Why You Really Should Buy Local

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

Meet a Metro Customer

I mentioned several weeks ago that we were going to begin periodically blogging about a few of our favorite customers. We always said that our Metro Car Wash Blog was not going to be about washing cars, but rather about people, our Tucson community, and the stories we come across. It seems fitting then, that Sherry Elliott would be the first that we write about. She’s been a loyal customer of Metro’s since 2003 and she’s someone we count lucky to know.

First of all, Sherry is just a very friendly and fun person. Most of the time, we don’t get to know our customers on a personal level (we like to remember names and faces, but at the end of the day, we are viewed by most people as simply a car wash). With Sherry, however, things were different. Besides the fact that she’s got a smile and a personality that make you feel (almost instantly) as if you’ve been long-time friends, Sherry also made us feel as if she was making us a partner with her in her business venture.

Sherry is a personal chef and a custom caterer, and she believes her vehicles (which she uses for deliveries and errands) need to reflect that she’s clean, neat, professional, and efficient. She uses Metro - for which we’re very proud - but even more impressive to me is how many of our employees have come to know her personally and how much pride these same employees take in making sure she looks good out on the road. This is impressive because it’s not something our Company did; it’s something Sherry was able to do with a friendly, gracious and open attitude to all of our employees. When Sherry comes by for a wash, it’s not uncommon to see her receive multiple hugs from our employees while she waits for her car.

Sherry started her own business over seven years ago. She’d been working in communications and sales for large companies and she’d become tired of the corporate life. She was a self-taught chef with a passion for cooking, teaching and making people smile, and so in 2003 she decided to combine them all into her own business venture and head out on her own.

Today, CookingSherry, LLC is a very interesting business that we hope more people will take the time to learn about and try. There are three main services that CookingSherry provides: Custom Catering, Chocolate Fountain Rentals, and a Personal Chef Service.

Sherry’s goal, when she began her business, was to be able to create an economical cooking service for individuals and families who were too busy to cook great meals at home, but who never considered that they could afford a Personal Chef.

With CookingSherry, however, the product and service you receive is simply an incredible value. First, Sherry will personally sit down with you in your home to review what types of meals your family enjoys (as well as dietary restrictions and taste preferences). She then goes to the store for you, does your grocery shopping, and returns to your kitchen to prepare 5 different custom meals which are then frozen until you are ready to use them (oh, and she cleans up the kitchen too). Each meal can be served twice, so one visit from the CookingSherry equates to 10 custom homemade meals for you and your family. Prices vary upon family size, but the cost is refreshingly inexpensive. And the food? Well, it’s healthy, fresh and delicious.

In addition to the Personal Chef Service, CookingSherry also offers custom catering from parties of 2 -200. For parties of two, she can deliver a romantic dinner to your door, or if you prefer, she can cook one for you in your home (if you’d like to pretend that you actually whipped up something yourself).

Finally, she also offers Chocolate Fountain Rentals. These fountains of chocolate goodness are pretty amazing and impressive. They’re perfect for weddings or holiday parties … or car washes. We’re actually trying to get one into our lobby this Christmas for our scholarship benefit.

Like most businesses, of course, the economy has been hard on Sherry. She’s struggled and is working hard to keep her dream going. Because business is slow, she’s actually taken on a part-time job to help pay the bills and her staff has all been moved to part-time help. But she’s not giving up.

When I sat down to interview Sherry, I was struck by how genuine and passionate she was. She says good food makes people happy, and she is intent on sticking to her vision of providing her products and services at a value price that the Tucson public can afford. Not only this, but she’s dedicated to delivering friendly and responsive customer service every day. She gets to know her clients, returns calls immediately, and works on her feet 15 hours a day. She was the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Member of the Year 2006. And in the long-term, Sherry has the further dream of creating a local Cooking School for children.

Oh, and in her free time she likes riding motorcycles, too. Yup. She has a 2007 Harley Sportster and belongs to a motorcycle club. Just in case you thought you had her all figured out.

All of the pricing for CookingSherry’s services can be found on her website at www.cookingsherry.net. If you’d like to reach her, you can do so at sherry@cookingsherry.net or by calling directly at 520-631-5201. (I've included a picture of one of her chocolate fountains below.)

We hope you’ll take the time to check the business out. If nothing else, she’s a great person to meet and know. At Metro, we’re very glad she stopped in some seven years ago and allowed us to get to know her.

Thanks for staying tuned, folks. And until next time, stay clean my friends.

-DJ DripDry

How Tolstoy Helped Our Car Wash

In the last few months I’ve been receiving an unordinary number of compliments on Metro Car Wash. It’s nice to hear; we’ve been working very hard to make our Company better. But of course, like anything that comes together, it takes more than hard work. Hard work has to be directed. I thought I’d take the time on this blog to mention where Metro’s impetus for improving our car washes came from—the unusual place we found direction. For what it’s worth, I think it can be applied to just about any business. And so maybe this can be a help to someone else too.

Curiously enough, Metro’s “business makeover” began with Anna Karenina, the novel by Leo Tolstoy. More specifically, it came after reading another great book, Guns, Germs, and Steel where the author Jared Diamond introduced me to the Anna Karenina Principle.

Anna Karenina begins like this: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The Anna Karenina Principle, based on this opening line, essentially says the following: To have a happy family, everything has to be just about perfect (there has to be love and respect, kids have to be obedient, there’s a good economic income, etc.). But if just one small thing is off, it can take away the entire shot at happiness. In other words, it doesn’t take much to mess things up!

Diamond used this principle to help describe an evolutionary trait. Metro Car Wash adopted the Anna Karenina Principle in a different manner.

We said: All great car washes are alike; every bad car wash is bad in its own way.

What did we mean by this? We decided that for a car wash to be a great business it has to be succeeding in all of the following areas:

§ A Quality Product has to be delivered

§ The product has to have a Value Price

§ Great Customer Service has to be delivered

§ The Facility has to be clean and inviting

§ The Employee Working Environment has to be fun and positive

§ And all of the above has to be accomplished while managing cost

If a car wash falls short in any one of these categories, then it can hurt the entire business. To repeat what I said earlier: it doesn’t take much to mess things up!

But thinking about our business in this manner really gave us direction. We started with that simple list and created a Plan that addressed fixing our business in any area we felt we might be falling short. Of course no one is perfect. And every business knows there is room for improvement. But by simply taking the time to write down everything that has to be in place to be a great business, we found we had a much clearer view of the path we needed to take.

That path, by the way, wasn’t an easy one. Another thing the Anna Karenina Principle did for us was to show us just how far away we were from the Company we wanted to be. It took well over a year before we felt things started coming together … and we’re still not satisfied. But that’s another thing Tolstoy is doing for us: he’s given us a measuring device that we can repeatedly match ourselves to. We see what it takes to be great and we gauge ourselves constantly to see how we’re doing in chasing that goal.

It may not be scientific. And it may not be earth-shattering. But this simple principle has helped us a ton. I hope it might help some of you.

And until next time, stay clean my friends.

DJ DripDry

Here we go ...

Well, here it is: our first blog. Maybe we’re a little late to the game. But then again, for a car wash, maybe we’re early.

We’ve given this quite a bit of thought, btw—the reason we’re blogging. Obviously, we hope it somehow gets us noticed (more). But we also just started feeling like we had something to say. Being a successful car wash company, we see hundreds of people every day, from every walk of life, in every different mood you can imagine. It gives us a unique perspective. It leads us to believe we have a little bit of a finger on a little bit of the pulse of our community. And with that being said, there is also the possibility that this Metro Car Wash blog just might be able to bring a little value to Tucson. It’s what we’re hoping for.

This is not a political site. And it is not a site dedicated to car care (although we might mention a few things about cars along the way … it is what we do, after all). Ultimately, we're a small organization in a struggling economy and we're fighting to stay alive. We're doing everything we can to improve our business, our customer service, and the lives of our employees. From that, stories are born (funny stories, sad stories, hopeful stories, and honest stories).

This blog is an effort to capture the spirit of our community, therefore, as well as the spirit of Metro Car Wash. In some ways, maybe it’s just a car wash diary. In other ways, it might become our new best tool to communicate with our customers. Regardless, we hope someone likes what they read. We'll be discussing everything from why Car Washes make America great, to why they help hurt America's image. We'll let you know why we believe car washes are a bell-weather for the local economy and why they’re a great tool for measuring a community’s attitude. We'll discuss our success stories, our failures, our business model (like Metro 2.0), our employees and you, the customers. Everything’s fair game. And we’re really looking forward to this.

Stay clean, my friends!

-DJ Drip Dry