Local businesses are integral to the fabric of communities across Canada. They help support the local economy, create jobs, give back and help bring communities together. Ahead of the holiday season, we launched our Good Ideas Deserve to Be Found campaign in Ottawa, Ontario to encourage people to shop local.
The campaign highlighted six local businesses and the good ideas behind them with a shoppable window display in Ottawa’s historic ByWard Market and billboard ads throughout the city:
- Birch Bark Coffee: Established by Mark Marsolais-Nahwegahbow, Birch Bark Coffee offers organic, SPP certified, Fair Trade coffee grown and produced by farmers that are Indigenous descendants. The cause driven organization’s mission is to bring clean drinking water to the Indigenous communities and create positive change.
- Brenda Made This: Brenda Made This is a chunky knitwear brand founded by Brenda, who expanded her business utilizing her new found passion for ‘hiberknitting’ during the pandemic, selling her made-to-order knit sweaters, home items and her knitting patterns.
- Gather Food Truck: Gather Café + Kitchen was dreamt up by chef Emily Anderson and serves up plant-powered bowls, espresso energized drinks, sweet & savoury baked goods, and handmade pantry staples from its food truck.
- Saint Lyon: Co-founded by Abby Boadi and Elom Tsiagbey, Saint Lyon aims to break the paradigm of having to break the bank for comfort and style with fitness apparel – plus for every purchase the company makes a donation to make a positive impact on the world.
- Nurture with Botanics: Lashawna Phillips founded Nurture with Botanics with the intention of providing herbal tools and resources to help others learn to thrive through seasonal needs.
- The Box of Life: Co-founded by Akil Mesiwala and Rashida Rajgara, The Box of Life brings innovation to urban composting with a beautifully simple home composting solution that uses earthworms to produce the world’s highest quality living soil without bugs or odor.
The Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found campaign is a continuation of our efforts to support small businesses worldwide and empower them with economic opportunities. It builds on the free tools and resources we introduced last year, like Shops, Meta Business Suite, small business grant programs and virtual training to help small businesses navigate the pandemic.
As part of the campaign, we shared how Sharon Ransom from Woodstock, Ontario uses Meta’s business tools to connect with thousands of followers and helps new students find their passion for drumming through her studio, Ransom Drum Lab.
When the pandemic hit, Sharon shifted her lessons online and she began sharing short drum covers on Instagram to inspire new and experienced drummers to share their talents with their online communities. Now, 100% of her business comes from Facebook and Instagram.
Learn more about Ransom Drum Lab and the Meta tools small businesses are using.