I read an article a while back about how major corporations are trying to get in on the recent “buy local” trend. Even though these corporations may have stores in your area, shopping at them is not shopping locally, unless of course you happen to live near their corporate headquarters. Shopping at one of these stores instead of online does indeed mean that your tax dollars stay locally, but it also means that the profit goes elsewhere. Shopping at locally owned companies means that the profits also stay in the area.

Take, for example, retail grocery. I split my time, for the moment, between Fresno, in California’s Central Valley and Roseville, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I will be moving to Roseville full time shortly, but that is another story. In these areas, the major players in the grocery arena are Safeway (Roseville)/Vons (Fresno), Save Mart (Both), Raley’s/Bel Air (Roseville). There are other stores, such as Whole Foods, Nugget Markets and Trader Joe’s, but I would class those in a separate category. The big box stores, Target and Walmart are also making their way into the grocery market.

If we examine, for a moment, where these companies are headquartered, we can see where the profits are going. From a Roseville perspective, the most local company is Raley’s/Bel Air (they also operate Nob Hill Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area), which is based in West Sacramento. Next to that would be Save Mart, based in Modesto, but with a major distibution point in Roseville, and Safeway, based in Pleasanton. From a Fresno perspective, the winner is SaveMart, with Vons, owned by Safeway, coming in second. With all of these stores, the profits stay in Northern California. Contrast this to the big box stores, headquartered in Minnesota and Arkansas.

Once we start talking about speciality stores, it gets a little more complicated because of local purchasing. For Roseville, going by my earlier position, Nugget wins, being based in Woodland, Trader Joe’s comes in second, being based in Southern California, followed by Whole Foods in Texas. As far as locally sourced products, Whole Foods seems to come off a little better than the others. Nugget Markets don’t have a presence in Fresno, but the other two do. Of course, none of these stores are quite as good as shopping at local farm stands or farmers’ markets. This is something I have been trying to do more of recently and will likely feature more heavily in the future.