In a country that runs itself on small, family-owned businesses, it seems ridiculous that there aren’t any restrictions on where big corporations can build their stores. Across the country, giant companies are branching out of the city and into the suburbs, and consequently small businesses are being trampled.
Small businesses have an extensive array of benefits far greater than any big corporation, both for consumers and communities. The sense of authenticity and coziness when you walk into your local coffee shop or sandwich joint can’t be replicated into 20,000 branches. Members of the community build a personal relationship with the owner, whereas if you were to try to get the know the owner of Starbucks, you’d probably have to fly to who-knows-where Seattle and wait five months for a meeting.
Big corporations simply lack the care or quality of a family owned company where the owner aims for quality in the ingredients versus how many tons of rice they can ship over from China for the cheapest price. The company brings money directly into the community while a giant corporation hires tons of employees on minimum wage and then spends millions on shipping supplies to thousands of city. But those costs are only a fragment of what the chairman’s and CEO’s pocket.
For example, produce is far better when bought from a farmers market where you know that the food was grown locally and picked when ripe. I’d rather eat my apple in peace than question how in the world it got so shiny and where it was between the time it left California to when it got to me. Or worse, having to question where the pomegranates came from when I walk into Jewel in the middle of January.
Big corporations are simply not as reliable as small businesses, and although they may create more jobs, these jobs are often low paying and have little to no benefit for the community. Employees working in Apple’s “Apple Care” program get paid very little in comparison to people with that amount of tech knowledge working for other companies.
I also find it a little strange when I’m driving through a cute little town with antique shops and tons of family-owned stores and then out of nowhere a gigantic Costco appears. Now don’t get me wrong, I, like any true American, love buying unreasonably large portions of cereal and pita chips and then throwing half of it away when they turn stale. But it truly makes me a little sad to think about what will happen to all the local farmers as mega-stores like Costco keep popping up.
Giant corporations should be kept in their own business parks, and far away from the innocent and unique businesses that are owned by families with children. Especially because the CEO of any mega-corp wouldn’t even blink if a few of their stores were shut down, whereas shutting down a family-owned store could be the defining line between whether or not someone’s child will be able to go to college.
Although their prices may be cheaper and their products may have more variety, the quality and community benefits of buying a product from a small business far outweighs that of a giant corporation. And for those one hundred something mega-companies that exist today, there are a million small businesses that are being trampled by companies like PetCo and Costco. If this pattern continues, our countries economy and giant chunk of production will rest on only a couple hundred businesses, which for me, is very scary.