Gilmer Chamber refuses to “cancel” Taste of Ellijay

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Not canceled, but not the same. It seems to be a trending theme in the last two months of events like Taste of Ellijay are being amended to work around the viral outbreak, quarantines, and distancing.

Gilmer County’s Chamber President and CEO Paige Green released a video on social media three days ago speaking about Taste of Ellijay Week. Instead of one day downtown, 2020 will see a whole week of social media posts, updates, highlights, and photos of the flavors and foods that Ellijay provides.

Chamber Communications Manager Caitlin Neal said that the Chamber did not want to completely cancel many people’s favorite event of the year. Most events like this have planned “rainout days” to reschedule the event if needed, but with the sheltering and quarantining, even that day was unsure of viability. Neal said they wanted to find some option to make the event still accessible. “We just didn’t want to not have a Taste of Ellijay,” she said.

With many restaurants doing curbside, delivery, or take options. But some are also having to work off limited menus due to the situation. A natural response is to connect citizens with the event to those restaurants who are struggling through this virus or others who are just reopening.

Neal took it a step further, however, as she said the Chamber is taking all the stress out of finding a restaurant as well. Instead of the common argument asking ‘where do you want to eat?’ Neal said the Chamber has made a Facebook and Instagram filter for randomizing Ellijay’s Tastes. The Taste of Ellijay filter will get you started into the week easily, randomizing and deciding for you on where to go.

With testing a beta testing, the filter is already been viewed 11,900 times and captured close to 1,400. With the event not starting until tomorrow, these statistics are all from preview testing and beta runs.

But filters, social media, and online efforts are still not enough for our Chamber as Neal expressed plans for more outside of restaurants like chalking information on the sidewalk in addition to other ideas. The entire campaign is not only helping a favored event to survive, but also to rally citizens to support local businesses amid the Coronavirus outbreak.

As the week continues and we follow up with the event, the Chamber will be hosting and resharing posts of their own as they curate the mostly online campaign for Ellijay. Follow the #TasteOfEllijay on social media outlets for more as well.

New food business birthed in Ellijay from viral shutdown

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ELLIJAY, Ga. – Amid the shutdown during the coronavirus outbreak, a new business has cropped up this weekend in Gilmer serving those at home through a new, shelter-friendly style of food service.

No, they’re not cooking, but people on social media have already started commenting and sharing experiences from this new business known as Ellijay Eats. Taking a similar model to some delivery services popularized before the shutdown, they say, “We are a new service created to help support the local restaurants in Ellijay, GA.”

Supporting restaurants and offering delivery to citizens, this entire business adds a “no-contact” style delivery service in and just outside of the twin cities of Ellijay and East Ellijay. They have noted that in these early stages, their is a set range of delivery. Early stages because the business has almost cropped up over-night due to concerns over the virus.

Even now, the owners are still working details out. One example as they said, at the time of this writing, is that they were unable to do alcohol sales deliveries due to ID checks as they haven’t figured out a process for it yet. Also, an expanding list of supported restaurants to deliver for is another limit they are looking to break. The business model mimics other delivery services that have been popularized, but this service is completely contact free.

Commenting on their own creation, their social media page stated, “The current situation is a shelter-in-place restriction due to coronavirus that makes it a challenge to support our restaurants.” They have created thei own website and facebook group in a matter of days. Indeed, the new business hasn’t even been open for a week. Making it among the first, if not the actual first business started in the area post-outbreak.

The business is owned by partners Molly Elmore and Mitch Silvius according to posts. Elmore said in her introduction, “Ellijay GA is wonderful mountain town, with many amazing independently owned restaurants that were not prepared for a quarantine situation. The vast majority were not set up to take online orders for local delivery.”

Elmore said the business was created to support local restaurants while also honoring the shelter-in-place order that has come from Gilmer County, Ellijay, and East Ellijay.

Chamber creates new “Chalk Ellijay” event amid isolations

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ELLIJAY, Ga. – Building, coordinating, and energizing a social function can be quite difficult, but doing one amid widespread quarantines and self imposed isolation is a completely different order, such as “Chalk Ellijay.”

Gilmer County’s Chamber of Commerce has taken on exactly that task as they began a new event over the weekend. After an earlier video post from President/CEO Paige Green promising to help coordinate resources and business in the time of need. But, the video ended on a very different note.

Green said the Chamber’s two locations, the Downtown Welcome Center on the Square in Ellijay and the main office just off 515 in East Ellijay, now have baskets of chalk. What they are pushing to do with this chalk is building community and a neighborhood feeling by using the chalk to “Chalk Ellijay.”

A later post offered more details stating,

“(We get by with a little help from our friends.) In an effort to help lift our community’s spirit, we invite you to chalk your sidewalk or driveway with an encouraging message, snap a picture, and post it using #ThisIsEllijay so the community can see! Need chalk? Visit the downtown welcome center or Chamber office! We have chalk inside buckets for you. (Please only take one or two and leave some for your neighbor!) want to go the extra mile? Leave an encouraging message in the driveway of an at-risk/elderly/immune compromised friend and give them a call afterwards to let them know you’ve been by. (Let’s maintain social distancing 💪🏻) We will get through this together in heart.”

Chalk EllijayThe idea of the chalk use is simple, but social media has been flooded over the last week from across the country with stories and videos of people do small things to build greater feeling and community.

From a man playing music in the common garden of an apartment complex for people to list to from their balconies to signs and gifts of people visiting elderly relatives outside the windows of their homes and apartments.

The local step is incorporating far more than just a few select groups though. The Chamber said, “We are here to support our community and lift the spirits of those around us… We have always said that the Gilmer Chamber is a family and now it is time to show our community what this family is all about!”

People are starting to take to social media, posting their own chalk art and messages, with even a few local businesses and restaurants joining in, too.

Chalk Ellijay

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