By Justin Aufdermauer
Executive Director
It’s been over a month now since the Governor released her Stay Home Save Lives order for the state, that required many types of businesses to close their doors to the public and has put a lot of people out of work. We’ve all been living with this “new normal” and trying to adapt our work and home lives to something that they’ve never been before.
But, I want to let you in on a cool little “life hack.” Ready?
Many of our businesses in Tillamook County are still open. In fact, most of them are. We have had a very small percentage of businesses have to close following the executive order – due in part to the fact that we are a smaller, rural community and we don’t have arcades, aquariums, or malls in our community. Our shops and stores are already small, and were already providing a safe space to shop.
Now, to adapt to these never-before-seen times, our business community is doing even more to keep their shoppers safe and keep their doors open. Things like curbside pickup, online ordering, local delivery, and even allowing shoppers to make appointments so they can be the only one inside the store while shopping.
You don’t have to take my word for it, though. We just launched a new video campaign #WereStillOpen to help showcase just how easy it is to shop small and support local businesses who are still open – in some cases, without even having to leave your home. Just a few great examples that we featured in the video include Salty Raven with their online ordering and shipping right to your door; Anderson Florists with their easy-to-use website and delivery services; Food Roots is taking call-in orders and curbside pickup; Madeline’s Vintage Marketplace is offering appointments for shoppers and posting their sale items to Facebook for easy, virtual shopping. Lot 35 Homes + The Shoppe also has an online shopping option.
We have seen how incredibly well the community has rallied around our restaurants and cafes through the #TillamookTakeout initiative but let’s not forget that we have many other businesses in our community that need our help, and we would be lying if we said we didn’t need them too. Because when we come out of this pandemic, we are going to want those small businesses to still be around, to still be open, and to still be thriving. To make that happen we need to support them now as best we can.
Head over to the Chamber’s Facebook page to check out the video and share it with your friends. Let’s help remind each other that our local businesses are still open and still serving their community in big ways. I encourage you to use #WereStillOpen to share your shop local photos with us.