Buying local CAN and WILL save our communities in Hartford County, Farmington Valley, and beyond... here is how.
Today I am writing about strategies and willpower to overcome this COVID-19 purgatory. Can we overcome this pandemic? Yes, we can! But only if we face these challenging times as a cohesive community.
Has COVID-19 left a permanent mark on all of our lives? Widespread echoes of physical, mental, and social despair cry YES. From small towns to the big cities across America and the world, no one can escape the detrimental effects of this unscrupulous pandemic. This new societal norm is causing financial devastation amongst both small and large businesses and becoming increasingly evident in the Farmington Valley. Over the weekend, my husband and I drove down West Main Street heading toward West Hartford. We decided to make a pit stop at the coffee shop in the Avon Village Center. If you live in a quaint town like Avon, Simsbury, Farmington, or Canton CT, your heart aches for these small business owners. These once always-animated sidewalks were silent. Seeing the dark windows along this once busy business district was truly devastating. The sense of community and rural living with quaint and unique shops and amenities is rapidly melting into a mere memory.
As residents of the Farmington Valley, we must now be wiser and smarter than ever in learning and inventing ways to live in the future. How? By helping our community and supporting one another! As I wrote in my previous blog about small businesses and their odds of emerging from this pandemic, I implore you to shop local and support our small businesses to keep our community alive!
While we all enjoy the convenience and fast deliveries from large companies like Amazon, we must ask ourselves this question; what is Amazon’s impact on small businesses in our communities? And if you live in any of these small towns in the Hartford County area like Burlington, Avon, Simsbury, Canton, Farmington, and W. Hartford CT, how do our small businesses and communities fit into Jeff Bezos’ “big plans”? What is a company like Amazon or Costco doing to benefit our small community-driven businesses across the country? The bigger question is; what can and must be done to keep our small business owners and communities connected and alive?
With the pandemic’s “new normal," our responsibility as citizens is to remain 6-feet apart, and the new social guidelines are devastating businesses everywhere. Let’s consider how restaurants, specialty beauty salons, and other businesses are being affected; social distancing is limiting the number of people who can be served and seated at once. These new guidelines have reduced those numbers significantly! If a small establishment can no longer fill all of its tables or chairs due to these guidelines, how will it stay afloat? Short answer: they won’t. Longer answer: they can, but only with our help and support as customers and community members. This leads me to this blog’s food for thought: before you place your next online order, think about what a local business gives back to our communities in contrast to what large distribution companies like Amazon give… Until next time.
