Advice needed please

[+Emily-Moo]

Hi - I am thinking about organising a local event cache for the 7 souvenirs of August challenge. There are quite a few geocachers nearby and we have talked about meeting up for a while, so this seems like a good push to get an event sorted. At the moment the weather is very unsettled, so I think it is better if we meet indoors. There is Weatherspoons here, that is suitable for children and disabled, and has nearby parking. Does this meet the commercial criteria? Although there would be no compulsion for everyone to buy drinks/food I think people would feel that they were expected to. I would check that the Weatherspoons was happy with this before posting. Thanks for reading :-)

[+niraD]

I'm not familiar with Weatherspoons, but I've attended events at pizza places, sandwich shops, burger joints, cafeterias, and other restaurants. See also:

Event Cache Guidelines in the Help Center

Event Caches in the Geocache Listing Requirements / Guidelines

 

The key point is that while you can't include "advertising, marketing or promotion", you can include "basic information about the location", and there can be charges associated with the event or its location.

[+NanCycle]

Hi - I am thinking about organising a local event cache for the 7 souvenirs of August challenge. There are quite a few geocachers nearby and we have talked about meeting up for a while, so this seems like a good push to get an event sorted. At the moment the weather is very unsettled, so I think it is better if we meet indoors. There is Weatherspoons here, that is suitable for children and disabled, and has nearby parking. Does this meet the commercial criteria? Although there would be no compulsion for everyone to buy drinks/food I think people would feel that they were expected to. I would check that the Weatherspoons was happy with this before posting. Thanks for reading :-)

 

I don't know what Weatherspoons is, but I did one in a local Mexican restaurant. They gave us their back room and I told them that there might be people coming in who didn't buy anything; of course, they weren't real happy about that, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. Turned out it wasn't an issue because everyone who came did buy dinner.

 

I worded it like this:

 

If you just want the smiley, feel free to sign in and visit for a while,

but if you are going to stay and occupy a table, please plan to order food and/or drink.

 

You should be okay with the commercial criteria as long as your cache page doesn't read like an ad for the establishment.

[+Emily-Moo]

Thank you NanCycle and niraD for replying, that is very helpful. Weatherspoons is a pub chain in the UK, that is family friendly. A rule in the UK is that if an establishment sells alcohol they have to provide glasses of water for free, so if some people didn't want to buy a drink there is that option. I don't think it will be a problem though, as I suspect most, if not all, will be happy to buy a soft drink or a coffee. I will now approach the manger to check that it is OK with them :-) Thank you again