Shop local statistics

Most shop local statistics trace back to one method. Researchers ask local independents for their books (payroll, local suppliers, owner profit spent in town, donations), then build a comparable profile for national chains from public filings. The gap they measure is called the local premium. A short overview of how this plays out on a single main street sits in our post on shop local statistics and neighborhood character.

Restaurants post the biggest numbers because so much of their revenue goes to local payroll. AMIBA's own 2021 explainer makes that point and warns that most retailers create a more modest multiplier unless they buy an unusually high share of their stock locally. That matters for groceries, where most of what sits on the shelf is made elsewhere.

Two cautions apply. First, the participating independents volunteer, and local business alliances usually commission the work, so the samples are small and not random. Second, the figure is the share of revenue a business spends locally on owner profits, wages, goods and services, and charity. It does not mean that money stays in town forever.

Buy local statistics also age badly. The Andersonville figure from 2004 still circulates on flyers, though it describes 10 businesses in one Chicago neighborhood more than 20 years ago. The Dane County study from 2022 is one of the newest in the series, and its chain retail figure (13.6 percent) matches the AMIBA average.

Grocery is where consumer spending is largest and most routine. USDA's Economic Research Service puts food-at-home spending at $1.10 trillion in 2025, out of $2.51 trillion in total US food spending, and says consumers spent 4.8 percent of disposable income on food at home that year.

Where does that money go first? In the ERS Food Expenditure Series, grocery stores took 56.2 percent of 2025 food-at-home spending and warehouse clubs plus supercenters took 26.4 percent. Direct sales by farmers, manufacturers and wholesalers were 1.2 percent, about $13.4 billion.

The newest grocery-specific numbers come from a May 2026 report for the National Grocers Association, written by Arizona State University economists Timothy Richards and Peter Rupert and sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers and UNFI. Using 2024 store-level sales data, it credits independent grocers with $353.5 billion in direct sales, 38.4 percent of a $920 billion food retail sector, and $557.5 billion in total economic output.

Read the fine print before quoting it. Its 1.58 multiplier (each $1 of sales tied to $1.58 of activity) is a national input-output estimate, so it does not say how much stays in your county. "Independent" means NGA members or potential members, matched against NielsenIQ store data. Beyond direct sales, the full report credits $97.7 billion of output to the supply chain and $106.3 billion to spending by workers.

NGA's previous study, released in 2021 put independents at 33 percent of grocery sales in 2020, up from 25 percent a decade earlier. The two reports used different firms and methods, which makes the jump to 38.4 percent a loose comparison at best.

The nearest thing to a grocery multiplier study is Healthy Foods Healthy Communities, a 2012 study commissioned by National Co+op Grocers and run by the ICA Group. It found $0.38 of each dollar spent at a food co-op reinvested locally, against $0.24 at conventional grocers, and $1,604 of local activity per $1,000 spent, $239 more than at a conventional store. Co-ops worked with an average of 157 local farmers and food producers, conventional grocers with 65, and local products made up 20 percent of co-op sales against 6 percent. The sponsor has an interest in the result, and the data is now 14 years old.

Small business statistics get mixed into this debate too, and they measure something else. The SBA Office of Advocacy's 2026 FAQ counts 36.2 million small businesses, 99.9 percent of all firms, employing 62.3 million people, or 45.9 percent of private sector workers. Its definition is an independent business with fewer than 500 employees, which says nothing about whether the owner lives nearby. For the local economy, ownership and sourcing matter more than headcount.

For a sense of scale on the other side of the counter, ERS figures that 13.8 cents of a typical 2024 food dollar spent on domestically produced food went to retail trade. Independent stores and chains share that slice, and the local multiplier effect comes from how each one spends it: on local staff, local accountants and local suppliers, or on headquarters elsewhere. The local multiplier studies AMIBA collects describe exactly that split.

The studies point to a few habits that move more money than a slogan does. The biggest lever is where the business spends its revenue, which you can often ask about directly.

Local independent grocery stores pass these questions more often than chains do, but not always. A franchise grocer can be locally owned yet buy everything through a national wholesaler. A small family market can stock regional brands, carry a local bank account and still pay rent to an out-of-state landlord. Each answer moves its local business impact up or down a little.

Scale matters more than purity. The 2008 Grand Rapids study modeled a 10 percent shift of spending from chains to local firms in Kent County and found nearly $140 million in new regional activity and 1,600 jobs. That is about one shopping trip in ten, not a whole new way of shopping.

That is the gap LocalCart sits in. Each independent business on it ships its own products, so the order comes straight from the maker. Caulfield Provision Company in Potomac, Maryland, is a woman owned, family operated sauce business. Rosie's Kettle Corn in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, uses popcorn sourced in Lancaster County. McCutcheon's in Frederick, Maryland, says it has more than 30 full-time employees, 16 of them family members from the 4th and 5th generations. There is more on the reasons people choose this route in our post on how shopping local strengthens communities.