Clever Ideas, Inc.

We are Clever Ideas, Inc. (CI), a marketing and finance company that has been serving the restaurant industry for over 20 years. We provide imaginative ways to improve your restaurant's business by reaching new customers as well as nurturing loyal customers. We also pioneer creative financing programs that continually set new standards in the restaurant industry.

CI's founder and CEO, Lee G. Suckow, has been involved in the restaurant, hotel, and travel marketing business for over 25 years. Realizing that restaurants were in need of creative financing options and innovative marketing methods, Lee founded Clever Ideas in 1977 and developed several programs specifically designed to help meet the financing and marketing needs of professional restaurateurs. Two of the most popular programs developed by CI are Dining Dollars® and LECARD®.

CI began helping restaurateurs with their marketing efforts in 1977. As a franchisee of a major hotel guest publication, CI sold advertisements to restaurants. The publication targeted out-of-town hotel guests, to drive new business into local restaurants. To assist restaurateurs in paying for their ads, CI developed a dining certificate program, called Dining Dollars. The certificates were sold to consumers at a savings off their face value. Participating restaurants accepted the dining certificates as payment for meals, and these certificates, in turn, paid the restaurant's advertising account balance.

Recognizing that consumers want discretion when it comes to dining certificates (viewed negatively by the consumers as "coupons"), a charge-card-based savings program was created in 1990. This new program, LECARD, offers cardmembers of a major charge card 20% savings off their meals at establishments enrolled in the LECARD program. The restaurants accept this charge card as payment for food and beverage, and these payments are applied to the restaurant's account balance. As part of the LECARD program, participating restaurants are listed in a nationwide dining directory and Web site, which cardmembers use as a guide to the restaurants at which they can receive their savings.

To this day, our various restaurant financing and marketing programs enable you to tap into your future sales to provide ready cash for your marketing plans, or for any other improvements you may have in mind. We also offer other creative financing programs through custom agreements with individual restaurants.