Mainstreets Annapolis Partnership is hoping to sweeten the pot just a little bit for Restaurant Week.

Working with the city, the downtown group is offering Plates and Perks, an incentive to not only attract more diners to the event, but to hopefully get more people to return downtown.

The new program is offering at least one day of free parking and discounts at several downtown retailers.

Mayor Josh Cohen said February and March are typically slower for downtown businesses and it was a great idea to link another promotion onto the already successful Restaurant Week.

“It’s a great opportunity to take advantage of an existing customer base,” he said.

Here’s how it works: Have breakfast, lunch or dinner at a participating Restaurant Week restaurant and receive a Plates and Perks voucher.

Each voucher gets you one day of free parking in March in either the Knighton or Park Place garage.

It also gets you discounts at more than 50 downtown retailers during the month of March.

And you can get as many vouchers as you like—as many times as you participate in the Restaurant Week specials.

“We wanted to try to capture all those restaurant ‘foodies’ and have them come back and shop during the month of March,” said Sharon Kennedy, of the Mainstreets Annapolis Partnership.

For more information and a complete list of participating retailers, visit www.annapolisvip.com/public/perks.