11/29/2023
Nailed it!
Thoughts on the eve of Small Business SaturdayâŠ.
The curse of the small business owner is that we are constantly comparing⊠yeah, yeah, comparison is the thief of joy and all, but we just canât help it. We put everything into our dream, we eat sleep and breathe it. We do everything in our power to make our business the best it can possibly be. So, I canât help but to get this uneasy feeling in my stomach every single time I pass this scene, which is nearly every single day. I took this photo at 3:27 on a Thursday afternoon. I couldnât help but to count the vehicles in line going all the way up to the drive thruâŠeighteen in all in this one particular snapshot in time. And because I must be a ma*****st of some sort, I decided to check our restaurantâs sales as soon as I got home. Our sales read $31.27, and one ticket, not at 3:27, not even from 3:00-3:30, but from 1:30pm-4 pm.
And listen, this isnât meant to be an anti Chick-fil-a post. I understand itâs quick and super convenient, and most people already know exactly what they want before even pulling up to the drive thru.
I think this is actually part of the problem. We, as consumers have become so used to super quick and convenient (i.e. Amazon, Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks) thatâs it's just become the expected norm and us small business owners that canât possibly run our business this way, just keep working as hard as we can to barely keep treading water.
We canât hire 30 people to work a lunch shift so that you can get your lunch in a few minutes or less. Your local boutiques and specialty stores canât price their goods in such a way that it will be shipped and on your door step the very next day (with no shipping cost to boot).
Weâre all owners, but weâre also the marketing managers expected to have fresh content that will catch potential customers attention in three seconds or less, weâre the customer service agents that help with your problems, weâre the PR department that gets the word out about our business and we do all of these things on our own, to the best of our individual abilities because thatâs just what small business owners do.
We donât have bowl games named after our businesses, most of us donât have snazzy apps that make it incredibly quick and convenient for you to buy our products, and we rarely even have the extra funds to take out billboard and magazine ads.
When we buy the products to make your food, did you know they are generally as much or sometimes even more than you pay for yours at the grocery store? Guess who gets the steep discounts? Itâs the chains and franchises. More volume equals better price. When you order food from us on one of the national delivery app platforms, that platform gets THIRTY PERCENT or more of that sale. Guess who pays out a significantly lower percentage of each sale to the national delivery platforms? You guessed it, the chains and franchises that do a much higher volume than we could ever dream of having.
Sometimes it piles on and often it seems that we are constantly fighting an uphill battle against something, whether that be Covid or inflation or the particular season weâre in, and perhaps thatâs why driving up on this scene day in and day out discourages me so much.
On the other hand, one of the absolute best parts of my job that brings me so much pride and joy is when someone brings an out of town guest to our restaurant and says, âI just had to bring my friend to try out my favorite restaurant in town!â
And we all do this, right? We want to show off the gems of our community⊠the one of a kind modern mercantiles, the quirky vintage shop down the street, the restaurant where youâll impress your out of town friend when you walk in and the owner immediately greets you by name.
But the thing isâŠ. We canât only think about these places when itâs convenient, we have to think about these places when it would be much easier to purchase off of Amazon instead and have it delivered to our doorstep the next day and when it would take no thought at all to join the Chick-fil-a line thatâs eighteen vehicles deep, because we know our order by heart and we know that those 30 employees will still have us out quicker than having to run into the local place.
Maybe this requires a mindset change on all of our part. Instead of joining that drive thru line, maybe we call up the local restaurant and place our order before we leave the school pick up line so it will be ready when we get there. Maybe we actually have to walk into the restaurant to get the food. Maybe we make an effort to browse our local shops before running into Target to grab a bouquet and a candle for a friendâs birthday.
Thereâs really no question, it just takes a little bit more work to intentionally support our local businesses and to support them OFTEN, not just when itâs convenient. But if we canât be brought to do this, more and more of our awesome, one of a kind spots that can be found only in our community will disappear and we will lose the very heart of what makes our local communities unique.
So this Small Business Saturday, we wonât be discounting our delicious, scratch made meals to try to bring in more business. Instead, we will hold on to the hope that our community will choose to support us, not just on Small Business Saturday, but every day, because of all that we (collectively as small, independently owned businesses) bring to the table and have to offer our community.
THANK YOU to all who intentionally and thoughtfully choose to eat and shop small at every opportunity and thank you to all of you who have read our perspective and will give it some thought. We truly love our Edmond and OKC and wish you all the happiest holiday season.
