FRISCO — Officials are revamping the Love Frisco, Shop Frisco campaign this winter to help support local businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign has relaunched under the title Love Frisco, Winter Frisco, allowing community members to purchase gift cards usable at participating stores and restaurants in town as well as receive a bonus card as an extra incentive to shop locally this holiday season.

“What has always been part of the fabric of Frisco are our diverse locally owned businesses,” Mayor Hunter Mortensen said in a news release. “The thread that holds this fabric together has always been our support of the unique, eclectic and independent businesses in our community. But now it has taken on even greater meaning because the commitment to buying your holiday gifts in a small, family owned business and ordering takeout twice a week at your favorite restaurant means that you are making the well-being of those businesses and the people who work there a priority.”

Frisco launched the shop local campaign in June, injecting $125,000 of funding into the program to offer the gift incentives. Of the original seed money, almost $54,000 remains, which the town will use to kick-start Love Frisco, Winter Frisco.

The campaign will work similarly to this summer, wherein community members can purchase a gift card and receive a 33% matching bonus up to $125. The bonus gift cards are available at LoveFriscoCo.com through Jan. 15 and will expire March 31. Purchased gift cards don’t expire.

“This virus is impacting so many aspects of our lives negatively that council really felt like giving back to the community, its businesses and employees was a way to have a profoundly positive impact,” said Vanessa Agee, Frisco’s director of communications. “… Supporting this is a way of expressing that this is incredibly important to us, but it’s also a concrete way of putting our money where our mouth is. There’s nothing wrong with some free money that encourages people to abandon online shopping and make a heroic commitment to buying your gifts locally.”

Love Frisco, Winter Frisco also will be running alongside this year’s Wassail Days, which will be taking place from Saturday, Nov. 28, through Dec. 6. The celebration will look considerably different this year due to COVID-19 as the town moves away from more traditional elements like wassail tastings at local businesses, the Soup Cup Classic, caroling on Main Street and free sleigh rides.

Instead, the town has come up with a number of other ideas to get community members hopping to different shops around town. The event kicks off with Small Business Saturday on Nov. 28, and shoppers can get a free Wassail Days gift bag with purchases of $50 or more. Prosit, Rising Sun Distillery, Next Page Books and Nosh, Foote’s Rest Sweet Shop and Mountain Dweller Coffee all will be handing out free cups of wassail with qualifying purchases.

Residents also can find Marvin the Moose hidden in 10 decorated windows along Main Street, each with a different wassail recipe. Marvin also can be found “slightly off the beaten path” with a past Wassail Days winning recipe.

In lieu of visits from Santa this year, parents can sign up to get a call from Santa during which kids can tell him what they want for Christmas. Santa also will be taking surprise laps around Frisco in a Jeep courtesy of Groove Silverthorne.

“Wassail Days has always been about more than a hot beverage,” Frisco Events Manager Nora Gilbertson said in the release. “This event draws attention to all of the unique businesses that make Frisco such a magical place with a backdrop of snow, stunning scenery and twinkling lights. It is more important now than ever to spend locally when you are shopping for holiday gifts so our favorite Frisco businesses are around in 2021 to offer wassail tastings once again.”