Chamber: Holiday season 'critical'

McCOOK, Neb. -- McCook Chamber President Dawson Brunswick said that it is critical this year for local businesses to have a really good November and December. The chamber’s Board of Directors are planning a Christmas promotion that closely follows previous years’ holiday promotions.

The plan is for shoppers to receive a scratch card with purchase from participating merchants’ businesses. Shoppers can win prizes, with one grand-prize-winner receiving a Chamber shopping spree. Even the “not-a-winner” cardholders will have a second chance at winning something.

The promotion will start the week of Thanksgiving. Beginning on Monday, November 30, the chamber will be doing daily “on location” live Facebook feeds between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., giving participating merchants the opportunity to talk about their businesses and showcase what they have to offer. There will be a daily drawing during the live feed from the “second-chance” entries, with the lucky winner receiving a $50 gift card from the featured business.

Brunswick said the deadline for businesses to sign up to participate has a bit more flexibility this year, since there are still materials left over from last year.

Santa Claus will go up on November 16. The Chamber has also earned the status as a Small Business Saturday Neighborhood Champion from American Express, so materials are on their way to promote small business shopping on November 28.

Brunswick said the Christmas Eve promotion whereby a sack of goodies is handed out along B Street is “99 percent a no-go” because of the pandemic. He is also still contemplating how the Santa fly-in at the airport could be accommodated. “We certainly don’t want to risk Santa’s health and expose him to Covid. It would be terrible if Santa had to isolate before his big day.”

The benefit of shopping local is looking out for the community and not traveling to North Platte, Kearney, or Grand Island and bringing back Covid, according to Brunswick. “It’s about thinking about your friends, your family your neighbors and knowing that they work at the place that you’re going to shop and support and you’re keeping them employed.” Brunswick went on to say that we’ve been lucky here, as most of our businesses are still operating and we haven’t lost anything due to Covid.

Brunswick said that only about one penny from every dollar of online sales comes back to the community.

That comes mostly from delivery jobs created locally through the post office, UPS, and Fed Ex.

“But when you spend locally, on average, I want to say its 66 to 70 cents that stays in McCook. And that’s huge.