With an additional three-week stay-at-home mandate unleashed last week, I was tickled to stumble across an ingenious, comprehensive website called”appropriately enough”www.stayhomekc.com. Devised by the local marketing gurus at HelloBigIdea, it’s designed so you can, well, easily support local for the next few weeks (or months, you know, depending.)

For designer/creator Ashley Mahoney, she says “simple is key here. We asked businesses to categorize themselves as one of the following”Eat, Play, Shop, Book. Eat allows for food/drink options. Play allows for experiences and event vendors, even exercise facilities to submit. Shop is for those brick and mortar stores needing local support and Book is services-based businesses.”

She came up with the apropos name while watching “a live press conference from Union Station early in all of the COVID developments and noticed the hashtag #stayhomekc. Liked it. Had my laptop on my lap and thought, ‘I wonder if anyone has soaked up that domain yet.’ Turns out they hadn’t. So, I did.”

Since its inception the website has received over 600 entries with new ones being added each and every day. “I loved the idea of figuring out how to bring KC together creating a one-stop-shop to be able to access local businesses that need support right now. It’s received hundreds of shares and thousands and thousands of pageview and visitors,” says Mahoney. “Kansas City loves supporting local!”