I had the chance to speak with business owners from the new Main Street Canmore Collective – Sean Meggs from The Tin Box, Mike Vlessides from Mountain Mercantile, Joanne March from Shoes t’Boot, Dave Carlson from Unlimited, Mike Gordon from Stonewaters, and Scott Smith from Empowered Retail:

 

RM: Scott, what can you tell us about this new Main Street Canmore Collective?

SS: We’re a group of businesses. We thought about the larger organizations in the Bow Valley that have staff get-togethers and do fundraising initiatives, and we thought it would be good to share resources together and just be a little bit of a collective.

RM: What can you tell us about this Food for Friends initiative?

MG: In early January, my wife Suzanne had a friend share a Facebook post with an initiative in Medicine Hat to support restaurants that were really suffering as a result of the pandemic, and also the Food Bank. This group agreed that this would be a good initiative here. We approached the Food Bank and they don’t handle food from restaurants, so we decided the gift card initiative would work well. Businesses that are willing and able and have done okay through this pandemic would buy gift cards from local restaurants, then donate them to the Food Bank who would put those gift cards into hampers for those in need.

DC: This initiative is indicative of the type of people are that are in our group. People like Mike got this going. He’s such a giving person during a pandemic. I feel so lucky that I get to work together with these folks.

RM: How can people support this initiative?

SS: We built a website where people can reach out if they’re interested in participating in any form. It’s a really simple concept. Some businesses in the group are going to do promotions in store to raise some money. When they have a certain amount of dollars together they’re going to get in touch with us and say, hey, I’d like to buy some gift cards. We’re going to try to work through as many restaurants as we can in the Bow Valley to make it fair. An example is, a business will have $250 together. They’ll buy five gift cards, bring them over to Stonewaters, get a receipt, then a couple of times a week the Bow Valley Food Bank is going to come and pick up those gift cards so they can supplement their hampers.

RM: Joanne, how is Shoes t’Boot going to be initiating this?

JM: Shoes t’Boot had a conversation with one of our big suppliers, Blundstone Canada, through a company called Tin Shack Canada. They’re donating boots so that we can then sell them and then use the proceeds from those to buy the gift cards. We’re also offering to customers if they would like to donate a dollar at the till or any other amount, they can do that at the time of their purchase.

RM: Mike, what about Mountain Mercantile?

MV: We’ve become quite known for our sock collection at Mountain Mercantile. My amazing wife Caroline and I decided that we would donate 10% of all our sock sales to Food for Friends. That’s what we’ve started with for now, but in an effort to keep things fresh and fun we might change that from month to month. We’re also going to give our customers the opportunity to donate directly to the cause.

RM: Dave, what about Unlimited? 

DC: We’ll put a percentage from sales of Unlimited apparel toward the Food Bank.

RM: Sean, what about Tin Box?

SM: Initially what we’ve done at the till is given people the opportunity to donate as part of their purchase. We did very well over the weekend, we raised a couple of hundred dollars, so we’re really pleased with that.

RM: Mike, what about Stonewaters?

MG: We have a few products that will have the proceeds go towards it. We’re hoping to have a budget of between $250 and $500 a month moving forward.

RM: Scott, how about Empowered Retail?

SS: We’ve decided to budget $250 a month until we decide that the program will end, just from the proceeds of our sales internally.

RM: Is there an opportunity for more businesses to get involved with either the Collective or this initiative, or both?

SS: Absolutely Rob. We wanted to make it super easy, something that everybody can customize their own promotions and choose what they want to do. We’d love to have people join the group in any way, shape, or form.

SM: If we can get as many businesses participating in this as we can, that critical mass means more money towards the Food Bank and towards these restaurants, helping the community.

MG: I talked with the Morley food bank and they’re very excited to have contributions as well, and they would like to support the restaurants in that area, like Smitty’s. We’re going to reach out to Banff as well so that we can cover the entire Bow Valley, if possible.

 

NOTE:  Food for Friends is not associated with the Food & Friends Monday night community dinners at St. Michael’s Anglican Church

Filed under: Canmore