This past couple of weeks has quite frankly been a bloody nightmare for businesses across the North West. Will they? Won’t they?… Should they…? Shouldn’t they?
With the introduction of a new tiered system for rating areas across England and their Covid-19 Alert Level, the government’s aim was to ‘SIMPLIFY’ the process. (We’ll leave you to be judge of whether that has in fact been the case…) The new tiered system has meant further restrictions on many business, reduced opening hours for others, and for some has meant temporary, or even worse, permanent closure.
We have always been huge advocates of supporting small business at Make Do Drink, from partnering with regional makers, to sourcing local suppliers, to collaborating with local venues.
In our hometown of Preston, if every adult spent just £5 extra per week in their local independent shops and businesses, it would mean £23.9 million per year going directly back into our local economy.
Our local market in Preston has been running a Fiver Fest promotion over the last couple of weeks to encourage us all to spend a few extra quid with our favourite independents. Everyone is struggling this year, but if we don’t show our support, small businesses will close, that money goes elsewhere, and our High Street’s become way more generic and boring!
We have always been huge advocates of supporting small business at Make Do Drink, from partnering with regional makers, to sourcing local suppliers to collaborating with local venues. we try our best to practice what we preach and spend our hard-earned pounds as locally as possible. As well as telling you about our own events and projects, we try to promote our favourite local businesses over on our social channels too!
Last year we pulled together an amazing Indie Christmas Gift Guide, giving shout outs to our fave make-ers, do-ers and places to drink-ers, and we’d love to do the same again this year!
If you are selling the perfect sticking filler for someone this Christmas, have an amazing festive cocktail menu you want to shout about or have a winter event you are promoting, drop us an email at makedodrink@gmail.com or ping us a DM on Facebook, Insta or Twitter and tell us all about it.
We’ll be aiming for an early December Indie Christmas Guide launch, and we’ll try to include as many as we can in!