Seems plausible. What about if you record a 15 minute video about their services, how great they are, why you are or are not using them, and why other people are using them. Then reach out to their pr + info@ + founder emails and give them your thoughts. Then perhaps they will look into what you can provide and take "the ball in their court" and come to help out.

If anything, it proves that you are serious about providing value and eyeballs to their services.

Good luck!

Good idea! I'm definitely going to ping the companies I listed, but I hadn't thought about a video.

Of course! I took a quick look through meetup and found the following: http://www.meetup.com/ProvEntrepreneurs/

If you look on the left hand side of the page you'll see both sponsors and companies who give perks to those who attend the providence entrepreneurs meetup group. I would also call these people to see if they would be interested in your deal. Given that you are an entrepreneur in providence and they reached out to the organizer of a meetup group focused on entrepreneurs in providence, I'm sure you can make a super strong case.

Good luck!

You should check out what this guy is doing: http://www.iwearyourshirt.com/

It's remarkable the difference I noticed in the comment's sentiment between your blog and HN. Good luck!

The things a poor founder will do...

I was going to downvote you for belittling the article, before I noticed that you're the submitter and author yourself.

Good luck with that idea. I have no clue if this can work, but I think there's nothing wrong trying it and I applaud the creative ideas (including the lasagna..).