Locl Mkt, a new online community shopping service for Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, has been featuring fresh and seasonal items from some of our best neighborhood purveyors.
The site, which launched earlier this year, was created by Mark Cooper and Sonja Kristofferson, who want to show support for our local shops, and help these amazing businesses thrive.
Cooper and Kristofferson are now expanding on the concept with SHOP BOCOCA, which will run from October 28th through November 12th.
According to Cooper:
"The goal is to get more people to support our neighborhood shops during the crucial weeks leading into the holiday season.
To encourage this, Locl Mkt has developed a discount key tag that lets customers get 20% off select products at 13 shops in the area. Customers just show the key tag at any of the stores, and they receive 20% off selected products / product categories. Save money, and help your community – all at the same time!"
Here is a list of participating businesses and the products that they will discount:
Caputo Bakery: Multigrain, cranberry walnut & olive breads
Damascus: All house-made pita bread
Dellapietras: 12 varieties of house-made sausages
Fish Tales: All house-made soups
Heights Chateau: New York State wines
Henry Street Wines: Rosé wines & hand-picked wines
Mia's Bakery: All whole cakes & pies
MilkMade: Signature 'Scream pints of ice cream
Paisanos: House-brand pastas, ravioli & sauces
Sahadi's: House-brand pre-packaged cheeses
Scotto's: Rosé wines
Smith & Vine: All glassware
Stinky Brooklyn: All cheeses
A portion of the proceeds will go to St Paul's/ St Agnes community outreach programs.
The discount key tags are $6 (plus $1 for shipping). Get yours now by clicking here.
The discount key tags are $6 (plus $1 for shipping). Get yours now by clicking here.
This is a really weird concept. So these guys take 20% of very specific sales, if you buy their key chain? and then SOME portion goes to local charity? Why not just give the money to the local business? Something seems off about this
ReplyDeleteThe businesses discount some of their items by 20% and by participating in the event, encourage people to shop in their stores. Locl Mkt, as I understand it, will make money selling the tag. Some of those proceeds will go to charity. Nothing weird about it.
ReplyDeleteSo for $7, I can go shop in stores in my own neighborhood, that I already shop in. Less money goes to the stores, and instead, it goes to this third party? And only for two weeks? Give me a break.
ReplyDeleteI'll second this is a weird concept - and just stop with the Bococa nonsense.
ReplyDeleteVery poor selection of stores. Need more stores that are on Court or Smith sts. This whole program is not designed to help the local stores. the only ones making any money off this "shop local-discount "program are the guys selling the little tags.
ReplyDeleteHey, this is Mark at Locl Mkt. I wanted to follow up on some of your concerns. The main goal of the program is to introduce new people in the neighborhood to some of our independent stores. Boerum Hill / Cobble Hill / Carroll Gardens has about 50,000 residents – 10,000 are new every year. The hope is to keep them from defaulting to Trader Joe's when they shop. We thought the discount would encourage them to give the shops a try.
ReplyDeleteWe tried to price the key tag so that it'd also make sense for people who already shop at these stores. If you end up spending $30 per week during the program – pretty easy to do on wine alone – you're saving money.
We had to charge some money for the program to cover our costs and some of our time. Overall, we're going to lose money, but thought it was worth trying. And we hope to get more shops on board next time, but are very happy with 13 considering it's our first time trying the program.
Thanks for taking a look and for the feedback. Hope to see you at one of the shops sometime.