The challenge of finding local gems

Written by Tyler Ibrahim, Local Frequency

One way to look at the world is through a profit maximization lens. There are businesses interested in maximizing profit, and those who aren’t.

I’m sure you’ll know all about the ones interested in maximizing profit. They are excellent marketers. They understand that by cutting costs – usually by reducing product quality or using cheaper materials – they can increase margins. They then use these margins to invest in more marketing that leads to more growth and greater scale.

It’s hard to discover the businesses that are focused on improving their product or service instead of maximizing profits. It’s even harder to find the businesses focused primarily on bettering their community. Unlike their profit maximizing counterparts, they don’t have the resources to constantly promote themselves, nor are they interested in growth for growth’s sake.

We go through our days bombarded with messages from big brands and forget about the awesome spots that make our community great. If you only paid attention to advertising, you’d think the best option for Greek food at lunch is getting some tzatziki sauce on your Subway footlong. That’s a problem when we have locally-owned, authentic Greek restaurants around our city. And how did you hear about that great little café down the street? Probably not a billboard.  Probably from a friend or co-worker. The shame in all of this is that the local independent businesses that have unique offerings, are on the cutting edge, and offer higher value products/services are harder to find.

Most of us have a short list of our favourite local gems. A great spot to get ramen, a cozy diner, a small brewpub, or a neat boutique shop.  We didn’t discover them through a marketing campaign. For every place on your short list, there are a hundred that you just haven’t heard of or found yet. Our goal is to make it easier to find and frequent more of those places. Businesses that you enjoy going to and feel good about supporting.

With our app you can find those great businesses that don’t spend their days blasting you with marketing, but are busy focusing on bettering their product, service, customer relationships, and community. Our program works by helping local businesses work with each other on one common platform. They can reward local shoppers and keep those rewards recirculating within the local economy. The way it works is similar to any rewards program but for independent local businesses. The biggest difference is that it stands for more than just loyalty points – it’s about helping people make a shift in their spending to local independent businesses.

When you’re spending money at a local business, consider using our app and spending Local Dollars. They’re a way to earn rewards for yourself, while helping to reduce the payment processing fees paid by local businesses. This keeps money recirculating in our local economy and helps us all get stronger together.