So, you want to support small businesses right now? Here’s how:
I’ve been involved with small businesses my whole life. My parents, aunts, uncles, and countless other relatives have owned, operated, and/or worked in small businesses.
Growing up around them fueled my passion for entrepreneurship, ultimately leading me towards venture capital and my involvement with Opportunity Fund (which is launching a COVID-19 Relief Fund). The staggering truth is that nearly half of the US GDP comes from small businesses and most of that is at risk right now due to COVID-19.
So, like many of you, I’ve been devastated by the impact the widespread (albeit necessary) stay-at-home orders have had on our beloved restaurants, cafes, salons, bars, boutiques, fitness studios, and more.
After weeks of tracking, I’ve come across many creative and inspiring ways that we, as community members who are able, can support local businesses during this time.
I imagine one day we will look back at these times and remember ourselves for how we acted. On that day, just as today, I’ll applaud everyone who acted swiftly to create and support new resources in this hour of need.
Below is the aggregation of these initiatives, please let me know if there are others you have seen that I should add!
1. Gift Cards
One of the fastest ways to get cash in the hands of small businesses is by buying their gift cards. Though gift cards hold some risk for both the company and the customer if the business falters, they are easily understood and readily available. Several new sites have popped up aggregating gift cards from your favorite restaurants:
- Help Main Street!— Directory of nationwide local business gift cards, started by the teams at Lunchbox and Eniac Ventures.
- Give Local / Support Local — Directory of local gift cards, started by Justin Mares and Brent Summers in Austin, TX but quickly expanded nationwide and joined forces with USA Today.
- Save Our Faves — Directory of Bay Area gift cards, started by wife-husband duo Kaitlyn and Mike Krieger (Instagram cofounder). A few worldwide replicas are listed here after they open-sourced their codebase.
- Rally for Restaurants — Directory of gift cards from Toast’s clients.
- OpenTable Gifts — Directory of gift cards from OpenTable’s clients.
2. Memberships
Digital subscriptions are on the rise, but are only just starting to make a dent in the offline world. Memberships are a great way to give restaurants cash upfront without creating a liability for them (like gift cards do) and getting additional perks for yourself like discounts and unique rewards.
- ChowNow* — already one of the largest online ordering platforms for restaurants, ChowNow just launched a feature to let their clients create memberships. Their businesses get 100% of the revenue upfront in exchange for a 1 year discount to the customer. They’ve already seen hundreds of restaurants around the country sign up.
- With Friends — this company enables any type of local business (cafes, restaurants, venues, bookstores, art galleries, etc.) to generate membership income in return for discounts and special benefits.
- Dining Bond— this initiative gathered restaurants nationwide who are willing to issue dining bonds. A dining bond is essentially a gift card (and comes with similar or even greater risk) but offers a discount, something like paying $100 for $120 of value.
3. Pledges and Tipping
- Neighbor Pledge — While name brand small businesses can gather meaningful community support, the even smaller ‘microbusinesses’ could also use your help. Launched by Dustin Rosen and Alex Loukissas, Neighbor Pledge lets you pledge any amount to any business with a Google Maps page. The money gets collected after they reach a certain amount in pledges and claim their business.
- Pledge by Ring — Similar pledging initiative launched by Ring, with a deeper focus on pledge “groups” and neighborhood geographical support.
- Service Industry Tips — Essentially ChatRoulette for tipping service industry workers! Nationwide initiative started by volunteers in Chattanooga, TN. Pick a neighborhood and randomly get assigned a person who you can support directly via Venmo.
- Virtual Tip Jar — Another nationwide (and international!) virtual tipping platform with support for both Venmo and PayPal.
- New Birthday Generator — if your birthday is during quarantine, this site will help you pick a new date to celebrate and pair you with a small business who will give you a special birthday treat!
4. Online Ordering Campaigns
While dining rooms have been shut down, many restaurants and businesses are still running with delivery or takeout only operations. You can give them your patronage in this new way immediately and most are taking immense safety precautions while preparing and packaging food now.
Very importantly, keep in mind that most restaurant ordering platforms charge a substantial fee to the restaurant, so it’s best to order direct from the restaurant or via ChowNow* which charges 0% fee (more here on OrderBetter.com).
- Restaurant Hero LA — list of LA restaurants that are still open for takeout / delivery.
- Bay Area Restaurants — list of Bay Area restaurants that are still open for takeout / delivery.
- Frontline Foods — New organization delivering meals from local restaurants to medical care workers in hospitals. Win-win to support both medical professionals and small businesses. Live in dozens of cities and you can support with a donation or bring it to your own!
- Chef My Kitchen — Chat with a professional chef who will help you cook up a gourmet meal in your own home using your existing ingredients. Money goes towards the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation COVID-19 Relief Fund.
- #TeamLunchChallenge — launched by LA2050, #TeamLunchChallenge is a way to maintain camaraderie while teams work-from-home and also support a small business. Once a week, they are buying a weekly team lunch from a local restaurant and challenging you to do the same.
- #TakeoutTuesday — trending on Twitter and Instagram, #TakeoutTuesday is a weekly push to get people ordering takeout from local restaurants on, you guessed it, Tuesdays.
5. Grocery
Many restaurants are quickly turning their operations into delivery/takeout only and adding grocery or pantry options, selling things like dried pastas, sauces, family style dishes, flour, coffee, beans, and toilet paper + gloves. This is a convenient way to stock up your pantry with unique goods and also support a local business in real time.
- LA-based options I’ve seen: All Time, Felix, Go Get Em Tiger, Guerilla Tacos, Highly Likely Cafe, Jon & Vinny’s, Kensho, Kismet, Neighborhood, Sharky’s, Uncle Paulie’s, Terroni, Tesse, Zinque, and more here.
- Long list of LA-based pantry options here and wholesalers selling direct to consumers here.
- Additionally, if you look closely at the menus on your food delivery apps, several restaurants have added grocery boxes to their offerings.
- Please send me any others who are currently running pantry-style offerings or lists you’ve seen that I should add.
6. Retail and Merchandise
Buying merch from your favorite small businesses is an additional way to support them right now where they receive the benefit of a healthy margin (merch is higher margin than food). For small boutiques and retail businesses, eCommerce may be the only way to support them right now since many aren’t deemed essential businesses.
- Buy direct from your favorite place’s own website if they offer eCommerce.
- Bulletin* launched #SupportTheStores which aggregates boutique brands and eCommerce purveyors.
- Apart-y launched to help you order unique goods and services from creative businesses in your area across categories like floral, food + bev, gifts + paper, and more.
- The Platform, a shopping center in LA, has launched their own eCommerce site to support their tenants in selling their goods and services virtually.
- Low-ABV spirits brand Haus is launching cobranded apéritifs with restaurants around the country. 100% of the profits go to the restaurants today and the bottle ships to the customer in May.
- Shop in Place DC launched to help DC residents find both essential and non-essential items from local businesses.
- A team at RGA launched Merch Aid in NY collab’ing with local businesses to sell merch.
- Global commerce platform Elliot launched a Virtual Mall to shop from eCommerce brands in a unique, visual way.
7. GoFundMe
GoFundMe is a charitable crowdfunding platform. Many small businesses have turned here for donations to support their staff during the shutdown. You can search for your favorite local business, suggest they create one if they haven’t already, or browse from the ones that are already listed here. GoFundMe is also running a general Small Business Relief Fund if you’d rather distribute your donation across multiple businesses.
Separately, if you are a small business owner, here are a few resources I’ve come across that may be beneficial to you right now:
- An important decision right now is to decide whether or not you’d like to keep your business open during this time by moving into delivery/takeout and/or grocery business using platforms like ChowNow, Doordash, Caviar, Postmates, Ordermark, UberEats, Square, Shopify, and others. Many states have relaxed regulations for the time being allowing things like to-go cocktails from bars, etc.
- Fanbank has a very easy way to set up virtual gift cards without the need to use their platform long term if you don’t already have those in place. Use the code FREE+SMBRLF. You can also explore offerings from Square, Toast, OpenTable, Shopify, and ChowNow but they require you to be customers of their platform.
- If you have not listed your gift cards on any of the above sites, fill out this form and I will help get you distribution onto those platforms.
- Consider joining the InKind+ network which is an aggregator of a few small businesses into one shared gift card platform.
- Patreon has some advice on innovative ways to keep your business going and productive during this time, including launching your own membership model through Patreon (or ChowNow). Here is another article with some similar, creative ideas during this time.
- Rapid Help is a simple site to let you power memberships or donations for your business. They are adding new tools soon, as well.
- Duke’s Center for the Advancement of Entrepreneurship compiled a robust, searchable database of grants, loans, and other capital relief sources that are helping entrepreneurs respond to COVID-19.
- Here are the best overviews I’ve seen on how to simply apply for the SBA stimulus package loans: SBA page, Forbes article, Goldman Sachs overview
- Facebook and Google are both offering advertising credits and cash grants to small businesses impacted by COVID-19.
Thanks!
Please let me know if I’m missing any great initiatives I should add.
[*Disclaimer: I am an investor in ChowNow and Bulletin]
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