Puyallup Seeks Restaurants For Vaccine Incentive Program

PUYALLUP, WA — The City of Puyallup is hoping to team up local restaurants for a new vaccine incentive program.

According to the city, the idea is to support local businesses and boost the vaccination rate at the same time, by offering $25 gift cards to patients who get the COVID-19 vaccine at local vaccination centers. The cards will be offered at the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department's Vaccination Center by the South Hill Mall and at Kirk's Pharmacy in downtown.

But before they can give out those cards, they'll need to find the right restaurants. The city says it will buy all the gift cards itself, so the program comes at no cost to the restaurant. All a restaurant has to do to take part is apply online.

The city says they will only consider restaurants that:

• Are located inside Puyallup city limits.
• Have 25 or fewer employees.
• Are not chains, franchises and are not corporately owned by companies outside of Pierce County.
• Have gift cards available for purchase.

Restaurants that want to take part have until 5 p.m. on June 21 to sign up. The city says they hope to partner with 20 restaurants maximum, though if more apply they'll use a lottery system to choose candidates.

"We know that the last year and a half has been extremely difficult on our local business community, with restaurants being some of the first to close and some of the last to fully reopen," organizers said. "The City is extremely grateful for this opportunity to support the community, once again, during this unprecedented time. By working together, we can beat this virus and move towards a full economic recovery."

>> Learn more about the vaccine incentive program from the City of Puyallup's website.

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