Youth Commission recognizes teen friendly business

Are you looking for a new local place to grab a bite to eat?

The Saratoga Youth Commission is awarding the Teen Friendly Business Award to La Cueva, a Mexican restaurant on Prospect Road which will be offering any free drink with the order of a meal to teens.  The discount is expected to be offered from late March to early May from 4 to 7 p.m.  To get the discount, students should bring a student ID card and ask for the Saratoga Youth Commission’s TFBA discount.

“The purpose of the award is to promote the downtown [and] Saratoga businesses to teens in the area,” junior and Youth Commissioner Anu Sreedhara said.  “The store benefits by gaining more business, new customers, and receiving publicity by articles in the newspaper, or announcements at schools and on the radio.”

The commission, a group of 11 teens who are elected by the City Council to serve as representatives of city’s young people, started giving out the award two years ago after hearing about it at the Youth Advisory Council Attack, a youth commission convention.

“We got the idea from the San Carlos Youth Commission at the YAC attack who used the award as a tool to promote certain areas in their city,” Sreedhara said. 

With the award still relatively new to the youth commission, they have yet to define an effective process for selecting a winner.  In previous years, the commission has sent members to speak with various businesses in Saratoga to ask if they’d like to participate.

“Communication with the businesses can be tricky,” junior commissioner Jane Chang said.  “We prefer to speak to the manager about the award and often times they aren't in or don't get back to us.”

When everyone reports back and a list of contenders has been made, the commission evaluates all of the businesses and the deals they would offer and votes on the winner.

“The youth commission awards a business based on various qualities [with] the main quality being teen friendliness,” Chang said. 

This year, the commission involved the new Saratoga Chamber of Commerce Youth Advisory Council in the process of selecting the participating businesses and created a poll on facebook to allow Saratoga teens to vote for their favorite.

The Teen Friendly Business Award has been given out twice before, to the Bell Tower in the spring of 2011 and to Yolatea in the spring of 2012. 

“We've had both success and failure with TFBA,” Sreedhara said.  “We hope that the third try will be amazing.”

The award is only one of multiple ways that the Saratoga Youth Commission is seeking to out to the community, another way being through the Walk-One-Week event. 

“WOW is a week week-long event we put on at an elementary school to encourage the students to walk or bike to school,” Chang said.  “The event honors Earth week, reduces traffic at the school, and builds rapport between the school and the commission.”

Last year the commission held this event for the first time at Argonaut Elementary School with great success.  The principal noticed about three times as many children walking or biking to school during that week than a normal week, according to the commission adviser Adam Henig.

“We had so much success with WOW last year that we decided to hold it at two schools this year, Argonaut and Foothill,” Chang said.  “Both WOW weeks will be in April.”

The commission holds regular meetings that are open to the public on the second Tuesday of each month at the Warner Hutton House.  The current members represent at least five schools in Saratoga, including Bellarmine and Lynbrook, and they are only in session during the school year.  Applications are available on the Saratoga Youth Commission website.