with stories about bicycling, people will realize that we have the solution to all of the woes that afflict us right here, right now. By belaboring the pedal machine’s capacity to cure emotional, physical and planetary woes, the thought shapers we contract with will make it seem that to heartily embrace its use is the logical next step on our path of evolution.

Everyone will want to be a part of the bicycle way. And the way businesses will know they can be a part of it is to offer NBG Members discounts on their merchandise and services. In such a way, the shopkeeping community will become a part of our family in the same way we will benefit from being a part of theirs.

To augment the bicycle burn they will have built, our PR Firm can also circulate stories about the increased cash register activity that bike riders are bringing business purveyors. They can talk about how these merchants do not have to create parking for us. They can talk about how the pedal community also tends to have a higher amount of discretionary dollars they can expend.

By making the bicycle riding public look like a community of rolling wallets that business proprietors want to get in their doors, this is more reason why they will be sure to offer discounts for such privilege. Where they can, our PR firm will take this as their cue to alert the public of the deals that could be available to them if they join our organization. And as they do, it will have the added benefit of making our merchants look like community minded, green purveyors of commerce.

A PR Firm can go one step further. They can create news stories and the like that point out some of what we talked about above. They can show that because of all the businesses joining our discount program, that bicycle riding in the city is becoming safer. They can plant the seed for the idea that the merchants in our discount program are beginning to pay attention to the on the road needs of the cyclist. Nor will the businesses offering discounts to get us to their doorstep be the only ones tuned into this message. Not in the least. 

It will cause greater numbers of people to become more aware of cyclists. Our public relations people can belabor some of the points we made above. They can stress how when businesses becomes mindful of cyclists, as we pointed out above, that this way of thinking trickles down from management to staff and to the customers who all want to make the way easier for us. This as greeter numbers of motorists become more and more aware of the need to share the road with all of its users.`