BVTC pitching bottled ‘dynamite’

POWERFUL IMPACT: Blackstone Valley Tourism Council project coordinators Donna Houle, left, and Lorraine Provencher, center, and Emily Soergel, “Keep Blackstone Valley Beautiful” coordinator, are spearheading the marketing of salsa and dynamite sauce. /
POWERFUL IMPACT: Blackstone Valley Tourism Council project coordinators Donna Houle, left, and Lorraine Provencher, center, and Emily Soergel, “Keep Blackstone Valley Beautiful” coordinator, are spearheading the marketing of salsa and dynamite sauce. /

Already adept at selling Rhode Island to visitors, some nonprofit hospitality and tourism bureaus in the state are selling products with local connections to raise money during difficult economic times.
The Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, based in Pawtucket, is preparing to sell jars of dynamite sauce, which when mixed with hamburger makes zesty, messy dynamite sandwiches popular in the northern part of the state. Salsa sauce is another culinary treat the council started selling this month.
In Newport, tourism officials report that they sell apparel, advertising space and tickets to local events, raising a total of $250,000 in 2008 alone. The apparel, including T-shirts and sweatshirts, are emblazoned with the Newport logo of the county’s tourism bureau.
“We want to be more than a place where [tourists] go to the bathroom and get a map,” said Evan Smith, president of the Newport County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The bureau, he noted, runs one of the largest visitors centers in New England, the Newport Gateway Visitors Center, which last year drew close to 900,000 visitors from across the globe.
In Pawtucket, housed in that city’s downtown visitors center, the dynamite sauce will be added to an extensive list of food and goods that the Blackstone Valley group sells online and in selected local markets.
“Product-marketing always has been a part of what we do to sell the Blackstone Valley,” said Robert D. Billington, president of the council. The council cannot afford to buy advertising, so this is another way “to get our name out there, to give people an idea of who we are.”
With an annual operating budget of approximately $1 million, the Blackstone Valley council, like its counterparts throughout Rhode Island, relies on income from the state’s hotel tax to fund operating expenses. But that income generally falls short, leaving the council with about $750,000 to raise every year, according to Billington. “The need to create outside revenue is stronger than ever,” he said.
The tourism council is working with a New Hampshire bottling company, Better Than Fred’s in Derry, to prepare 1,200 24-ounce bottles of dynamite sauce that should be ready for sale at selected local markets and online in June at a price of no more than $5 each (plus shipping and handling for online orders). “We could not find an [interested] local bottler, we tried for a year and a half,” Billington said. “Our hope is that one day we can bottle it here.” The council’s plan to sell its own dynamite sauce began two years ago, when the Blackstone Valley group decided to hold a contest to see who makes the best dynamite sauce in Rhode Island during the French Farmers Market held each fall in Woonsocket.
The winner of the 2007 contest, however, would not agree to have her sauce marketed, so a second contest was held in 2008. Winners were Michelle Marcotte and Lynne Leroux, employees of The Friendly Home, a nursing home in Woonsocket. It is their recipe that is now being bottled and it includes spicy tomato sauce, chopped peppers and onions.
Prepared a few months ago, a special inaugural batch of 125 numbered bottles, selling for $10 each, has nearly sold out, council representatives say.
Although its origin is uncertain, the dynamite sandwich dates to at least the 1920s in Woonsocket and was popular among French Canadian immigrants due to its low cost and ability to be preserved, local historians say.
Billington found that the process of having the sauce bottled was more complicated than expected. “There was a lot to look at,” he said, such as quantity, testing, preparing nutritional information and including bar codes on the jars. “It was hard and it was expensive,” he said. Calise & Sons Bakery Inc., based in Lincoln, is helping with the cost of bottling in exchange for a mention of its dynamite rolls on bottle labels.
In another attempt to defray the bottling cost, the tourism council sells jars of salsa sauce (medium-spiced) made by Better Than Fred’s, whose major markets now are colleges and universities. The salsa sauce will retail for no more than $5 each and about 150 bottles are being prepared for retail sale starting in April.
The dynamite sauce and salsa join a long list of products the Blackstone Valley council has been selling for years on its Web site, www.tourblackstone.com, including miniature canoes with paddles, Autocrat coffee syrup (to make Rhode Island’s official drink of coffee milk), Polar Express accessories including nightwear for children, T-shirts, hats, books and lapel pins. The council also raises funds by selling boat tours of the Blackstone River during warm months and renting out the Samuel Slater canal boat, equipped as a bed and breakfast for overnight stays on the river. In Newport, staff members at the visitors center for years wore matching shirts emblazoned with what Smith called “a very handsome stitched logo” bearing the Newport moniker. Visitors often would ask where to get such shirts and, starting last year as an experiment, the center started selling the sweat shirts, T-shirts and jackets, along with canvas bags and umbrellas, all with the Newport logo.
“The sweat shirts sell out like crazy,” reported Kathryn Farrington, vice president of marketing for the bureau. Sweatshirts sell for between $20 and $30, she said, with canvas bags at $7 and umbrellas at $6. In 2008, after expenses, apparel sales raised about $10,000 for the bureau, Smith said, and the experiment now is a permanent part of the visitors center offerings.
For the last 20 or so years, the Newport center has sold tickets to local attractions – more than 60 attractions right now, Smith said – such as the jazz and folk festivals, the mansions and tours of the city by boat, foot or bus. Some $1.3 million worth of tickets were sold last year, netting the center $130,000, according to Smith. Also, the sale of advertising space at the visitors center, with back-lit ads displayed in large glass enclosures, dates back several years and brought in $110,000 in 2008.
Of the state’s six tourism councils, only Blackstone Valley and Newport sell products to raise revenue.
“We do not sell anything other than the region,” said Myrna George, president of the South County Tourism Council.
Founder of the New England Visitors Center Association five years ago, Smith believes such centers play an important role in tourism, not only by offering local goods for sale, but also due to the expertise of staff members who act as virtual travel agents for visitors. Although no two visitors centers in New England are the same, he said, “what they do have in common is they are all under-funded.” •

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