Kansas City Restaurant Week, an annual event during January, will run from Jan. 11 through Jan. 20. Each participating restaurant will have a special menu for KCRW diners.

This event includes about 200 restaurants in the Kansas City area. Ten percent of the proceeds will go to a selected group of charities, including The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City, KC Regional Destination Development Foundation and the Greater KC Restaurant Association Educational Foundation.

The restaurants participating in the event will have special multi-course lunch and dinner menus that range anywhere from $15 to $33. The reservation spots fill up for these restaurants fast, so KCRW suggests making reservations as early as possible, making them for non-peak dining times and, if possible, avoiding weekends. They also have an app called KCRW to help make reservations, find restaurants and create a wishlist.

KCRW features a huge variety of restaurants from barbecue, like Q39 or Jack Stack, to seafood like the Bristol Seafood Grill or Bonefish Grill. For a complete list of options, all the restaurants participating are on KCRW’s website along with the locations available and the menus. Senior Gretta Allen went to Rye in Mission Farms to take part in KCRW and said she loved it.

“The atmosphere was soothing and exciting because there was a lot of commotion but the lights were dimmed so it was nice,” Allen said. “I have gone in the past and enjoyed it, and I might be going back later in the week.”

During this event, KCRW chose three charities to donate the proceeds to. This year’s charities are The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City, KC Regional Destination Development Foundation and the Greater KC Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. The Boys and Girls Club was added this year to the charity list, while the other two charities were some of the founding beneficiaries of KCRW.

“I really like that I could eat out and make a difference,” junior Madi Brown said. “I went to Maggianos and they had their special restaurant week menu. The restaurant was packed but still had a fine dining atmosphere and great food. I loved it.”

Junior Nora Weir currently works at Funhouse Pizza, which is a part of KCRW. The amount of people who came in was crazy, according to Weir. It was a peak time for the restaurant and there was a constant stream of people coming in and out, according to Weir.

“We had almost zero takeout orders all week,” Weir said. “We just had a bunch of people wanting to eat in.”

KCRW is a great way to explore new restaurants around Kansas City at affordable prices. Since the prices at most restaurants include an appetizer, main course, and dessert, customers can have multi-course meals at a cheaper price. KCRW has a huge variety of locations and menu types, so almost everyone can find a new restaurant to try out while simultaneously giving back to charity.