It goes without saying that the local restaurants in Liberty Village add so much to our neighborhood, they are the place where we celebrate milestones and special occasions, they are where meet-up with friends and colleagues or go on first dates, they are the place we go to enjoy summertime cocktails, or pick-up a warm meal when we just don’t feel like cooking, and they are the places we go to when we need comfort food at the end of a long day. 

Now more than ever we as a community need to give back by providing some comfort to our local business owners and consciously help support local restaurants as much as we can.

To help you help our local restaurants here are some ideas on how you can #supportlocal during these unprecedented times. 

1. Purchase gift cards to a local restaurant for yourself, family, and friends.

2. Consciously choose to order takeout from local restaurants and when possible choose to order pick-up or use a local delivery service to help ensure a higher percentage of the profits go directly to the restaurant.

3. Share some virtual love by engaging with local restaurants on social media to help amplify their marketing efforts and “word-of-mouth” marketing by going the extra mile by writing a positive Yelp or Google review.

4. When dining in is not an option (and when it is) please leave a tip.

5. Make a conscious effort to see what else local restaurants are offering – opt to order from their bottle shop rather than lining up at the LCBO. Is your favourite restaurant offering meal kits, have they setup a mini grocery store or are they offering online cooking lessons? Shop with them, participate, show your support.

6. Get creative! Do you have a skill or service you can offer to your local restaurants to help relieve some of some of the extra burden they may be feeling during these times? Offer your photography services, social media marketing, free delivery services for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. We all have something to offer, we just need to get creative and decide to lend a helping hand.

To help you help support our local restaurants, over the past few weeks we have been working on developing an updated map of Liberty Village with all the restaurants and cafés in our neighborhood. We hope this resource makes supporting local restaurants easier for you and helps our restaurants. Remember to tag @libertyvillagebia in your social media posts and us the hashtag #LoveLibertyTO so we can help amplify and send the love you show online even further.

We’ll get through this together. 

#LOVELIBERTYTO