By Rabbi Yehoshua Werde – Founder, CHYE
“He chose the other guy who was more expensive because he wanted to support his own community.”
I recently heard this from a Crown Heights businessman who was explaining to me how a promising deal fell through.
He bid to service a business that is owned by a Jewish person from another neighborhood and was surprised that the owner chose to pay more just so he can support a fellow from his community.
When I heard this, I thought there’s a powerful lesson here. Our own Crown Heights community would benefit greatly if we adopt this same attitude.
If we truly want to support one another and improve the economic health of the community, then we should make it a priority to shop local or do business with our fellow Lubavitchers as much as possible.
In fact, if only 50-70% of the community were to spend their money locally, we’d bring in additional tens of millions of dollars a year to the community!
According to halacha, the highest form of charity is supporting a fellow Jew’s parnasa, and that support starts at home. We must serve our community first.
At a farbengen in the 1970’s, the Rebbe spoke some very powerful words on this subject. “We have recently discussed the importance of strengthening the community of Crown Heights,” the Rebbe said.
“One of the ways of doing this is by patronizing local Jews,” he stated. “When you can either buy an item from a local Jew or from a Jew from another neighborhood, try to buy it from the local Jew.”
This decision can affect something as simple as giving a child a coin to buy himself a candy.
Now, for the first time on Sunday, January 16th, our community will be rallying around our community’s service providers at the first-ever Chosen Business Conference, organized by Crown Heights Young Entrepreneurs (CHYE) in partnership with COLlive.com.
The conference will feature booths from Crown Heights-based, or Lubavitch-run service businesses from every B2B industry, an award show recognizing local businesses and local business leaders, and networking with ample opportunities for all participants to walk away with new business.
In my opinion, attending the Chosen Business Conference is an important step toward upgrading supporting the financial status of our community.
I hope to see you there.
Register Now: https://www.thechosenexpo.com/
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How about if the local vendors charged local customers less? That would also support our community by allowing the locals to have more money so that they can buy more from other local vendors.
At the end of the day people will shop wherever it’s cheaper
I reluctantly shop in Boro Park. I wish I could afford shopping locally.
On an average week I save 30-35% off my bill versus shopping at Empire Kosher.
When you have ONE person owning 75% of the food establishments in CH, they charge what they want.
It is very nice & commendable that he does A LOT of tzedakah. But this is being done on the backs of the people that can’t exactly afford it.
You can’t expect the individual to conduct business in a way that is not profitable. I’m assuming that the place(s) outside of CH are done in a larger scale, which allow them to work with smaller margins.
On a similair note, I never understood why our local developers don’t purchase property in the neighborhood and keep the money local. In the past 10 years the amount of real estate being purchased by outside firms is staggering. It’s our neighborhood, why do we cede properties within our borders to outsiders?
Yes , THIS is the real issue!!
Probably because if they have to evict a tenant for not paying rent then the whole community would be up in arms. If they dare evict a ‘Jewish family’ from their home, they would be seen a pariah in the community. Not worth the hassle, money better spent where their property rights are respected, not in a place where their called to sacrifice their financial well-being for others .
Servicing your own community works both ways not just the people supporting the shops, businesses and schools , but the other way around s well. treat people with respect and give competitive pricing and the people will come
To those saying to make items cheaper, you are ones making stuff more expensive,by not buying from the business, weather from a local bussiness or a store so they have to make the price more to break even.
Everyone needs to look out for everyone. Once we start playing the blame game, everyone begins to only care for themselves.
If you’re talking about giving Tzedakah, you’re right, we should give money to those stores that are struggling as Tzedakah, but when you’re talking about business, it makes no sense to patronize businesses that charge you more so that you will need Tzedakah after giving them business.
1 charge less, if other places can charge less you should do the effort
(And with time you have more and more costumers to compensate..)
2 dont let people from out of town to come to buy all the real state in ch so they come and take profit and also do all what they want (since its not they neighborhood) And I mean the building and residential business
How many developments are made for non jews or only high class leaving the majority of ch residents out?
Food is less in Five towns than Crown Heights. Boro Park even less. This may not be due to price gouging just the cost of doing business in a what has become a high rent neighborhood. This applies to clothing and other items as well. That said how is the owner of a hardware store to compete with Home Depot. It’s not so simple. Crown Heights business would be better to focus on quality and service. If they can be the least expensive great, it’s just not that simple.
Are local businesses putting money back into the community or hiring outsiders and spending their profits elsewhere?
Are you crazy to pay premium and then the stores pay more and then real estate goes up the lower people always suffer at the end let them not support the ones driving up prices
It would also help if stores were open earlier in the day. Aside for basic common courtesy and customer service.
Customer service and treating people nicely is the key
Just about everyone in CH tries to use local CH physicians and their medical staff.
But demand FAR exceeds supply in CH, unfortunately.
In fact, if more CH people would venture outside the confines of Crown Heights for their physician care, it would lessen the strain on our overworked CH medical practices, and the quality of care would naturally improve, for all, to better than mere triage for all.
Me and my brother BH where blessed with a thriving bussiness, and we can thank God afford to keep our buying local and help our community, weather its buying take out from mendys or bouf and bun, or shopping from empire kosher to the marketplace, but I just wanna add 2 points. 1. If only the customer service was better in ch I have no doubt in my mind people would stay local that means I shouldn’t be on hold for 15 minutes trying to make a order, and I shouldn’t have to bag my own stuff at empire kosher… Read more »
As a local business owner I cannot begging to tell you how many people price shop with me for the lowest price, have zero loyalty or appreciation, and are only interested in the least expensive price regardless of any other factor. As a buyer of goods also, I understand the need to find the the lowest prices. However some people take this to an extreme and are not courteous or respectful of someone else’s time. And that makes it unpleasant to business with those people. Nobody wants to waste time working for someone, only to have them go find the… Read more »
Im an out of towner chabad girl and no matter how hard I try I cant shop for clothes in CH. I always end up in boro park. The clothing is tznius so even if frum stores can sometimes be pricey it’s worth it. I have nothing against CH but I’m not going to skim through every dress in the shunah just to find one half decent thing that’s ridiculously priced. The prices need to go down and the tznius needs to go up.
Congratulations to the Crown Heights Young Entrepreneurs, the organizers of the Chosen Business Conference. May the event be worthy (in terms of halacha, hashkafa and professionalism) to carry the communities name. Mei’chayil El choyil!