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Save Gas, Save Time, Save Money
Save Gas, Save Time, Save Money by shopping and dining in Vermilion. Support your community by shopping Vermilion first. While you may not be able to do all your shopping in Vermilion, by choosing to shop Vermilion first you save gas, time, money and help our local economy by keeping your money re-circulating in your home town.
Sometimes seemingly small acts can make a big impact. Take family spending. You may think you’re just fulfilling your family’s wants or needs when you shop or dine out. Think again. The choice of where you spend your money makes a big difference to your community. Spending your money with local businesses puts your money to work directly helping your community’s economy—just one way your community benefits from its home town businesses.
Those businesses use goods and services of other local businesses—re-circulating your money about three-and-a-half times longer locally than if you spend it at an out-of-town big box chain. This creates greater community health and prosperity. Now imagine the impact on our community if everyone shopped locally. You can stop imagining and help make it a reality.
"Shop local first—to maximize the impact of your dollars and inject potentially millions more into the local economy through doing your shopping, dining out and other business with local businesses."
From rural to urban areas, an ever-growing chorus of citizens aments losing a sense of community. Before developing shopping habits, we typically choose to do business where we perceive the best value for our time and money. But perceptions only are as sound as the scope of information creating them, and we humans like short-cuts. Thus, it's as easy to accept as truth the omnipresent big box corporate chain ads bombarding us daily as to miss information about the values small businesses provide us, both personally and in community.
There are many well-documented benefits to our communities and to each of us in choosing locally owned businesses. Here’s why.
Locally owned businesses:
- Spend more money at other local businesses helping the local economy grow – creating a “multiplier effect” - rather than this money “leaking out” through remote corporate headquarters and centralized purchasing departments
- Pay more in local and state taxes than outside corporations
- Are part of what makes Vermilion unique and distinctive, attracting tourism from surrounding areas and out of state
- Make up the largest employer category, nationally and locally
- Give better customer service overall
- Have owners that live in the communities they do business in and are free to make decisions based on local needs
- Require less public investment than large employers seeking tax breaks or special zoning consideration.
It is not always possible to buy everything you need from locally owned businesses, but if everyone purchased one more item locally when they shopped, the effects would be tremendous. The point of this campaign is to encourage people to Shop Local First when choosing where to buy goods and services!
Local Food First
A local food system is made up of many elements. It includes the regional farmers, ranchers, fishers, and food producers as well as the restaurants, retailers, and institutions that serve food. It also includes the end consumer of those products—you, because local food is produced for local consumption. There are many benefits to a local food system...
More Taste: Local food means better taste and more nutritional value. The closer you are to your food source, the fresher and healthier that food is for you and your community. There’s no taste like home.
Strong Agricultural Economy: Local food means a strong local economy and the viability of local agriculture. Local farms and food producers are crucial to a healthy and diversified economy. While dollars spent with large corporations almost immediately leave the community, dollars spent on local food products circulate within the community eight to fifteen times, drastically improving the value of your purchase.
Less Waste and Pollution: Local food means fewer food miles and dramatically reducing transportation, days of refrigeration, and tons of pollution and packaging. Unlike most food in the US that travels 1500 miles and from seven to fourteen days in transport to reach your plate, local food is usually harvested within 24 hours of the time you buy it. How fresh and healthy would you feel after a week on a truck?
Preserving Unique Character: Local food means working farms and fishers that connect us to our land and preserve our home’s rural character. By preserving farm land, we are guaranteeing that our rural landscape remains beautiful and productive and that future generations will have the opportunity to work in environmentally sustainable and culturally valuable industries like food production.
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Save Gas, Save Time, Save Money
Shop Vermilion First!
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Shop Local...
Save Gas - Save Time - Save Money
