#lovelocals

Local dissonance: (n.) when you know that shopping locally greatly benefits your community and neighborhood, but don't trust the real independent shops enough and end up compromising by shopping at a mega-chain that stamps "local" on the box

Sometimes we reach an impasse in our judgement. We love the idea of supporting our community's local businesses, but they are sometimes just...subpar.

The Whole Foods and Trader Joe's brands are trustworthy and they do great things for the local farmers by stocking their products--which makes us feel good and want to shop there. Nothing wrong with that at all. But we tend to forget that Whole Foods have pushed a lot of independent grocers and co-ops out of business.

There is nothing wrong with shopping at a large chain--especially one as socially conscious as Whole Foods. They are incredibly well managed, clean, and bright--which, and let's be honest here, some of the local shops are not.

But is there a way we can support our neighborhood shop owners with not just our money, but advice and feedback to help them stay competitive? We can be a bit candid and say to a shop owner, "Hi, I live around the corner and I would love to shop here if you could just..." (i.e. clean up your aisles...or, tidy up your shelves,...or not have so much things cluttering the space"

After all, if our local shops get better and more competitive, don't we all benefit?

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ps. If you think that this is too confrontational, that's true. It is. But really good shop owners will take the advice to heart and appreciate it. Others might curse you off (but then you wouldn't shop in that store anyway...and with local competition as it is...they wouldn't be in business much longer).