Two Sides Now
Story By Lauren FitzGerald
Edited By Misha Bower
Amidst all the suggestions out there for ‘projects you can do while staying home,’ Lauren FitzGerald suggests the project of researching how London’s small businesses are continuing to provide their signature high-quality food, beverage and grocery services and making a small business connection a scheduled (and delightful!) part of your week.
Lauren FitzGerald is a hospitality professional and is currently the General Manager of Grace Restaurant where she uses her beer knowledge, her cocktail skills and her passion to support the natural wine movement to curate a dynamic beverage program. Lauren is an avid supporter of local food systems and the local restaurant industry. Lauren spends a great deal of her time seeking out new restaurants, new breweries and wineries and new places to buy good quality food products. A hospitality tourist of sorts, an ideal day might include a visit to a small butcher shop, a good flat white at an espresso bar, a classic burger at a forgotten diner, and a stop at a roadside farm stand to buy whatever is in season.
Fast forward to six months from now.You’re walking in downtown London, down the brand new flex street that was built to lift up the community. Little bits of refuse blow across the street and it is very quiet. You walk past window after darkened window, no lights and no life visible inside. You turn on Talbot and proceed to King street, everywhere you look you see shops that have met a similar fate. The only beacons of light and life that remain emanate from the STARBUCKS and SHOPPERS DRUG MART signs - brilliant and mightily uppercased, as though boasting their ‘essentialness’ relative to your favourite craft beer bar and localvore cafe, now bygone and shuttered. To take your mind off food, you walk down to where that small florist used to be to find a new plant to brighten up your apartment; the once bright and artsy window displays are gone and the place is empty of all greenery. You try to fill your time with vintage clothing stores, independent bookstores, shiny kitchenware shops--but you find yourself disappointed over and over because they are all gone. How could life after a pandemic feel more apocalyptic than the pandemic itself? Where is the light that we hoped for at the end of the tunnel?
You might think this picture is a little melodramatic, but part of you knows it’s a possibility, albeit one you don’t want to think about. These small shops, restaurants and cafes are part of the overall tapestry of our city; they are the dynamic flourishes of vibrancy and intention that enrich London’s character. The deeper we get into pandemic life, the more I realize the importance of minimizing trips to the grocery store or LCBO in favour of seeking out and supporting the local businesses I came to love before the world stopped turning.
When it became clear that lockdown was here to last, a question I asked myself was, “What can I do with this time?” Instead of taking a course or learning a new language (or scrapbooking or rearranging furniture or, or, or…), I’ve been immersed in connecting with my favourite local businesses and looking forward to the weekly deliveries that so conveniently come to me. Last week it was jam-filled sourdough donuts from Whole Grain Hearth. This week came with some organic, low waste pantry staples from On The Move Organics, fresh greens and vegetables from Loco Fields, immune boosting tonics and a healthy prepared meal for two from Rebel Remedy, and a grocery delivery filled with ethically raised meat, fresh housemade pasta and low-intervention wine from Grace Restaurant. When it comes time to order cleaning supplies, Reimagine Co will have my back. If I need makeup or toiletries, I’ll call on Purdy Natural. Coffee? Las Chicas and Locomotive Espresso have got you covered. When my partner runs out of beer, Storm Stayed and Beerlab! are both offering delivery. With this list, and many more not mentioned yet, I can cover all my needs and then some--and the absolute best part is that every single dollar I spend goes to passionate and deserving small businesses that desperately need our support. The big box stores and chain restaurants will be around when this is over. The futures of the small businesses that contribute to the identity of our community are much more uncertain.
There are at least two compelling reasons to support small businesses: to breathe life into the ideal that humans can create and consume good and beautiful things, and to put money into an economic sector that, as of 2015, employed over 8.2 million Canadians (Government of Canada). This is a huge portion (70.5%) of the private labour force, comprising people taking massive financial hits and at risk of losing their jobs altogether. There are some businesses that continue to be considered ‘essential,’ operating with reduced staff in an attempt to scrape together enough to keep themselves going during COVID19’s financial fallout. Some restaurants have changed their operation overnight to accommodate the increasing demand for deliveries. Other restaurateurs have transformed their business into a grocery delivery service to try to fill the increasing demand for grocery essentials delivered safely to your doorstep. These are extraordinary measures that match this extraordinary time--but even these measures might not be enough. Some small businesses are busy and thriving in this new system, while others are struggling to make even 30% of their customary revenue. Businesses in either case are warily waiting for the other shoe to drop, for things to get worse before they get better, for more extreme distancing measures that could remove any possibility of revenue.
Right this moment we have the opportunity to vote with our dollar, to tell small businesses and their staff in our London community how much they mean to us. You require essential things like personal care products, alcohol, food, cleaning supplies--and the small businesses in our community can provide you with all of it, so buy from them. Committing to this will have a more far reaching impact than you might imagine. Small businesses in the hospitality industry tend to work as a community and supporting one of them usually means you are supporting many. For instance, most independent restaurants purchase their food and beverage products locally, thus supporting and participating in the local food community. The more our local food community is strengthened, the less we will have to rely on food shipments from other countries in the world and the less we will have to worry in the future of supply chains being cut off.
Above and beyond the urgency of a COVID19 economy, ‘supporting local’ must transition from being a trendy buzzword to being a day-to-day reality. In adjusting our daily lives to find purpose and direction in the days, we have an opportunity to adjust our habits as well. Supporting small businesses might mean stepping outside a certain grocery store comfort zone (although, how comfortable would you say grocery stores are these days?)--but the reward for doing so is fresh food, beautiful beverage, high-quality personal and cleaning products and a sense of connection to your community that comes from knowing exactly who you’re buying from and where your money is going.
We are at a pivotal moment in our history and each and every one of us has a say, no matter how small, in the direction we want to go and in what kind of community we want to live in when this is all over. The stark, grey picture I painted for you at the beginning doesn’t have to be our reality going forward. We have a voice. We have power. We can learn from this and we can come together to build a stronger, more locally focused community. All is not lost. Let’s fill those empty shop windows with life, light and movement again.
So, London, what’s for dinner?