Small Business Saturday for Real Change

Today is Small Business Saturday. You may have never heard of it in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it’s much more important to your local economy. I don’t want to bore anyone with numbers but I’ll start with a quick statistic from the 2018 Small Business Economic Impact Study: “For every $1 spent at a small business, an average of $0.67 stays in the community."

From what I can tell, Black Friday numbers are drastically down (personally I don’t think the doorbusters are nearly as good as they used to be), but with that being said I would guess you have some extra money saved up for Cyber Monday, which is becoming much more prominent. Disclaimer: I’m never someone to tell people how to spend their money, but if you can and or want to, today would be a good day to get out and spend money at your favorite small business. For once you actually have a legit excuse to spend, haha.

Yes, sometimes small businesses are more expensive but believe me, it’s not to rake in a boatload of cash, it’s simply to make reasonable profits at a localized level. The massive retailers can sell 100 coffees across 100 locations all over the U.S. within a matter of a minute, while the local small business has to sell 100 at that store over the course of hours, so they aren’t making nearly as much money in such a small amount of time. 

Today I went to the Lil General Convenience Store, which is near my neck of the woods in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. This, in particular, is an example of the higher prices for the same product, I went to actually get a donut, but not just any donut – an Allie’s Donut (another local small business here in RI), which is royalty in these parts, but it’s about a 35 minute drive to North Kingstown and there’s a line out the door.

So this local shop wanted to attract customers by carrying Allie’s for $1.70 per donut instead of Allie’s 99 cents, which for me is so worth it because I honestly probably save more than the 71 cents in gas anyway. 

I’ll be honest, I totally went for work purposes, and it was definitely not to have this amazing donut.

Cheers.