With Her Dine-LI Facebook Group, Alyssa Guidice is Connecting LI Restaurants to the Foodie Community
By Emma Ehrhard
Something is always cooking in Alyssa Guidice’s life.
As if a job in wine and spirit sales and running her own baking business don’t keep her busy enough, Guidice, 30, also manages the popular local Facebook group, Dine-LI.
While studying baking and pastry arts at Suffolk Community College, Guidice took her first step into a well-rounded career in the food and beverage industry. She started her business in 2012, A Pound & A Half: Cookies and Cupcakes, operating out of her kitchen in Hicksville.
After graduating from Suffolk Community College, Guidice obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management from SUNY Delhi. Post-grad, Guidice set her sights on the beverage industry. She spent some time in a few different roles, working for well-known companies such as Arizona and Tito’s, before landing her current job as wine and spirits sales consultant for Opici Family Distributing.
While working as a wine sales representative for Empire Merchants in 2019, Guidice noticed that restaurants and food businesses were lacking in community connection, likely from the lack of a forum to build relationships on. She set herself a goal to “connect owners and consumers on the same platform in a positive way” and created the Dine-LI Facebook group.
She says that being so well-rounded in the industry encourages her success in her role as a connector of restaurants to foodies on social media.
“I’m seeing 6-10 restaurants a day,” she said. “I know what their hardships are, their struggles are. It gives me a middleman position.”
Dine-LI went live in 2019, inviting food lovers, chefs, business owners, and the like to share a space for recommendations, reviews, questions, and more. It strives to keep the Long Island community informed about trends and struggles of the local restaurant industry. It was an instant success, achieving more than 2,000 members on its first night. The group has now grown to close to 43,000 members.
Guidice has since enlisted the help of a small team to assist with running the page, which can be demanding alongside her two other jobs. Dine-LI is a venture motivated by her dedication to community, as she does not make money off of the group.
Dine-LI’s policy on positivity is what sets them apart from other recommendation/review pages. All group members are welcome to post, but every post is checked by Guidice and her team to ensure no negative opinions are shared.
“It’s a restaurant empowerment page over a review page,” she said.
Her social media presence gives Guidice the opportunity to give back to the community. Each year, the Dine-LI team organizes a farmers market for charity, welcoming a large variety of food and beverage industry vendors. The last market took place in February 2023 at the Samanea Mall in Westbury, raising $20,000. In total, Dine-LI events have raised over $80,000 for charity over the course of four events.
She was also involved in the recent Long Island Pizza Strong fundraiser, where over 100 Long Island pizzerias donated $5 from every pizza pie sold on Wednesday October 25th to raise money for the victims and families of the Farmingdale High School bus tragedy.
In the future, Guidice looks to continue hosting in-person and charitable events through Dine-Li, and dreams of expanding Dine-LI to a wider market, hopefully inviting foodies from New York City.
Emma Ehrhard is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
