Small Business Saturday supports local South Bend businesses

SOUTH BEND, Ind - Businesses throughout Michiana participated in Small Business Saturday today, offering deals, coupons and promotions.

The holiday season is all about giving gifts to the ones you love. Black Friday allows anyone and everyone to buy those gifts at a cheaper rate. And Small Business Saturday, just a day after Black Friday, allows those shoppers to buy locally and invest in the local community.

From Centennial Place throughout Granger and into our very own downtown South Bend, businesses from all over Michiana are participating.

Black Friday shoppers tend to shop at big stores and this national event started almost 10 years to help bring holiday shoppers back to local businesses.

“I think part of it is the money stays here, it doesn’t go to across seas, it doesn’t go to another state. It stays here with local, the people who live here and who grow up here and who raise their family here,” Danielle Gilbert, who works at Pigeon and the Hen Pottery downtown said.

Gilbert said it also helps the city.

“67 cents of every dollar goes back into the South Bend economy. That provides jobs for other people, we provide services, a fun environment for here. It also boosts our local economy,” she said.

“It’s really important to have Small Business Saturday kind of to keep the money inside our local economy and to keep boosting business around,” Joe Russo, bartender/server at South Bend Brew Works said.

South Bend Brew Works is just one local business that also uses it’s space and profit’s to help the community it serves.

“We give back to the community, we give back to four local nonprofits every beer that we sell,” Russo said.

He said they even open up their space for local artists to showcase and sell their work. But he said this event also boosts downtown businesses so that more stores will come set up shop.

“More incentive to have great local businesses moving forward as a community,” Russo said.

Others say they have seen more locally owned businesses pop-up in South Bend.

“Absolutely, there’s more excitement downtown, more people are coming to spend their time and their money down here,” Gilbert said.

“I think it’s been growing ever since I came here,” Russo said. “It’s really cool to see everything that’s kind of been changing around town and it’s been busier for sure.”

Although Small Business Saturday is pretty much done, that doesn’t mean you should stop shopping locally. We have several businesses in downtown that are locally owned and operated so you can come down whenever.