Made in Vermont: Local Businesses Win Out Over Chains

The literary and corporate landscape is different in Vermont, both smaller and more intimate than in most states. Kari Meutsch, as co-owner of Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock, knows this firsthand. She and co-owner Kristian Preylowski were assisting with book sales at an author event at the local library. "After the event," she says,"we received an email from someone who had attended and enjoyed himself, simply saying, 'I've been guilty of using Amazon for book ordering, and want to amend my ways.' He then ordered two books from us."

Meutsch and Preylowski once worked for a Barnes & Noble in Burlington. "No great amount of consideration was made for individual stores facing individual situations in their communities," Meutsch says. Their Yankee Bookshop is the oldest continually operated bookstore in Vermont, founded in 1935. Of the state's 38 bookstores, 36 of them are independently owned.

Organizations such as Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) and laws that tax corporations 8.5 percent on profits above $25,000 support small businesses in Vermont and make it harder for large corporations to establish themselves. This, combined with Vermonters' innate interest in their local communities, helps explain the longevity of the state's small businesses.

Founded in 1990 by local business owners, VBSR utilizes education, outreach and public influence to support the prosperity of both Vermont citizens and Vermont small businesses. VBSR helps sponsor the Vermont Changemakers Table to guide young advocates for political and social change. Recently, the organization gathered CEOs from some of the businesses it supports, including Ben & Jerry's, Seventh Generation and others, to pressure the state government to pass a climate change bill geared toward local, renewable energy.

Much of VBSR's outreach is focused on building social responsibility, which has become a driving force for many small businesses in Vermont. Consider VSBR member Alchemist Brewery, in Waterbury, which has a goal to become 100 percent reliant on renewable energy. It donates a portion of its current generated energy to the local senior center, and the brewery has a water filtration system that sends water out of the building cleaner than it comes in.

Businesses must be at least 51 percent Vermonter-owned and able to make independent choices (which excludes franchises and big-box chains) in order to work with VBSR. At any given time, 200 businesses work with VBSR, including Alchemist Brewery and Phoenix Books, which has four locations in the state.

According to Small Business Administration size standards, more than 90 percent of Vermont's businesses qualify as small, says Samantha Sheehan, VBSR's communications manager – a challenge particular to Vermont, where most population centers are small, rural and far apart. Vermont's Montpelier is the smallest capital city in the country, at about 7,485 residents. Because of this, Vermonters are concerned with building "Main Street-sized" businesses, ones that, according to locals, are focused on supporting, not outgrowing, their communities.

"It's easy to make friends with small business owners," says Molly Leach, a psychotherapist at a community health center in Rutland. She travels the 33 miles to Manchester to go to Northshire Bookstore, her "favorite bookstore in the whole wide world."

And Rutland resident Lindsey Johnston says she considers the local "farmers market a key aspect to our downtown," and notes that she is on a first-name basis with her maple syrup supplier.

Vermont's median age of 42.8, according to 2017 Census data, ranks second oldest among all states, and the state's reliance on small business is as much due to this aging population, self-reliant culture and rural nature as its deterrence of large corporations, which includes the state's high corporate tax rate and measures to ban billboards.

There is also Act 250, a development law enacted in 1970 that requires any new commercial project on more than 10 acres (if the town has permanent zoning regulations), or more than one acre (if it does not), to complete a 10-step checklist, known as the "10 Criteria." These criteria are focused on a range of items, from water supply to erosion to aesthetics to the potential impact of growth, and address municipal concerns, such as if a town does not want new commercial enterprises over a certain size.

Alchemist Brewery has been through the Act 250 process successfully twice, once for its first brewery in Waterbury and then for its expanded brewery in Stowe. But big-box retailers such as Target have a harder time starting business in the state than in other states, in large part due to Act 250. Target had been trying to open a store in Vermont since 2010, the only state without a Target store at that point.

Act 250 makes big-box stores "have to contend with criteria that can be highly subjective, such as not having 'an undue adverse effect on aesthetics, scenic beauty, historic sites or natural areas,'" according to a Star Tribune article in December 2010, when the chain was struggling to open in Vermont.

Target did open a store in the state in 2018. The company is "pleased to join the South Burlington community in Vermont and have seen a positive response from our new guests," says Target spokesperson Jacqueline DeBuse.

Despite that and having a Walmart in Rutland, there is a "fair amount of pushback to big-box stores in Vermont" due to a "huge emphasis on shopping local," Vermont resident Leach says. "I think that my values have changed a bit based on the people I've been exposed to here. Big-box companies go against a lot of those values."

In July 2018, as part of the Vermont Legislature's "Commission on Act 250," residents were polled on their most pressing priorities for Act 250 reform. Protecting ecosystems and furthering economic development topped the list – not surprising, considering supporters of Act 250 prefer the former, while reformers favor the latter. Following a series of small discussion groups last July, Democratic state Rep. Bill Bowell said, "One comment from the group I was with caught my attention, and that was the need to think through how to reset a permit when conditions change over time," according to the VTDigger news site.

If conditions are changing over time, it's not due to the support of local businesses. "We listen, we learn, we care," Meustch says about Yankee Bookshop. "We know, and serve our community on a personal level, are invested and involved, and are able to give back."