The city I live in is called Valparaiso, like Valparaiso, Chile, but we all call it Valpo for short. --Holy, comma, Batman!-- It means biggest port in some native tribe in the Americas, I think. Anyhow it is an old country/farm town that has grown from a Back to the Future type 50's community. Average income here is really high for the state because we have a lot of retired professional athletes, doctors and lawyers from the surrounding cities like Gary, and a ton of executives from the City. We also have 4 or 5 college campuses. Since there is so much money here per capita everything is corporate just about. Much more than anywhere I've ever lived. The thing is it is liberal money for the most part. Only the poor people vote republican in it. So we are one of like 3 key counties that carried Barrack in the general and turned Indiana blue. Probably the most actually because a lot of people here know Obama or Michelle from work, and there were so many campuses to recruit volunteers and an endless stream of money for the campaign. I had never thought about how incredibly influential my area is on politics before but you can at least partially thank my community specifically for not getting healthcare reform and the general movement in politics to put corporate interests above civic interest: We are why you have Evan Bayh in the Senate (at least had - hooray!). Does that paint a clear picture for you?
We also have an underclass obviously and a strong middle class (my demographic) because of all the steel mills and factories on the lakefront, and BP oil has a growing presence. So we do have one of the strongest union-oriented populations in the country too. That isn't relevant to this post, but I didn't want to purely paint us in that negative light.
Since I was in high school, two cities closer to Chicago, we've lost the majority of our locally owned institutions. I mean even the gas stations and bakeries. The gas station chain that we had forever that was only in like 10 locations but catered to community needs was called Family Express and they've turned into a major regional corporation that goes into cities buy a station across the street from the most popular mom and pop with the lowest price in gas and undercuts them by 20-30 cents for about a year when they buckle and sell to the corporation across the street. I grew up with the kids of that family and it went from caring about the community to just sucking the money out of your pocket. Panera bread, Starbucks, and Walmart have stamped out all but one bakery in the entire region with the likely exception of Gary (I don't go there so I don't know).
Corporations are sneaky when they come in here and will set up a subsidiary and a facade for the area as if they were a small company like Fair Oaks Dairy and Farm. That is the place I took my Grandma on the field trip with her nursing home and said I'd post pictures of, but didn't. I didn't know until I went there that they were a super mega corporation, because their packaging is so deceptive. They own most of the corn fields around here now. All up and down the interstate from Chicago to Indianapolis and the interstate and state road that both run east/west. So they are getting corn subsidies up the ass, buying out local farms and killing jobs, setting up dairies and pumping the cows full or corn (which isn't natural and isn't healthy for them) and somehow mark their chocolate milk (what I bought from them) organic. They own 10's of thousands of acres of farm land and probably bought out most of the dairies too, but that is pure speculation.
Anyhow if I want to eat healthy like get a bad assed salad, in Miami/LA/Chicago/Indianapolis there would be a ton of places I could go. Vegan places, vegetarian places, deli's, local diners (we do have 3 local diners), and just a bunch of places before I'd have to go to Cheesecake Factory or something. Well here, I'm shit out of luck. If I want to eat something kind of healthy I pretty much have to go to Arby's to get a Market Fresh Sandwich (not healthy at all) or McDonalds for a Salad (and then a healthy dressing from the store). I could do any one of those moderately priced corporate places like Applebees or Fridays, but I hate those places, except for the bar at Fridays.
Last night I thought I would get an ice cream cake to take to a party on Sunday night and I wanted to see if places other than Baskin Robbins, Dairy Queen, or Coldstone had them and some site came up in Texas where they were talking about a billion local places and it got me thinking and I remembered Valpo Velvet from high school, and the first thing that caught my attention was a big Anti-Walmart rant on the page I got sent to. Then I saw their twitter and it was over. Here is just a part of their Walmart rant:To all of our loyal customers: That note above is actually from Wal-Mart's website, quite contradictory to how they actually do business. A lot of people have asked us to keep you updated our situation at Wal-Mart. After months of trying to keep our ice cream in Wal-mart, and months of Wal-Mart moving us, taking us out, and putting our product in the back room, they finally told us that Corporate did not want us in anymore. So we are officially out of Portage, Michigan City, and Valparaiso, a blanket decision....with no explanation, but it is not hard to notice that they put a cheaper product on the shelf, one that definitely will make THEM a higher profit. This was our biggest account, and our sales were strong. We know a lot of our loyal customers went to Wal-Mart to get our ice cream and we just want you all to know that it certainly was not our doing to have it removed. We did everything right, but ultimately greed won out. We are not sure if there is anything that will change the decisions of people sitting down at the corporate office, but at least we can let them know that their rash decisions actually affect people in America. We have come to the conclusion that Wal-Mart claims they support the local guy, but in reality, that is not true. They have also kicked out other local businesses out of their stores in the last couple of months. They make profits the way they want to, and then give back to the community on their terms.
I guess they buy everything they can locally for their ice cream and stuff as well as the little sandwich wrap/carry out/lunch type store they have that I didn't know about before. To my surprise the Brown Family still owns it and the owners actually work their store and come up with new menu items everyday, like crab bisque soup (yum!). It appears that they are foodies. Now I just got extremely high with my friend and went to school to talk care of some applications, test results, and shit like that and forgot about going there. I'm hoping to go later today when I do get hungry and I can comment more about the actual store later, but the point of all this is, I didn't know there were places like this still in my area. It looks like they try to prop up other local restaurants and distributors too and they all advertise for each other for free. That is where the idea came from for me to want to build something that competes with the corporations. I'll go into what later.
I'm interested in any webistes or personal stories you have with dealing with local companies/distributors, and if you know of any directories to find them. Maybe some small business resources you might now. I want to get down to the average cost of utilities and stuff in my plans. I'm obviously going to start very general first, but eventually that's where I want to go. I just want the fictional company to support community in every way possible so it can almost function as a community center too. I just want inspiration for stores, and I know for a fact that Portland is one of the most community focused cities in the country with tons of small shops. Unfortunately the recession has hit me hard so I had to cancel the plans I had for going out there (for a different purpose). Now I have to try to learn from a distance. Anything at all would be helpful on successful shops, especially ones that are new versus carrying a customer base for a few generations.
Side note: It says that Valpo Velvet has been offered to come out with a pint line, but I didn't see if it was national or not. If it is maybe you'll see their product over the next 5 years or so. I wonder if they'd sell out with all that money if it went down that way... I hope not bc I think this is going to be my new favorite spot to hang out and use their wifi. What should I tag this?Edit: I forgot to add that I didn't go to local shops to support local business in other cities. I just went because the food was always better. Damnit, there was one more thing I wanted to add but I just forgot. I guess I'll just post it in the comments when it comes back to me.
