My family and I have always been super into supporting local businesses from the time I was a young girl. I think this is partly because of the area of Rhode Island I grew up in was surrounded by local shops and restaurants. I live close to Main Street in East Greenwich which only has local businesses on it.

One of my favorite memories as a child was walking from my house with my dad to go to a coffee shop on Main Street, which I easily go to every day now to get my coffee. This coffee shop will always bring me comfort because it’s something I know well.

I often go to local coffee shops to do homework or hang out with friends. As I’m typing this right now I’m sitting in Cool Beans Cafe in Narragansett, which has amazing acai bowls and wicked good coffee. This coffee shop, too, also reminds me of my connections to the community in this part of Rhode Island. This is because I go to the University of Rhode Island, and I always end up seeing someone from one of my classes there.

Another reason I tend to support local businesses is that I’ve worked both in a corporate business and at a local restaurant and I’ve enjoyed my time working in a local setting much more. This is because management is so much easier to talk to on a local level and I feel much more connected to my community. Therefore, interactions with people are much more personal.

Having a personal connection with my community is something that is very important to me and makes me grateful for the interactions I am able to have with people in my town. I love being able to live in a place that is so community-centric and having a place that I can go to with friends because we all love the local aesthetic.

Living close to a quintessential New England-style main street plays a big role in me loving the localness of my life. The aesthetic that it provides makes me feel very much at home and whenever I go to Main Street I feel comforted by the familiarity with the places and people who are there as well.

Aesthetics are something that are important to me, and I feel as though having grown up in a town with locally owned small shops has contributed to the kind of aesthetic I want to surround myself with. This type of aesthetic has allowed me to thrive, and it's an aesthetic I feel as though the University of Rhode Island provides as well because it's so close to a beach town, that again has so many locally owned businesses on it.

When I think about it, I am grateful to my parents who love local businesses equally as much as I do. I did not really understand why they loved local business so much until I grew up and understood that you are able to make so many more personal connections with people through locally owned places than you can in a corporate setting.