REGINA -- Despite January being a normally tough month for retailers and the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to mount, some local businesses are seeing increased sales as more customers aim to shop local.
Regina’s Fat Plant Farm saw sales triple in 2021, compared to January 2020.
“More people are spending more time at home, some people are working from home and we’ve had lots of people who want to incorporate plants into their office space,” Kait Waugh, the owner of Fat Plant Farm, said.
Waugh attributes part of the sales increase to an emphasis on shopping local.
“Motion to support local, we felt it right off the bat. The biggest thing actually was getting up a website because we did not have a shopable website before that,” Waugh said.
E-commerce platform Square said January gross online sales were up 14 fold among its clients across Canada.
Jimmy Schimmel, the owner of Regina’s Hobo Donuts, adopted the platform at his new downtown location. He ended the business day with not a single donut left in the shelf.
“We did no contract deliveries. You just order through our website and we deliver it to the door and honestly that was amazing to see all the support from the community,” Schimmel said.
Demand also remains strong for ice cream throughout the pandemic. Dandy’s is palnning a second Regina location in the east end. It is also pivoting into chocolates next week.
“Unfortunately for some business it has been challenging. For us, I feel like the community is so close to each other that they just support so much local and I feel like that has been a blessing to us,” Daniela Mintenko, the owner of Dandy’s Gourmet Ice Cream, said.
