Benicians eagerly look on as Small Business Revolution co-host Amanda Brinkman prepares to announce Fredonia, NY as the Season 5 winner.

(This article originally appeared in the Jan. 29 print edition of the Herald)

Galen Kusic, Editor

Benicia was selected as one of the “Top 5 Towns” in the competition to be the featured town in season 5 of the hit Hulu series Small Business Revolution, an original series by Deluxe, hosted by Amanda Brinkman and Ty Pennington.

Public voting opened on Tue. Jan. 14 and continued for one week through Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 9 p.m. The winner of the competition, Fredonia, NY was announced Tue. Jan. 28. A watch party was held at Zeppelin Comics on First St. All five town’s watch parties were livecast to eventually show the winning town’s reaction once Season 5 airs. Benicia received the fifth most votes in the competition.

“Each of these towns should be proud of the effort they put forward,” said co-host Amanda Brinkman. “To each of you we met along the way, we sincerely thank you for sharing your stories.”

Benicia Economic Development Specialist Teri Davena speaks about the importance of connecting with neighboring small businesses on social media to gain exposure.

After receiving thousands of small town nominations and nearly a million votes for the Top 5 towns, Brinkman announced Fredonia as the winner. While Benicia didn’t win, it has been extremely beneficial for the city of nearly 30,000.

“We really promoted Benicia,” said Benicia Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani. “There was a lot of great coverage for Benicia last week. We want to keep that momentum.”

Giuliani noted that Benicia was featured in the San Francisco Business Times on Jan. 24 with a large insert, the largest of its kind in Benicia’s history. The publication has nearly 50,000 print subscribers and receives over half a million views online.

“This is the largest piece of marketing the City of Benicia has ever done to promote our town,” he said. “It’s our part of promoting what we all know and get to experience how great Benicia is.”

Giuliani thanked all that helped promote Benicia during the contest, specifically Dan and Natasha Curtis, owners of Zeppelin Comics, Nancy Martinez of Benicia Main Street and Teri Davena, Benicia Economic Development Specialist for their hard work to spread the word about Benicia.

“Our business organizations, business owners and residents worked hard to get the word out,” said Giuliani. “Being a part of The Small Business Revolution has been a boon to bringing downtown Benicia to the attention of national, statewide and local audiences. Coming together in the vote shows how our local organizations, independent businesses, and friends and fans can work as a team to promote Benicia. We expect to see this momentum continue as we all work together to promote Benicia.”

Sharing is caring!