I want to shop local, but when I google locally owned stores they’re all boutique-type stuff or restaurants. How do I find deodorant and a bag of sugar?
Where are you? In Texas we have a lot of little Mexican markets. No idea who owns them.
Walk
Ask
Low-tech methods
This. It may sound harsh but it is true. If you OP can, ask the elderly, they know more about it.
I don’t believe, at least in Germany, that it is possible for sugar to be made ‘locally’ at a reasonable price and with enough volume to be able to stock shelves. I don’t see why the situation should be different in (I assume) the US.
You might try gift shops. They sometimes have ‘fancy’ versions of basic stuff to gift away. Looking at their products and producers might give you a hint at where to start researching.
You could open Google maps (or any other commercial directory) and try to find shops in your town that you wouldn’t otherwise notice because they don’t advertise on channels you’d consume.
I don’t think their concern is necessarily where the products themselves are made, but just where they are sold from.
Big box retailers have been known to crush local businesses because they offer convenience and have more financial resources to throw around. But they don’t have investment in their local communities outside of the wealth they can extract from them, so they can be detrimental influences within the communities where they operate. They cause local businesses to close and offer only the bare minimum to employ local workers.
Local businesses can still carry mass-produced goods, but money spent there largely stays in the community. Rather than the profits going to enrich some C-level execs at a corporate office located who knows where, it helps the local business owner who is more likely to either reinvest in the quality of their business or put the money to some other purpose within the community.
Those are typically the reasons people are thinking of when suggesting that folks buy local. But having local business more easily able to stock locally made goods is also a bonus, which would not be done at a larger retailer.
The US made a lot of its own sugar in the past either though sugar beets, or by growing cane in the extreme south, but that era is largely over (ignoring corn syrup): it’s cheaper to import it from places where imperialism keeps wages low.
Most US food is not local, unless you go to a farm share or market.
There are manufacturers locally like flour/oat mills.
Won’t hurt to look around. Maybe it’s somwhere close to another destination.
Local grocery stores. There are mom and pop type ones in some places, but most are going to be chains these days. In a nearby town was a single location family owned grocery store that was very popular despite being just down the road from a major regional chain, it failed because the real estate market and shopping trends in COVID made it impossible for them to stay open; it is now a very busy Whole Foods. So small family owned grocery stores are dying.
The thing is that shopping entirely local is very hard to do and even harder to do if money is a concern. You have to make compromises like driving twice as far or spending twice as much.
Those boutique stores are often failing because they can’t compete unless the town is a tourist spot or there is a wealthy enough population for bored housewives to have their operating costs subsidized.
If you really want to go local, meaning locally produced products, then you will have to do your shopping online or contact the company to see if their products are in any stores.
Soooooometimes shops that sell organic vegs also do local (but not always which is wild to me).
