Where your dollar goes
Why a dollar spent here does more
Why shop small
Costs a little more. Does a great deal more.
Shopping here costs a little more than it would at a mainland chain. It also does a great deal more — and those two facts are the same fact. What makes us cost more is, almost exactly, what makes your dollar do more. Here’s the whole picture.
The part everyone knows
A small store starts behind
For the same $100 of groceries, here’s what each store pays to stock the shelves — and what’s left when the bills are paid.
They buy by the truckload, so the same goods cost them less — and a chain keeps more of each sale. We pay more and keep less. What little we keep goes back into the island.
The part we’re proudest of
What a little more pays for
- A living wage
- Year-round jobs
- Housing for staff
- Open year-round
- 7am–7pm, every day
The people who work here live here, year round. We pay a wage a person can actually live on, and we house some of our staff, because year-round housing on an island is scarce and hard-won.
That matters past our own four walls. A store that can keep year-round workers is part of how North Haven holds onto year-round residents at all — and year-round residents are what keep the school open and the lights on at every other business on the island.
And it doesn’t stop there
Your dollar goes around the island
Spend it here and it doesn’t stop at the register. It becomes a paycheck someone spends at the next island business, which pays its own people, who spend it again. About three times as much of it stays in the local economy as a dollar spent at a chain — where it’s gone after a single stop.
- A dollar spent at the island market pays a living wage and housing for the people who work here.
- They spend it at other island businesses.
- Which pay their own workers and suppliers, who spend it again.
- About three times as much of it stays in the local economy as a dollar spent at a chain, which is gone after one stop.
A dollar spent off-islandgone after one stop.
Local-economy studies (Civic Economics; the American Independent Business Alliance) find that more than half of each dollar spent at a locally owned business recirculates in the local economy, against less than 14 percent at a chain — roughly three times as much.
Before you go
No pitch. The honest version.
We’re not going to pretend our prices are something they aren’t. We just want you to understand what your grocery dollar is holding up when you spend it here. A store on an island. The people who run it. And a good share of the small economy that makes North Haven a place people get to live, and not only visit.
Thank you for being part of the reason it can exist.