In the world today, where you spend your money can be a powerful and meaningful choice. It affects the quality of the item and the impact on your budget, certainly. It can also make a statement about what you value in a company, and even make a statement about where you stand on politics and social issues. However, the waters are deeply muddied when you choose a corporation with many owners. Are you endorsing the opinion of every stakeholder and the people they donate to? If you are accustomed to getting quality products, but then they get bought out by a larger company with a bad reputation, what will happen to the products you love? That is part of the reason why so many people prefer family-owned businesses.
Big and Small
It’s important to remember that “family business” is not synonymous with “small mom and pop store.” Family businesses come in all shapes and sizes, from the aforementioned small retail store to a big chain restaurant to a multifamily utility company and even big national and international businesses. If you’re looking for a family business, you can find them in all shapes, sizes and industries.
Retail
Retail is perhaps the most common place where we expect to find family-owned businesses. Buying from the small family store on main street is a great way to boost the economy of your immediate community, because family owned businesses tend to be more closely connected to and responsible for the economy in your immediate area. They hire local and buy local. If you can’t afford to support a small business that might be more expensive, there are plenty of big box chain stores that are cheap but also family owned. If they are family owned, it’s a lot easier to track who they’ve supported in the past and what kind of reputation their store has.
Food
The same principles that apply to retail apply to your local restaurants, with an added benefit: small, family-owned restaurants have greater incentive and greater ability to buy from local suppliers. Buying from local suppliers means that you’re boosting the local economy as well as going a long way to ensure that your food is higher quality and safer to eat for everyone. Think big picture: if everyone got their food primarily from local suppliers, then one salmonella contamination at one processing plant only affects one small area, not dozens of different areas across the whole country.
Repair
Thinking beyond retail and food industries, perhaps the other most common area where you find family owned businesses is repair and maintenance. All the usual benefits apply here, but on top of that anyone who’s ever taken a car to the dealership for repairs can tell you that being part of a large company does not guarantee better prices or better service. The benefit of finding a local repair-person is that their business model relies primarily on word of mouth. Being extremely good at what they do and providing extraordinary value for money is in their best interest, because it increases the odds that you too will spread good word of mouth for them.
Service
Family-owned businesses are all over the service industry as well, because the service industry in many areas is built at least in part on reputation. From family owned hotels to family owned catering services, it is the reputation of the family name that is their most valuable asset, so you can expect them to live up to that reputation, for good or ill.
Especially in this day and age, it’s increasingly important to support family businesses where you can. When you are shopping at a family owned business, you know who you are supporting and you can at least figure out what to expect from them and you can expect some measure of consistency from them. There are countless reasons to support family businesses, and a whole range of different family businesses that you can support, across every industry and service area.
