How to help your local businesses during COVID-19
As we can all appreciate, the world is a little manic right now and with COVID-19, now more than ever, is the time to help and support local businesses. We wanted to provide useful tips and ideas on how you can help support your local businesses. This is a crucial time for all businesses and they need all the support they can from their local communities, to come together and ensure that they are doing all they can to help.
We also spoke with inStreatham, a Business Improvement District (BID) that was voted by local businesses back in February 2013 and voted back in again for another 5 years in 2018, about what they do to help local businesses. inStreatham explains, “We work towards creating an environment and amenities that encourages more local people to visit. We contribute to many community projects, events and festivals including the popular Kite Day, Food Festival and Streatham Festival.” With this in mind, although these community festivities are cancelled for until further notice, like inStreatham, we need to continue to support out local businesses through other various ways with the limitations that we have right now.
We asked InStreatham how they help to make a better and stronger community, they explained, “Local businesses play an important role in our communities; as well as providing retail and leisure offers, they also act as important hubs that facilitate opportunities for people to meet, share and connect.” With this in mind, it is important for us to think about the small actions that we can do, to make a big impact. We have listed some of the following below in which you can do to help support your local businesses:
Purchase a Gift Card
Companies need business more than ever, so if they are unable to provide the full service they usually would, why not buy a gift card? Various types of businesses are starting to introduce these, even if they were not something they used previously. Purchasing a gift card would help give the business the extra cash that it would need and you are still supporting them. What is even better, gift cards could be a perfect gift for a loved one, particularly for anyone working in the NHS at this time.
Home Deliveries
Although we must be mindful about not going out of our homes as much as we’re used to, it doesn’t mean that we can still enjoy some of the necessities and luxuries we had before. Why not use your local businesses delivery services? Even if some businesses did not have this an option before, this is becoming an increased accessibility in a lot of cases. Ring your local shop to find out if this is possible and if it is, get supporting by shopping online and getting a home delivery.
Forget the refund
Times are tough for everyone at the moment, so if you have purchased any tickets for the upcoming weeks/months and you are struggling to get a refund, consider the purchase as a donation to the company. All small companies need all the help they can, so any way we can donate to them is going to be incredibly beneficial to them.
The Scooploop community is here for all, if you are a struggling small business, why not join Scooploop for Business – it is free and can be a fantastic way to communicate and network with your local neighbours and other businesses.