Q: Do businesses pay a membership fee to be featured on the A-List?

A: No. Businesses featured on the A-List do not pay any sort of monthly or annual membership fee. If they did, we feel that the integrity of what we’re trying to do would be compromised, as has happened with other local “Best of ” lists. Businesses do, however, pay a small, one-time setup fee which compensates for our time gathering their information and creating their profile on our site, as well as a photography session for inclusion in their profile.


Q: How do you make money if you don’t charge businesses a membership fee to be featured?

A: We make our money primarily from the sale of Green Cards. This allows us to provide an extremely high quality advertising medium to our members at no charge, while providing residents and visitors of the Brandywine Valley with a very valuable discount card that can be used over and over at hundreds of local businesses. This way everyone wins.


Q: How do you check the quality of each business before featuring them on the A-List?

A: We utilize a number of methods to ensure that each business on the A-List meets our high standard of quality. After utilizing one or more of the methods below, in addition to other methods, each business is hand-selected and invited to be featured on the A-List.

• Mystery Shopping - In many instances, we check the quality of these businesses by sending a mystery shopper, or by shopping them ourselves. Given our high standard of quality, this is often the best method for determining the quality of a business.

• Word of mouth referrals - We take recommendations from the consumers who have used these businesses. However, given the fact that people’s opinions can vary greatly, we require a number of positive referrals for a particluar business before featuring them on the A-List.

• Consumer reviews, trade journals, feedback forums, and other publications and websites - We keep on top of consumer review publications and websites, as well as other local editorials and lists that rank the quality of these local businesses. However, we do understand that the downside to this method is that the reviews are only as reliable as the company that published them. That’s why we are very careful about who we listen to.

• Trusted sources in industries related to the business in question - If, for example, we’re looking to feature a disc jockey, we would ask for referrals from event planners, caterers and other like businesses that deal with disc jockeys on a regular basis. Then, once we’ve gathered this information from multiple sources, we would make our decision based on these reviews.


Q: Why don’t you feature local franchises on the A-List?

A: It’s true, some franchises could be considered local businesses. But if we chose to feature those businesses, we’d be left with the messy job of determining which franchises are “local” and which aren’t. That’s why we decided to exclude them altogether.