You here it all the time these days: Buy Local! Support your local businesses! Locally owned and operated! It’s become the mantra of small commerce. A battle cry.
But here’s the question: what does “buying local” really do for you? Does it honestly help your community? Is it better? Is it the right thing to do?
How does supporting your neighborhood business, as opposed to a large company out of Boston, really impact Tucson? Impact you?
Because when you think about it, job creation is job creation. Right? If you go to any restaurant, you’re helping to support local jobs. And that stands true whether it’s a local bistro or a large chain. Correct? It all puts money back into Tucson’s economy.
So what’s the big deal? Is buying local just a gimmick? A sneaky way to guilt you into supporting small shops? Is it like your mother asking you to please be nice, to invite the nerdy kid to your party?
I think this is a valid question. And (surprise, surprise), I think I have an answer.
In my opinion, there are three main reasons to buy local: better service, community involvement, and local profits. I’m sure there are more, but these were the ones I could easily come up with using Metro Car Wash as an example (again, surprise, surprise). I understand we are probably biased, but just the same, I hope the following helps to validate Tucson’s cry when we shout: “Locally owned and operated!” We just can’t help ourselves. We love the sound of it.
Better Service
OK, I’ll say it right away: not every local business offers better service than a large chain. That would be completely unfair to say and a gross generalization. You can get good service anywhere; you can get bad service anywhere. My point is, overall, I do believe there are a few factors that tend to tip the scales in favor of local businesses when it comes to quality of service.
First off, I think a local owner has a better understanding of the immediate market. Every city is different. Economies are dissimilar. Some places are hard on their luck, while a few are booming. Large corporations rely on feedback from outside firms or special divisions within their company to assess the temperature of these markets and to then “fit in” to what the community wants. The local business owner, on the other hand, lives it.
At our car wash, for example, we knew the right time to simplify our menus, to lower our prices, to improve our value – not because of research, but simply from dialogue with customers. Even our use of Facebook and Twitter is more conversational, a two-way street with local consumers. If we expanded beyond Tucson, this would become significantly more difficult to manage, we would lose the intimacy with our customers and as a result have less of an understanding of the market’s wants.
But being local can improve service in more subtle ways too. As an example, I think it can often mean more involved training and enhanced mentoring, each of which can lead to better customer experiences. At Metro, for instance, the owners have weekly meetings with the staff. This setting is more like a classroom; service concepts are taught, homework is given. But even more than this, the owners work with the managers and employees, expectations of how to handle customers are taught by example, by owners on site who know just how important each customer is. Employees pick up on this (they become our friends, in some cases, they feel like family). And the business as a whole improves.
Along these same lines, having an owner’s feet on the property also speeds up customer feedback when it comes to complaints, suggestions, or requests. At Metro, for example, if you want to talk to the owner … you can! You can usually find one of us walking the site. And if you email Metro from the website, it’s an owner that will get back to you, usually within 24 hours.
You just won’t get this from a larger company. Because the truth is, the local owner has more to lose. He or she is waking up every morning with their hard-earned, (personal) savings on the line. That’s real motivation. Pure and simple.
Community Involvement
A lot of large corporations donate big sums of money to good causes, which is certainly something to respect. But just as local ownership means a better understanding of the market, I believe it can also lead to a better understanding of a community’s needs.
Donations to large non-profit organizations are wonderful. But these are also the organizations that have access to large grants and other forms of assistance; these are avenues smaller, local organizations don’t have. The truth is, in economy like ours, it is the local charities and non-profits that are struggling as much as anybody. And local businesses have the best understanding of those needs.
At Metro, we have a great fundraising/community partnership program. I won’t go into details here (they’re available at our website), but suffice to say, we partner with almost twenty local charities, both financially and as volunteers. We award a significant number of Annual Passes every year to local heroes, teachers, and volunteers in Tucson. We’ve established our own scholarship with Pima Community College, sending one local student a year to one full year of schooling at Pima (and we raise money for it by turning our car wash into a haunted theme ride at Halloween). This isn’t to toot our own horn; there are lots of local businesses doing even more. The point is: local businesses feel the community; they understand the city; and they’re better able to serve and give back (to what is most needed). In our opinion, that’s one very strong reason to go local.
Profits Stay Local
I think this one is important. Jobs are jobs, but in a big corporation (not from Tucson), profits do NOT stay local.
When you shop at big box stores, when you eat at chain restaurants, you may be supporting local employment, but the profits are going somewhere else. And profits, dumped back into a local market, can do wonders for our little economy.
Not only this, but local businesses are also more apt to use community banks. And because community banks are also local, the interest they earn stays local too.
At Metro, we not only create jobs for Tucson, but any profits are also kept here. We believe strongly in keeping it local; we bank local, we buy supplies locally. Other car washes, like Simonize, are headquartered on the East Coast. The company Mister Car Wash isn’t even American (it’s Canadian, though their wash offices are in Tucson) and their sources of funding are foreign.
We’re not saying these companies are bad (they are not). But it is a good example of the contrast.
Conclusion
I guess here’s what we’re saying: When you buy local, there is more than meets eye. We’re not advising you to never shop at a big, monster store. The truth is, it’s getting harder not to (as the little guys disappear).
But beyond the character of the local bistro, the neighborhood flower shop, your friend’s car wash (me), there are a lot of other things going on too. Profits are circulated back into Tucson, local charities are identified and helped, employees are cared for on a one-on-one basis, and you, the consumer, begin to receive better personal service in an increasingly bland and generic world.
OK, I told you we were biased. But just so you know, we really do care about you (and your car). And when you think about it, that may be the best reason of all to keep it local.
Thanks for listening folks! Stay clean my friends.
-DJ Drip Dry
