Support Local Even in Uncertain Times

Creative ways to buy from small businesses while social distancing.

Editor’s Note: While our community handles the effects of CV-19, we highly encourage you to support local, but to stay safe and healthy. In this quick-moving environment, we advise you to please check with businesses on their social media pages or websites to stay updated on their hours, offerings and options. 

You’re working from home, canceling plans with friends, hoping that concert you bought tickets to months ago will be rescheduled.

And you’re worried that all your favorite coffee shops, restaurants, book stores and small businesses will not survive a weeks-long stretch with no customers.

But what can you do? 

Actually, there are ways to help out even as you do your part to flatten the Coronavirus curve. You can:

Pay Now, Enjoy Later

No, this isn’t the time to grab a drink at that swanky bar downtown. But you can stop in to purchase a gift card. This provides cash to an establishment that still has to pay rent — and ensures that you’ll be back when times are better. Places to support: restaurants; small shops of all kinds (think gift shops, boutique clothing and shoe stores, outdoors stores); service providers (like hair salons, nail salons and spas).

Think Local for Stocking Up

Need wellness boosters, pet food, cleaning products, project supplies for some DIY work you’re planning while stuck at home? Visit your local health food store, specialty pet shop or hardware chain rather than the big boxes to stock up. They might have items in short supply elsewhere. Plus, you’re ensuring they’ll be able to keep the lights on.

Buy Local Online

Need books to keep your mind from endlessly churning? Time to repair that camping gear/bicycle/kitchen appliance? Hoping to fill the fridge with some nourishing bone broth or your favorite bottle of wine? Many local stores have websites where you can order what you need. Most will bring items to your car. Some will even deliver to your home — typically for a small fee.

There’s an App for That

Small businesses have to hustle even in the best of times. These days they are thinking outside the box like crazy. Sign up for text alerts and newsletters of your favorite shops and follow them on social media to find their latest innovations. You can download an app to order coffee to be picked up curbside. Restaurants are cooking up take-out orders. Farmers markets are supplying local food by taking called in or written orders and making curbside deliveries. Many local farmers are putting up online order forms so you can click what you like and pick up at a designated location.

Keep Paying If You Can

Have a gardener, a house cleaner, a gym membership? Even though these services can’t be used at the moment, if you have the means, keep the regular payments flowing. That way folks who depend on those checks can keep paying their bills.

Support Local in a New Way

You’re stuck at home with more time than you’ve had in decades. How to spend it? Plant a garden, knit a sweater, try a craft project, work your way through a book list. The supplies you need, you might be able to find at a small business down the street or online. Buying from a small business — even if it’s in the next state over, it can still help keep local retail running.

About the Writer:

Christina Nifong is a writer with a decades-long career profiling interesting people, places and ideas. She’s recently launched a new email newsletter focused on life in the slow lane, called Nourishing Stories. Sign up and find more of her work at christinanifong.com.