The Pub Ring

Three bars. Thirty days. One winner.

The Pub Ring is a monthly contest that sends members to three hand-picked local bars, restaurants, or breweries worth knowing about. Visit them, earn points, and the member at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the month wins a curated Pints, Forks & Friends prize basket.

Free to join. No app. Just a card, a stamp, and a good reason to get off the couch.

How It Works

Each month, PFF selects three local spots for the Pub Ring campaign. When you sign up, you receive a Pub Card. Take it to any of the three locations, get it stamped, and earn points on everything you do there.

How You Earn Points

Points Action
5 pts Pick up your Pub Card at a participating location
5 pts Any beverage purchase
10 pts Food and drink purchased together
15 pts Merchandise or gift card purchase
10 pts Share your stamped card to the Pub Ring Facebook Group
5 pts Share any visit to social media using the campaign hashtag on your Pub Card

After each visit, scan the QR code on your Pub Card, take a photo of your stamped card, and submit the quick form. PFF logs your points. Halfway through the 30-day campaign, a public leaderboard goes live on the site so you can see where you stand.

The member with the most points at the end of the month wins. The prize basket is curated by PFF and includes our favorite products, plus merch, glassware, or gift certificates contributed by the three participating venues.

For Bars and Restaurants

The Pub Ring brings motivated, engaged customers through your door for a full 30 days, not just one night.

  • PFF selects three venues per campaign. Each venue pays $299 to participate.
  • That covers your Pub Cards, stamps, a campaign poster or flyers for in-house promotion, and PFF's social media ad budget promoting all three locations to the local audience.
  • PFF runs the contest, tracks the points, manages the leaderboard, and handles all member communications.
  • At the end of the campaign, PFF writes up the winner and promotes all three venues in the Pub Ring newsletter.
  • Winners will be announced at the bar with the most contest stamps
  • Venues are encouraged — not required — to contribute merch, glassware, or a gift certificate to the winner's prize basket.

You get 30 days of consistent, documented foot traffic from an audience that came specifically because they heard about you through PFF. The ad spend is included. The storytelling is included. The community is already there.

Community for Causes

A portion of every Pub Ring campaign goes to our Community for Causes Food Bank Partners. When you participate in the Pub Ring — as a member earning points or as a venue running a campaign — you are helping feed people in the communities these programs serve.

  • Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank
  • World Central Kitchen
  • The Giving Kitchen

Interested in running a Pub Ring at your location? Contact us here.

Where the Ring Runs

The Pub Ring started in Northeast Ohio. That is home base and where the first campaigns run. Outside the greater Akron area, campaigns are run by local Fixers — people who know their city's bar scene and want to put it on the map. Fixers coordinate the participating venues locally. PFF handles everything else.

If you want to bring the Pub Ring to your city, reach out. Fixers who successfully run a local ring earn a $100 commission per campaign. You know the bars. We will handle the rest.

What Pub Ring Members Get in Their Inbox

Signing up gets you contest announcements, leaderboard updates, and winner reveals, plus:

Stories worth reading.
The people behind the breweries, the pitmasters who have been at it for forty years without a Food Network appearance, the wing spots better than anything on a Google "Best Of" list.

Field notes from the road.
Kentucky bourbon country. The Hawaiian North Shore. A smokehouse in the middle of nowhere Ohio. You hear about it before it hits the blog.

Local intel.
When something worth knowing about opens, closes, or deserves more attention than it is getting, the Pub Ring says so.

Gear we actually use.
No affiliate-first thinking. If we tell you to buy something, it has already earned the mention.

I Can Do Another 12 updates.
New episodes, location scouting, and wing discoveries before anyone else hears about them.

The newsletter goes out when there is something worth saying. The Pub Ring runs when there are bars worth stamping. That is the deal.

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Once You're In

The Pub Ring Facebook Group is where the community lives between newsletter issues. Stamp card photos, campaign announcements, drawing reveals, local intel from members who have already been in. It is private, and it is free the moment you sign up.

If you want to run a Pub Ring campaign in your own city, to be the person who knows the right bars and wants to put them on the map, that conversation starts in the group. We call them Fixers. Details inside.

Join the Facebook Group

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