Lowcountry Local First

When we buy local, on a basic level, more money stays in our community, which is an efficient way to make a community economy thrive. Lowcountry Local First’s efforts have helped shift the balance of national franchises with locally-​owned businesses. Their work is why the streets of Charleston look like Charleston and not a generic American city. I know that my membership and donations go towards supporting a movement to help keep Charleston Charleston.
This organization provides a broad group of services to support Charleston’s economy. There’s the «Buy Local» movement, with awareness campaigns, research studies, marketing, etc. They also do a LOT of work to help us eat locally-​grown food by creating an incubator farm (called DirtWorks), a farm apprentice program, farm tours, «eat local» month, and more. They put on the Chef’s Potluck, which is a fantastic event at Middleton Place each year that pairs top local chefs with farmers to create table after table of small plates with all local ingredients. The new LocalWorks office provides budding entrepreneurs or at-​home workers a place to co-​work in a beautiful environment with lots of shared office services and help promoting those businesses.
Plus, the monthly member mixers are fantastic networking opportunities for my small business!
What would Charleston be without LLF?

This organization promotes local economy and supports small businesses here in the Charleston area with branding, publicity, and networking. They offer a spring farm tour to introduce the public to the farmers who grow the produce supplied to local restaurants, stores, and farmers markets. LLF also has an internship program and functions as a start-​up incubator. Support the cause by getting a «Local» logo tee from them, and choose products with the «Local» label.