Restaurant

I’m not trying to be a downer on my usual light-hearted blog, but I just feel the need to get this off my chest. I have tweeted it and posted it as a status on Facebook, but I think it deserves more than 140 characters. These snowstorms over the past week have hit local business hard. There was a great conversation about it this morning on Twitter among a lot of my Frederick friends. Sorry I can’t remember everyone in the conversation to give credit to, but you know who you are. :-)

Some of the ways these companies have been impacted are:

• Lost revenue from not being able to be open and shoppers not being able to get out to shop.
• Events canceled or postponed meaning refunds or delayed payment.
• Expenses from paying for snow removal or taking care of any damage the snow may have caused.
• Hourly employees who lost pay because they couldn’t make it to work or work was closed.
• Shipments to companies have been delayed causing inventory issues.
• Mail not being delivered has meant payments are not received.
• Meetings being canceled and purchasing decisions delayed.
• Let’s not forget this is Valentine’s weekend and a day that many retailers, florists and restaurants rely upon.

All of these affect the bottom line for business both large and small, but the smaller businesses are affected more due to their finely tuned cash flow system. One hiccup in the system will throw the cash flow dance off rhythm. I can completely attest to this being a small business owner myself. While being snowed in for a week most likely won’t have a lasting impact on me, things like the recession and 9/11 did. Anything unexpected that causes people to not spend money, whether for fear or being snowed in, can be crippling to the businesses they typically support.

So what can we do? Once your local governments have deemed it safe to travel on the roads, make an effort to get out to your locally owned small businesses and show them some love with you wallet. Our family did this on Tuesday before this latest storm. We wanted out of the house and decided to visit one of our favorite pizza shops for dinner. We have already started talking about where we want to get out to this weekend to eat and for a little retail therapy. I mean Little J and Hubby both deserve a nice Valentine gift after being snowed in with me all week

Finally, don’t just limit it to this weekend. It’s going to take awhile for businesses to recover, so when you have a choice on where to make a purchase or eat, look locally first and know that your purchase is really making a difference.

You know you want out of the house anyway, so get out there and make a local business owner smile.

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