PTA Restaurant Week is a two-week dining promotion run with school PTAs and the restaurants around them. Participating restaurants publish a special Restaurant Week menu, and 20% (or the rate a location shows on its page) of the value of every Restaurant Week item they sell goes straight to the PTA of the school they have partnered with.
The model is NYC Restaurant Week, which started in 1992 and has since spread worldwide. What is different here is where the money lands: not in a marketing budget, but in the hands of a PTA a few blocks away — funding the field trip, the library books, the classroom supplies that the district budget does not stretch to.
It costs a school or a PTA nothing. It has never cost a school or a PTA anything, and it never will.
How it worksFour moving parts, and the PTA never handles a fundraiser stall.
A school signs up
The PTA lines up 10–15 restaurants near the school — we help with the invitations.
Restaurants build a menu
Each restaurant publishes a Restaurant Week menu — prix-fixe or à la carte — for the two weeks of the edition.
Families eat out
Dine in, take out or pick up between November 2–15, 2026. Order anything from the Restaurant Week menu.
The PTA gets paid
20% (or the rate a location shows on its page) of the value of those items goes from the restaurant straight to the PTA. We never touch the money.
Our partnersThe businesses paying for the banners, the printing and the advertising, so that every dollar a restaurant donates can go to a PTA.
Locality Bank
A Fort Lauderdale business bank built by local bankers, lending to the companies that keep South Florida working.
PlayVS
The high school esports league — official competition for students in thousands of schools across North America.
PIPA — Portuguese International Parents Association
The Portuguese-program parents of Ada Merritt K-8 Center, who asked their favorite restaurants to join by name.
Miami Be Happy
A Miami community and events network connecting local families and businesses.
What each side does
The school & PTA
Get the principal’s sign-off, invite 10–15 neighborhood restaurants (we help), hang the banner at the entrance and the car line, tell your families through the channels you already use, and report each restaurant’s donation total back to us at the end.
The restaurant
Publish a Restaurant Week menu for the two weeks, hand the PTA 20% of the value of every Restaurant Week item sold. There is no fee for this first edition.
PTA Restaurant Week
Directory listing, co-branded social assets, digital advertising and PR outreach for the edition, plus printable menus and table tents for any restaurant that wants to print them. We never hold or handle the donations.
Emerson Silveira
Born in São Paulo, Emerson Silveira moved to New York City in 1992 and studied computer science and design at Parsons while working in Manhattan’s fine-dining rooms. Back in Brazil he studied marketing at Anhembi Morumbi and, in 2005, launched the country’s first national restaurant-week event — Restaurant Week Brasil — growing it past 1,500 restaurants across 19 city editions a year, with sponsors including Mastercard and Visa.
In November 2014 he moved to Boca Raton. PTA Restaurant Week is the first edition of that idea rebuilt around school PTAs, starting in his own South Florida backyard.