A downtown Evanston street with shops and a high-rise. Photo: Eric Fredericks from Rancho Cordova, CA, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
More than a dozen Evanston businesses were competing in November 2013 for one of twelve $250,000 grants in Chase’s Mission Main Street contest. The final stretch ran through Friday, Nov. 15, the deadline for each entrant to collect 250 votes from customers and fans online and stay eligible. A panel of experts was to choose the twelve winners in January 2014.
Rex’s Place, a dog boarding and daycare business on Ashland Avenue, had already cleared the vote threshold. MyChild, a software company, was close behind. Voters could back as many businesses as they liked, once each.
Who was in the running
The Evanston list covered food, pets, retail and services:
- Feast & Imbibe, a caterer that also hosts pop-up dinners around Evanston and the North Shore.
- Greenwise Landscaping, an organic lawn care and landscape firm that had appeared on HGTV’s Yard Crashers.
- Perennials, a longtime gift shop at 2022 Central St.
- A Walk in the Park, which offers dog walking, small-group daycare and training.
- Hip Circle Studio, 707-709 Washington St., a dance and fitness studio founded by Malik Turley.
- Rex’s Place, 2120 Ashland Ave., with 11,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor play space and cage-free boarding.
- Happy Husky Bakery, 2601 Prairie Ave., which bakes dog treats on site.
- Edzo’s Burger Shop, 1571 Sherman Ave.
- MightyNest, an Evanston-based online seller of non-toxic children’s products and housewares.
- Now We’re Cookin’, 1601 Payne St., a cooking school and shared commercial kitchen.
- Beholden Photography, run by photographer Chime Costello.
- MyChild, an online tool that lets preschools and child care centers share daily updates with parents.
- Hazelbaker & Lellenberg, a literary agency whose clients include the Conan Doyle estate.
How the contest works
The program is run by Chase with Google. Winners receive $250,000 in cash plus a trip to a marketing workshop at Google’s headquarters. Public voting on social media narrows the field, and the panel then weighs business plans, growth plans and the likely benefit to the local community.
For the Evanston entrants the exercise had a payoff regardless of the outcome: a reason to talk to customers, and publicity in the weeks before the holiday shopping season. MyChild was also among the startups scheduled to pitch at the Northwestern University Startup Showcase in downtown Evanston that same week.
Program details: NBC News coverage of the Mission Main Street grants.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
