Groupon Partners with South East Chicago Commission to Drive More Traffic into Hyde Park’s Small Businesses

New campaign marks the 9th time Groupon has featured an entire neighborhood of Chicago businesses

Groupon's new Hyde Park campaign features small businesses from the South Side neighborhood. (Graphic: Business Wire)

CHICAGO--()--Groupon (www.groupon.com) (NASDAQ: GRPN), which has pumped more than $20 billion into local communities, today announced the launch of Discover Hyde Park––a community-wide Groupon campaign designed to attract the attention of all Chicagoans to the amazing cross section of small businesses in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Through a joint effort with the South East Chicago Commission and Downtown Hyde Park Chicago, Discover Hyde Park features some of the neighborhood’s top experiences, including things to do, mouth-watering eats and more.

“Hyde Park is an amazing community, home to some of our city’s biggest cultural attractions, but it also has many great local businesses that a good number of Chicagoans have never explored,” said Groupon’s Head of Social Responsibility Matthew Kruse. “From our conversations with small business owners, knowing where to advertise their business and not having the time to effectively market what they do are two of their biggest challenges. Discover Downtown helps them overcome these barriers and do it in a way that also celebrates the uniqueness of their neighborhood –– providing more Chicagoans with the opportunity to try their one-of-kind local experiences.”

Discover Hyde Park is the ninth Chicago neighborhood to participate in Groupon’s Discover Downtown series that helps shine a spotlight on various Chicagoland neighborhoods and drive small business commerce. Since the first Discover Downtown campaign launched in 2015, the campaigns have resulted in driving more than 32,000 people into more than 150 local businesses.

"It's great to see a Chicago-based company using the power of their platform to promote the incredible, diverse cross-section of small businesses that we have in Hyde Park to all of Greater Chicagoland," said Illinois State Sen. Robert Peters, District 13, and a former Groupon employee and founding member of the company's African-American employee resource group. "While I'm a tad biased, we have some of the best and most innovative small businesses in the city, and I can't wait for more people to experience everything they have to offer."

In conjunction with the Discover Hyde Park collection, Groupon issued a $5,000 grant to the South East Chicago Commission to support its recent regional economic development symposium, Fueling Our Economic Evolution. The event brought together entrepreneurs, business executives, property owners, investors, practitioners, civic and policy leaders to discuss ways to strengthen the lakefront’s economic development and growth as well as the business districts and communities of Hyde Park, Kenwood, Oakland, Washington Park and Woodlawn. Additionally, Groupon sponsored the Silver Room Sound System Block Party earlier this year which gathered over 46,000 attendees to shop, dance and commune in the Hyde Park community.

“We’re very grateful to Groupon for their support of our recent symposium which helped bring together people from all walks of life and backgrounds from the community to chart a successful course for our neighborhood,” said Executive Director, Diane Burnham, South East Chicago Commission. “Our organization’s mission centers around job creation, community investment and economic vitality, and we couldn’t achieve any of these things without the local businesses that have chosen to call Hyde Park their home, the support of our community and all of Greater Chicagoland.”

Businesses featured in the Discover Hyde Park collection include:

Building great communities is one of Groupon’s five core values, and the company is committed to continuing to promote initiatives that help foster economic development and growth of small businesses. For more information about Groupon’s community-building initiatives, please visit https://community.groupon.com.

To visit the Discover Hyde Park collection, shoppers can visit https://www.groupon.com/occasion/discover-hyde-park. Pilsen, Beverly Hills/Morgan Park, Bronzeville, Edgewater, Lincoln Park, Uptown, Rogers Park and West Town neighborhoods have also participated in Groupon’s Discover Downtown series.

About Groupon

Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN) is building the daily habit in local commerce, offering a vast mobile and online marketplace where people discover and save on amazing things to do, see, eat and buy. By enabling real-time commerce across local businesses, travel destinations, consumer products and live events, shoppers can find the best a city has to offer.

Groupon is redefining how small businesses attract and retain customers by providing them with customizable and scalable marketing tools and services to profitably grow their businesses.

To download Groupon's top-rated mobile apps, visit www.groupon.com/mobile. To search for great deals or subscribe to Groupon emails, visit www.groupon.com. To learn more about the company’s merchant solutions and how to work with Groupon, visit www.groupon.com/merchant.

About South East Chicago Commission

Founded in 1952, the South East Chicago Commission (SECC) is a community-based not-for-profit organization focused on enhancing economic development in five neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago: Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Washington Park, Kenwood and Oakland. For more information, please visit https://www.secc-chicago.org.

Contacts

Groupon
Dana Van Duerm
dvanduerm@groupon.com
312.662.7786

South East Chicago Commission
Diane Burnham
diane@secc-chicago.org
773.324.6926

Release Summary

Groupon launches Discover Hyde Park––a community-wide campaign designed to attract Chicagoans to small businesses on the South Side.

Contacts

Groupon
Dana Van Duerm
dvanduerm@groupon.com
312.662.7786

South East Chicago Commission
Diane Burnham
diane@secc-chicago.org
773.324.6926