Across a booth at Amy’s Place, Amy Kedron looks a bit bleary-eyed as she dips a French fry into a double barrel of Frank’s and blue cheese. (For the uninitiated, it’s called a “blue-hot,” and is not to be missed.) She has reason to be tired. A third-year law student who is also pursuing a Ph.D. in American studies at the University at Buffalo, Kedron faces a challenge bigger than any academic degree: creating a better business model for Buffalo.

Last June, as the key project of her dissertation, Kedron founded Buffalo First, a “local-first” initiative that has quickly taken root throughout the city and suburbs. Buffalo First encourages shoppers to invest in their communities and support local, independently owned business. Instead of a casino, it’s betting on national “go local” and “go green” trends and the glimmer of a present-day retail renaissance to deliver Buffalo from its industrial past into a more prosperous, sustainable future.

Planet, people and profit

The idea of local-first initiatives—essentially grassroots marketing campaigns that encourage consumers to support local, independently owned businesses—has been around for a while. They exist in communities of all sizes and economic realities, including San Francisco, Washington, DC, Seattle, Philadelphia, Toronto and Milwaukee.

Many are part of a national organization called Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, or BALLE. There are currently 50 BALLE networks representing more than 15,000 businesses in rural towns, big cities and even entire states. BALLE defines them as “living economies,” or communities that “ensure that economic power resides locally, sustaining healthy community life and natural life as well as long-term economic viability.”

Several entrepreneurs, including Judy Wicks, owner of the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, formed BALLE in 2001. Wicks is an activist as well as a successful restaurateur. In the early 1980s she saved the café, then a crumbling rowhouse in West Philly, from the wrecking ball and quickly realized that she could make a profitable living while taking a stand for what she believed in—in her case the environment, human and animal welfare and a strong, diverse neighborhood. Twenty years later, she runs her organically sourced, award-winning restaurant and travels the country to share her path to economic freedom with others. “Living and working in the same community has not only given me a stronger sense of place, but a different business outlook,” she told an audience at the University of Rochester’s Pathways to Sustainability conference in April.

In just one year, more than 100 local businesses from all over Western New York have joined Buffalo First, making it one of the fastest-growing BALLE chapters in the country. “The response has been phenomenal,” says Kedron, who spent the last year signing up members.

For a fee starting at $50, members receive a retail kit that includes posters, window decals and other materials to spur customer participation. They also get placement on Buffalo First’s Web site and listings in buy-local directories and other promotions.

In addition to encouraging communities to purchase their products locally, BALLE and Buffalo First ask the businesses themselves to embrace the “triple bottom line”: planet, people and profit. Part of BALLE’s definition of a local living economy is one where the business sector attempts to integrate elements of sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, green building, and low-impact manufacturing into its everyday practices. BALLE also advocates for public policies that support socially conscious, community-driven projects and businesses, from small farms to independent media.

BALLE networks have high standards but welcome any local business owner, no matter how new to the sustainability concept, to improve their practices at their own pace. Some have had a head start. Bob Syracuse, president of the local chapter of the New York Restaurant Association and owner of Pizza Plant in Williamsville, developed a wheat- and gluten- free menu for people with celiac disease, and gets most of his ingredients, supplies and services locally whenever possible. He also recycles used bottles and cans, paying extra for a separate dumpster. “It can be a double-edged sword,” he says, “but in the end, it keeps my overall trash costs down.”

Other members include hair salons, record stores, independent craftspeople, hardware stores, food and beverage purveyors, bars, local banks and credit unions, clothing boutiques, nonprofits and manufacturing companies. The board represents businesses on the East and West sides of Buffalo, downtown and the suburbs, including both seasoned professionals and start-ups.

Erin Sharkey, outreach coordinator for Massachusetts Avenue Project, was one of the first to join Buffalo First’s board of directors. “It’s a fabulous idea, and Amy has done a tremendous job building a diverse membership from all over the city,” she says.

Defining “local”:

Wall Street vs. Main Street

To be considered local, a potential Buffalo First business must be privately held (not publicly traded on the stock market), registered and headquartered in New York, and half of its ownership must live in Buffalo. Members must also be able to make independent decisions and pay all of their own expenses. Technically, Wilson Farms is locally owned, although it has stores outside Western New York.

According to BALLE, when businesses operate on a smaller scale they are more likely to consider the costs and benefits to their base community when making decisions. “There’s a big difference between a small business and a local, independently owned business. What we’re really talking about is the difference between Wall Street and Main Street,” Kedron says.

Perhaps no one knows this better than Jonathan Welch, owner of Talking Leaves Books. “I didn’t want to grow too large,” says Welch, “because that’s when you have to make difficult decisions about payroll—how many employees you can afford to have and still pay a living wage and give people the service and product quality they’re expecting.”

Welch has always chosen to employ no more than four or five people, including himself. As at most small businesses, they do everything from orders, inventory, meeting with book reps and cashing out patrons to shoveling the sidewalk.

Amy Kedron of Buffalo First

Welch resisted several offers to expand his stores, finally relenting in 1993 and opening the Elmwood branch of Talking Leaves “due to popular demand.” Today, he says, his two locations don’t compete because each fills a different niche; the Elmwood store draws mostly neighborhood foot traffic while the Main Street location has become a retail destination.

Several economic impact studies and investigative reports have discovered that local businesses are better than non-locals in creating the ripple effect economists call a “multiplier” within their communities. Civic Economics, a research firm in Austin, Texas, recently released a major study on local business within the San Francisco Bay area. In 2005, it looked at the city’s bookstore, toy store, sporting goods and limited-service restaurant sectors and found that they were not only matching but were surpassing the market share of national chains.

The study also found that local stores and restaurants re-circulate more money back into the local community. A consumer making a purchase at a local business, which in turn makes purchases locally and so on, is the “local multiplier” effect at work.

Bay area bookstores, for example, generated an estimated 2.14 local jobs back into the local economy for every million dollars of books sold, while national chain stores created 1.27 local jobs for every million dollars of sales.

In their most publicized 2002 study, Civic Economics found that for every $100 dollars spent in two local bookstores in Austin, Texas, nearly four times as much money would return to the local economy than if the same $100 were spent at Borders. Like Talking Leaves and many other Buffalo-based businesses, Austin’s businesses spend most of their money in town—on hiring local residents, buying from local suppliers and advertising locally.

“Booksellers deal in ideas and knowledge, so we are often on the leading edge of retail fights and the first to see threats coming,” Welch said at a celebration of Talking Leaves’ remarkable 32-year anniversary held downtown at the Church in April. The event also featured a screening of Joshua Bricca’s 2006 documentary on dwindling independent bookstores, aptly titled Indies Under Fire.

Unfortunately, the film reveals that bookstores are also highly susceptible to being outsold by larger retailers. According to Stacy Mitchell in her book The Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, the number of independent bookstores fell by half between 1990 and 2002, and their market share shrank from about 30 to 10 percent.

Although the latest US Census Bureau statistics for small businesses in Erie County don’t specify whether they are locally owned, the data shows that 94 percent of the more than 27,000 businesses in the Buffalo Niagara region have fewer than 50 employees and a little less than half of those businesses have between one and four workers.

“Buffalo is ripe for this kind of movement,” says Kedron, who notes that when she moved back from New York City during the depths of Erie County’s fiscal crisis, the shops, bars and restaurants were humming along Elmwood Avenue. “There have been hidden models of creative entrepreneurship developing since the steel plants shut down, so there’s no reason why we can’t build on that tradition and encourage shoppers to support it.”

Other investigative reports found similar results for communities in Oregon, Washington and suburban Chicago. But critics say that local multiplier studies are often flawed and don’t always consider the positive effects that large corporations have on regional economies.

Last May, Michael S. Shuman, a BALLE co-founder and author of Going Local and the Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition, responded to that argument in a letter published in a Bellingham, Washington newspaper. “My contention is that a community should put out the welcome mat for many different kinds of businesses…but only offer systematic support for locally owned ones,” Shuman wrote. “That’s where a community’s scarce people, hours, and attention should go. And that’s the position of Local First.”

Supporting small-scale local business does not necessarily mean shunning larger or non-local ones, he adds. The BALLE philosophy, for instance, acknowledges that it’s often very difficult to know how (and where) to shop locally, and certain goods, like tropical produce or auto parts, must be imported. Instead, BALLE supports a balance between large and small, global and local, but in a way that puts the local owners on a more even playing field. It goes back to the multiplier, says Shuman. “The more times a dollar circulates within a defined geographic area and the faster it circulates without leaving that area, the more income, wealth, and jobs it generates.”

By educating the public and asking for more local investment from city and state government in local business, says Kedron, BALLE communities become more self-reliant and require fewer taxpayer handouts to national or publicly traded corporations.

Even the more traditional experts at the International Economic Development Council admit there may be real merit in the BALLE philosophy:

“[Small businesses] are typically more innovative [than larger companies] in terms of products and processes. Second, they are less likely to relocate because of strong community ties, and are more likely to hire local residents. Third, research has found that small businesses that are able to survive the first few critical years have profit margins as strong as, if not stronger than, large corporations. Finally, small businesses are much more flexible…which means they can adapt to changes in market demand faster.”

If more independent businesses are doing well, making profits and transferring those gains into better-quality goods and services, prices will become more competitive and shoppers won’t be tempted to shop at a “discount” chain in the first place, says Welch, who has felt the sting along with other small-scale booksellers from the encroachment of Barnes and Noble. Plus, studies have shown that a more dense and diversified local retail base (think waterfront) leads to greater market demand, and a better chance to convince those flagship “marquee” companies to move in and stay for the long haul where we need them the most (think downtown Buffalo).

Despite, or verily because of City Hall’s insistence that a Bass Pro be installed along the waterfront in an ideal spot for showcasing local retail, this community is fighting back. In Akron, residents are resisting a new Wal-Mart Supercenter (see Terence Kumpf’s June 7 AV article “Attention, Wal-Mart”). And more local retailers are realizing what people like Jonathan Welch and Bob Syracuse have known for decades: that a sustainable business means a sustainable community, and can be good for the bottom line, too.

Brian Barrington of the Buffalo Cooperative Federal Credit Union, Bob Syracuse of the Pizza Plant, Jonathan White of Talking Leaves Books and Amy Kedron of Buffalo First.

Shared success

Last June, during her speech at BALLE’s annual meeting in Vermont, Wicks said, “Community self-reliance is something we can all work on together—a way of doing business that not only builds loving relationships, but is essential to our survival in a changing world.”

Sharing knowledge and resources with other businesses is vital, especially to very small or startup businesses, say Buffalo First members Alexa and Edreys Wajed. The couple opened Gallery 51 on Elmwood two years ago after spending 10 years working out of their house. Emani Kemet, Inc., their greeting card and stationery business, fills one half of their storefront. The other half doubles as an art gallery and public space for poetry readings and other events.

Married with two young sons and looking for paid employees, these energetic and passionate 30-somethings take BALLE’s “people” principles to heart. “We want our retail store booming, yes, but in five years, we also want to be a hotspot for community gatherings,” Alexa says. “In order to do that, we’ve had to rely on many mentors along the way, and now we’re finally in the position to mentor others,” Edreys adds.

To survive those first critical years when failure rates are at their highest, Buffalo startups must often tap local economic development agencies for help. It’s an uphill battle; the Census report noted that, from 2000 to 2005, the number of “microbusinesses” employing between one and four people didn’t post any noticeable growth compared to larger regional companies.

In 2005, Alexa Wajed knew she had the skills and creativity to turn her husband’s artwork into a viable business, “but I had no idea how to write a business plan.” So she turned to several non-profit agencies, enrolling in training and mentoring programs through the Economic Renaissance Corporation’s entrepreneurship assistance program at Canisius College, Buffalo State’s Small Business Development Center and UB’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL).

And there may be more help on the way. A clearinghouse called MicroBiz Buffalo, now in its second year, offers one-stop shopping for such agencies and other entrepreneurial services on its Web site and blog, www.microbizbuffalo.org. Bob Syracuse and other restaurant owners are in the process of establishing a new Independent Restaurant Institute at Buffalo State. By 2008, he says, it should be up and running with a certificate training program and mentoring services for restaurateurs.

“Education is important,” says Syracuse, who sends his employees to training sessions, both on- and off-site, to learn how to properly source, order and handle food, improve customer service and market the business. “We weren’t afraid to experiment, but found our niche, and over the years our customers have stuck with us.”

Sharkey agrees. “Buffalonians are terribly loyal—that’s one of the reasons local businesses can make it here. Farmers here have a face, which you don’t often see elsewhere, but we need to help them get their products to underserved people in the community.” Her hope is that Buffalo First will support MAP’s Growing Green youth gardening program, which is working to deliver fresh produce to urban residents and create deeper relationships between Western New York farmers and consumers.

Buy Buffalo Week

Kedron returned from BALLE’s 2007 conference in Berkeley at the end of May with renewed energy and a packed summer schedule. Buffalo First, now a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is expanding its membership, recruiting more volunteers, printing a local coupon book and planning several new “buy local” retail events throughout the region. Their first “Buy Buffalo Bash” event was held last December during the holiday shopping season. In the first week of July, during Buffalo Old Home Week, an annual “Buy Buffalo Week” is planned to encourage the metro area to shop locally. And Buffalo First will join MAP’s Growing Green youth gardening group in throwing a local celebration during National Local Food Week, July 30 to August 3, when Buffalo restaurants will be asked to source their menus close to home.

More businesses continue to take the initial steps in considering the triple bottom line, but that’s just the start, says Kedron. “It’s up to us as consumers to help create a community we can be proud of.”

For the where, why and how on shopping locally, visit www.buffalofirst.org or www.livingeconomies.org. And read Artvoice.

Lauren Newkirk Maynard is a former managing editor of Artvoice and currently writes about sustainability issues in Buffalo.