Cut-price cacti and dining discounts among the offers as businesses join forces to attract shoppers

Jay Liston at J-Jays in Savile Street, Hull.

BUSINESSES from boutiques to banks and hotels to hair salons are sharing an online shop window as they work together in an attempt to build city centre footfall.

Offers including food and drink discounts, cut-price cactus and even fully-funded training are being posted on the new City Centred Facebook site with organiser HullBID confident it will grow in popularity.

Tracey Jordan, who opened The Nut Job in South Street, Hull, last summer was one of the first to join City Centred.

She said: “It can make a big difference, particularly for small, independent traders. We’re quite a tight knit community down here and we get some orders from food and drink businesses in the area. That’s likely to increase as City Centred raises awareness of what people are selling.”

Jay Liston, who opened J-Jays in Savile Street, Hull, nearly two years ago, is using the service to promote offers ranging from coffee and cake to lunch and a drink and even the meal prep service which offers healthy, nutritional, ready-to-cook meals delivered to your door twice a week.

Jay said: “We have a range of offers which we sell in our health food restaurant, home deliveries and through a gym and a shop in the city centre and we are looking for new ideas all the time. I think the offers promotion is a great move because it lets people know what is available from other businesses in the city centre.”

Another participant in the City Centred scheme is the Holiday Inn Hull Marina, which has used the community to promote offers including a discount on hotel rooms for people attending last month’s HullBID Awards at the Bonus Arena and a 25 per cent discount on food and drink for anyone attending a show at the Arena.

Nicola Shillito, Sales Manager at the hotel, said: “We are always looking to provide further incentives for visitors and residents to stay in the city centre for longer. Bonus Arena has been a fantastic addition to the city and, as we are located a stone’s throw away, we have been promoting offers for those attending a concert or an event. The way we view it is that if visitors or residents see the value in spending extra time here, they will return and, in turn, that helps all businesses in the city centre.”

House plant, homeware and furniture store Plant & Paint on Humber Street is cutting 10 per cent off the price of cacti and from the professional sector, Golding Computer Services is offering businesses the chance of funded training courses leading to qualifications in Computerised Accounting for Business.

Catherine Goble, Marketing and Events Co-ordinator at HullBID, said: “There are offers from bars and restaurants, salons and boutiques, lawyers and accountants and by putting them all in one place the aim is to showcase some of the fantastic businesses in our city centre and point people to the places where they can buy the products and services they need and save money!

“We urge the public to get behind this initiative, ‘like’ and share the City Centred Facebook page with their friends, and shop local.

“We’d also love to hear from more businesses with details of their existing offers or with new ideas, because it will benefit everybody if we can make City Centred bigger and even better and use it to attract more people into the city centre.”

To view the current City Centred offers and see more as they happen, please “like” https://www.facebook.com/CityCentredHull/

To find out more about the scheme and to submit your own offers please email Catherine@hullbid.co.uk