LEARN ENGLISH PODCAST: BUYING LOCAL (WITH SUBTITLES)

- [Jack] Hello, and welcome to episode 15

of the "To Fluency" podcast.

It is great to have you with me today.

And before we get started,

if you are listening to this on YouTube,

then check out the description for your free book,

"The 5-Step Plan for English Fluency".

And you can also do that if you're listening on Spotify,

Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

or whichever platform you are using.

Now, today we're going to talk about shopping local

or local shopping.

And this just means buying things from businesses

which are native to your area.

So an example of this is

buying shoes from a local shoe shop,

one that is based in the city where you live,

versus buying shoes online from Amazon.

So there's a big difference here and I'm going to talk about

how this trend has changed over the years.

I'm gonna talk about some stories from my childhood too,

which is going to be great listening practice for you.

And then I'm just gonna give some thoughts

on what I'm trying to do and why I think this is important.

Now in episode 14,

which you can watch or listen to,

which I'll put a link in the description,

we talked about buying online

and how it's so easy these days to fall into the habit

of just buying something online

and getting everything online because of convenience.

And this trend rocketed last year when coronavirus happened

and shops closed down and the only way you could buy stuff

was online.

And I think people have fallen

into the habit of doing this now,

and it's just become a norm.

This was a trend that was happening anyway,

but it really just took off last year due to what happened.

I want to give you three statistics

when it comes to buying local.

And I think these are really interesting.

Okay, so the first one is this

small businesses of 500 or fewer employees

make up over 99% of US employer firms.

So small businesses of 500 or fewer employees,

or you can call them workers

make up over 99% of US employer firms.

So the majority, the vast majority

of businesses in the US are small businesses.

Now, speaking of Amazon, here is a stat,

in just one year, Amazon displaced 62,000 shops

and 900,000 retail jobs.

So Amazon displaced 62,000 shops and 900,000 retail jobs.

And the last stat here is that

the lockdowns caused over 100,000 of local small businesses

to close permanently.

So this has been a big trend as well,

where a lot of small businesses had to close permanently,

due to the restrictions placed by local and big governments.

So I think these three stats really highlight two things,

the importance of buying local

if you care about local businesses

but also just the trend that is happening at the moment,

where online retailers

are really taking over local businesses,

and this has been happening for years now.

And I think there are two ways to look at this

when you're thinking about this and the implications.

And the first one is to say, well this is happening

and it's very difficult to stop.

This is a trend that is just going to accelerate

and it's going to be very difficult for that trend to stop.

And you can think about things in the past where,

in the UK, during the Industrial Revolution,

and elsewhere too, in France, the Luddites

were a group of people

who wanted to stop the machines coming in

and taking over their jobs

when it came to producing cotton and other materials.

And you can see this all the time

when a new type of industry comes in, like Uber,

which is the car ride service

which has taken over traditional taxi cabs.

And I've been in countries

where there have been big protests

for example, in France, from taxi drivers

against companies such as Uber.

But it's one of these things where you think, okay,

is this a trend that's going to happen anyway?

Is automation and online shopping and apps like Uber,

are they just going to take over?

Is that the trend that is going to happen

and we can't do anything about it?

And the second way to look at it is to think,

well, what can I do,

what do I think is best in these situations?

And how can I as a person

change these types of trends and behaviors?

And personally, I think it is super important to buy local,

and the stats that I shared before talk about this.

And another stat here to highlight it is that

if every US family spent just $10 extra locally,

instead of at a big box or national trade chain,

so if they spent $10 on a local company

versus a national company,

over 9.3 billion would be directly returned

to our local economies.

So the benefit of buying local is it's going to benefit

your local economy, because when you spend money in stores

where the people who own the stores live in your local area

then that money is going to stay in the local area

instead of going to people who work in different cities

and to a company that is just going to take the money

and make profit.

Now, before I go on about some of my habits,

I do wanna talk about what it was like growing up in the UK

and just how much more emphasis there was on buying local

and just how much more of a way of life it was.

So in the 80s and 90s,

there wasn't anything like online shopping,

but there was the emergence of big box stores,

big companies, national companies

that took over high streets.

So if you went to the center of Preston,

the city or town where I grew up,

then in the past there would have been

all these local businesses.

So people who were selling jewelry, food, clothes,

all on the market or on the high street.

But then that changed a lot I think in the 70s, 80s, 90s

where the big box stores, the big companies

took over the high street,

and basically ran all the small businesses out of business.

But what I remember growing up

is something a little bit different,

because I used to have a milk round

where I used to deliver milk to people's houses.

And in the past, the vast majority of people

got their milk from the local milkmen.

And you couldn't really,

people didn't get milk from the supermarket,

they had it delivered.

And we also had other things delivered too,

like the the fishman would come over once a week in his van

and you would go out to the van and buy fish

directly from the fishman.

And then you would go to the local market or the butcher's

to get your meat.

And all these companies, businesses were local businesses.

So you wouldn't go to the supermarket to get the milk,

the fish and the meat,

instead, you would get these from three different places.

And I used to have a milk round

where I delivered the milk to people's doors.

This job was brutal because I used to do it

from 5:00 till 7:00 in the morning.

I used to wake up at 4:30

and I did it in the winter, it was freezing cold.

And then I went to school for the rest of the day so,

that was one of the toughest jobs I've had.

And I'm not sure the reason why it has changed so much.

I think a big reason is convenience,

where supermarkets started to

stock everything that you needed including clothes and toys

and everything else.

So you could go to one shop once a week

and get everything that you need.

And also think that a lot of families now have

the two parents working all the time.

And obviously this is based on Western countries,

countries like the UK and the US and my experience of that.

But it'd be also interesting to know

what it's like where you live too.

So if there's a comment section below,

please just give me your thoughts on this

and how it has changed over the years.

But I think the fact that

two parents are now working full time,

you don't really have the ability for one parent

to be able to go and do all these things

and to clean the house,

and then go to different shops and buy local

and going from supermarkets to having everything,

now, we're really starting the emergence

of the online experience.

And one of the good news stories for local businesses

is that they can also get part of this

online shopping experience.

So for example, I am trying to be more conscious

and I'm trying to buy more things from local businesses.

And one of the things I'm doing is

I'm using a local farm now

and I've been doing this for a while actually

to buy most of the meat,

because the meat is high quality,

they have good practices, and again,

it keeps the money within the local economy,

within the local area.

So that's one thing I'm trying to do more of

and just make that more part of my life.

And another thing that has really taken off

I think over the last 10 to 15 years in the US

is the farmer's market.

And this is where farmers will bring their produce,

mainly vegetables and fruit,

but also you get cheeses and meat and other products too.

And they'll bring them to an area

in different areas around town,

and then you can go there and buy directly from the farmer.

And this is another way for people to buy local.

And it also brings about that community element too

because usually there is music,

you see the same people that all the time,

and you're engaging with farmers in a real way.

And just to go back to the online shopping part,

like I said a lot of businesses now

are setting themselves up

so that you can buy online from them

and have things delivered.

So I know a few people who own businesses,

including restaurants in the area where I live

and they've started to do a lot more of that.

This started really from the coronavirus lockdowns

where people, while businesses

the only way they could survive was to deliver things,

so this is happening with alcohol,

this is happening with food,

we know people who own a coffee company now

who are delivering local coffee,

people who have a tea company delivering local tea.

So there are ways to marry, which means mix

the ability or the convenience of buying online

and also buying local.

And just one of the differences that

I have noticed in a big way,

and this goes back to a podcast episode I did

where I talked about getting around cities.

And this is comparing mainly places like Spain to the US

where people are more reliant on the car in the US

and it's not walkable.

It's very difficult to walk places in certain cities.

And like I said, New York and places like Chicago,

they are different.

But when you go to small town, America, it's quite difficult

or small cities, it's difficult to walk around town,

which means that you can't just walk and go past local shops

and brow shops,

instead you get in your car, you go to shops in your car.

And again, this is like

the breakdown of local communities in a way

and it's difficult to then reinvest and to buy local

when you don't feel part of that community.

So I think the farmer's market is a great thing

that's happening in the US,

but if we do have that detachment from local communities,

the ability to buy online from local companies

is a big step forward.

So hopefully that has given you

some good listening practice.

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and also go back and listen to it again

if you want to improve your listening.

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So you can do things like watch it,

or listen to it once with subtitles

and then listen to it without,

and then revisit the episode,

listen to it again in a week or so,

and just see how much more you can understand

the second time of listening.

The repetition is really going to help you with that.

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All right, thank you so much for listening

and I'll speak to you soon.

Bye bye.