Businesses across Sunderland have been nominated by appreciative customers in the UK’s Favourite Local Business competition.
And now the hope is that one of the favourites will take home a possible prize of a £1000 Sunderland Gift Card – with a second £1000 card going to one of the people who nominated them.
The competition has been organised by Miconex, which operates the Town & City Gift Card scheme nationally, which includes the Sunderland Gift Card.
While businesses across the UK are being put forward for the prize, Sunderland has become a front-runner with more than 400 nominations to date.
They include a whole host of the 200 plus businesses which accept the Sunderland Gift Card including Angelo’s Restaurant, Crave, Ashbrooke Home, furniture store Harrison & Brown, The Sweet Petite, Natural Selection Therapies, Asiana, Chapter 13, Shinbob1, Pop Recs and Slice.
The good news is that there is still time for people to vote for their favourite, as the competition is open until 30 November.
Roberta Redecke, Head of Business Services at Sunderland’s BIDs which set up the Sunderland Gift Card scheme – the first of its kind in the region – is encouraging people to keep voting.
“It’s fantastic that businesses in Sunderland are doing so well in the nominations but there is still a long way to go before we can celebrate a win,” she said.
“We would really like people to keep voting and nominating so that one of our worthy businesses can take home the prize and the glory of winning.”
Anyone wanting to enter can do so at www.lovelocalwin.co.uk and need to include their details, the business they want to nominate and the reason for doing so.
Since its launch in 2020 the Sunderland Gift Card has gone from strength to strength, with hundreds of shops, restaurants, salons, bars and hotels signed up and giving a boost of more than £500,000 to the local economy.