The CitySquares Blog

With July now in full swing, it’s time for our final update on the Buy Local Challenge. For those of you who haven’t been following it, we here at CitySquares gave ourselves a challenge to buy only from local businesses for the month of June. Below are words from my fellow CitySquares staff members.

“Even though I was apprehensive about only buying local, I actually really stuck to it aside from this past week in California…I mean lets be serious I had to try Inn and Out Burger’s secret menu and dine amongst the stars at Mr. Chows. That aside, when in Boston I got the majority of my groceries from a local store called Symphony Market and on the way back from the beach in Rhode Island on the weekends I would stop at the farm stands and buy my fruits and veggies for the week. I stopped going to Starbucks all together and now go to Espresso Royale. Even though I really enjoyed the local markets, now that the challenge is over I will probably start going back to the larger super markets, simply because they are more affordable and convenient.”  - Caitlin

“Buying local was easy in the dining out and bar scene since I live in a city. The biggest upset is that I wanted to buy flowers locally and didn’t know where a local florist was. Since I was out of town, and driving, I used GPS to find one but it was 15 miles away. I ended up going to a Shaws and spending a fortune on a floral arrangement that I probably could have gotten cheaper from a local florist.“  - Alexandra

“I am buying entirely local more successfully. I’m eating at local establishments, buying at only local businesses including Tags Hardware and Porter Square Books, I’m even buying local beers. I’m starting to really enjoy it and the more I practice this kind of Buy Local behavior the more I find myself objecting to non-local purchasing/commerce. It’s starting to just become routine. I’m not finding myself purposefully working at it as much now, it’s just sort of happening on its own.”  - Ben

“Coffee is my thing. I need to have GOOD coffee in the morning, afternoon and some evenings. I felt this was the best way to test the local waters.  Buying local meant that Starbucks was out of the picture. Enter Greenlight. The Pete’s Iced Coffee is self-poured and the cups are prefilled with ice. No frills, just coffee.  In just about any other setting this would come off as kind of a pain. However, once you take your simple coffee to the register you are greeted by  a smiling and friendly, non-uniform wearing fella who knew my name after my first visit. My morning coffee became more like what a morning coffee used to be, a daily social activity, not just a caffeine binge. The coffee was half the price as Starbucks and frankly just as strong as my Venti Iced Black Eye (One big coffee with two shots of espresso).  I won’t lie, it will be hard to completely nix the Starbucks, but Greenlight has a new loyal customer.”    - Steve

Overall, this Buy Local challenge was a success. Buying locally is something that’s really baked into CitySquares’ DNA. Because we work with locally owned businesses all day long, every day, it’s a constant reminder. And what’s fun about working at CitySquares too, is that it really puts a spotlight on the communities we work with, and the local businesses within them. Even so, we need a reminder sometimes. Buying things like toothpaste, flowers, greeting cards, groceries, things like that are all matters of convenience. We’re consumers, and we tend to not think about our consumer behaviors. But when we do, when we intentionally monitor those behaviors and try to be a bit more socially responsible with them, we find ourselves enjoying our consumer lifestyles a bit more. As Steve pointed out above, he found his morning cups of coffee to be more social and friendly, and as Ben realized, the more he altered and practiced his consumer behaviors the easier it became.

When we first discussed doing this challenge there was a lot of debate about where to buy certain products. Some of us didn’t realize how much opportunity there really was to buy locally. Ultimately, we all learned some lessons here and we’re better consumers because of it.

– Julie