I noticed a few comments from people recently about the Starbucks coming to Bridgewater and the Popeyes Chicken opening yesterday in Bedford that they wouldn’t be going because they are not local businesses.
And I think they are wrong.
Maybe, for some strange reason they want to support “Mom and Pop” owned local businesses, but Starbucks and Popeyes still hire local people and their biggest expense has to be salaries paid to local people to work there. They certainly don’t fly in people from other parts of the country to fry chicken or make expensive coffees.
I often wonder how somebody local who gets a job at a franchise or big box store feels when their friends and neighbours claim they won’t shop there because they support local. And chances are those boobirds are making their comments known by typing into an overpriced smartphone made in China and sold by a company based in the States.
Also, very few Mom and Pop businesses start operating without the help of a loan, usually from a bank whose head office and shareholders are not local. Should we not spend our money there if it’s going to pay off the loan?
If a business is located geographically on the South Shore and doesn’t exclusively use robots to serve me, then that’s my definition of local. What’s yours?
