What it takes to keep a shop open
For families: read this one together.
Every shop on the Fayetteville square has rent, stock and payroll to cover before it earns anything for the owner. What does that look like up close?
Here’s what running a shop usually looks like, in general terms. (These are common parts of running a small shop, not facts about any one Fayetteville business.)
What owners put on the line
- Their own money. Many owners start with savings. Loans are common too, and a lender may ask the owner to sign a personal guarantee, which means the owner is on the hook personally if the business can’t pay.
- The lease. A storefront usually means a lease that runs for months or years. The rent is due whether it was a good month or not.
- Inventory before it sells. A shop buys what’s on the shelf first and hopes it sells. If it doesn’t, the owner has already paid for it.
- Payroll on schedule. Employees get paid on payday, whether the week was busy or slow. The owner’s own pay comes from what’s left after the bills.
- Long hours. Open, close, order, clean, do the books, fix the leak. Often the owner is the one doing all of it.
- Slow seasons. Weather, holidays, school calendars and road work can all change how many people walk by.
- Competition from online and big-box stores. They sell many of the same things. What can a small shop on the square offer that they can’t? What can they offer that it can’t?
What you don’t see
Just notice and wonder. These are for you to think about, not to ask. (Money questions are private.)
- Before the doors open, someone already unlocked, swept, stocked and turned on the lights. Who? When?
- Most of what’s on the shelf was bought by the shop before you could buy it.
- On payday, who gets paid first: the helpers or the owner?
- Count the hours on the door sign. Now guess how many hours the owner really works.
- Rent and the light bill are due even after a slow, rainy week.
- What jobs happen after the sign flips to “Closed”?
Where a $20 sale goes
You spend $20. Part pays back what the shop paid for the item. Part goes to rent, power and insurance. Part goes to wages. Part is sales tax, which the shop collects and sends to the state. What’s left, if anything, is the owner’s pay and the cushion for a slow month.
The general shape only; these are not figures from any business or study.
Follow the $20 in Lincoln County
Tennessee’s sales tax is 7%, and Lincoln County’s local option rate is 2.5%. On a $20 purchase that’s $1.40 state and $0.50 local, $1.90 in all. Half of the county’s local option tax goes to schools by law, so 25 cents of that $20 sale heads toward schools (our arithmetic on those rates).
Where the rest can go (wages, local services, rent, the team jersey, and the part that leaves town) is drawn out, with the national study figures labeled as such, in Follow the $20.
Sources: TN Dept. of Revenue (state 7%) · CTAS county sales tax list (Lincoln County 2.50%, effective May 1, 1992, on the first $1,600 of a single item) · Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-712.
What the town gets back
- Money that keeps moving here. Studies by the research firm Civic Economics compared local independent shops with chains. In its national Indie Impact summary (2011-2012, 10 communities), “local retailers and restaurants for all completed surveys recirculate 52.3 percent of revenue locally, while chains recirculate just 15.8 percent,” and “Looking at just retailers, local businesses recirculate 47.7 percent of revenue locally, compared to 13.6 percent for chains” (as reported by the American Booksellers Association’s Bookselling This Week, Jan. 17, 2013). Those studies were done in other cities, not Fayetteville, and the American Independent Business Alliance notes “The exact amount of dollars recirculated by locally owned businesses varies by time, place, and industry.”
- Local jobs, including many people’s first job. What does a first job teach? Showing up on time, counting change, talking to strangers? Ask someone about theirs.
- Sales tax that helps pay for local services. Tennessee’s Department of Revenue says “The sales tax is comprised of two parts, a state portion and a local portion. The general state tax rate is 7%. The local tax rate varies by county and/or city.” For a sales tax levied by a county, state law says “One-half (½) of the proceeds shall be expended and distributed in the same manner as the county property tax for school purposes” (Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-712). In plain words: when you buy something taxable in town, part of the local share goes to schools.
- Sponsorships. The team shirt, the festival banner, the raffle prize.
- The square itself. Lit windows, open doors and people on the sidewalk. Walk it at noon and again after closing. What changes?
Full impact: the different kinds
One shop reaches outward in rings (see the diagram). Here are some of the ways people have described that reach.
- Economic. Money moving: wages, rent, purchases from other businesses and taxes. Lincoln County’s 2023 payroll at businesses with staff was $389.3 million (Census County Business Patterns, not adjusted for inflation).
- Social: the “third place.” Sociologist Ray Oldenburg called them “third places,” spots that are neither home (first) nor work (second) where people gather and talk. His book is The Great Good Place (1989). The diner counter, the barber chair and the hardware-store aisle all count.
- Civic. Sociologists Charles Tolbert, Thomas Lyson and Michael Irwin studied U.S. counties. They found that places with more locally owned small businesses and civic organizations tended to score better on measures of community well-being (“Local Capitalism, Civic Engagement, and Socioeconomic Well-Being,” Social Forces 77(2):401–427, 1998). A later small-town study found that “nonemployers and third places are associated with greater civic welfare in models for both metro and nonmetro small towns” (Tolbert, Irwin, Lyson & Nucci, “Civic Community in Small-Town America,” Rural Sociology 67(1):90–113, 2002, doi; working paper). These are national patterns (“associated with”), not proof about any one town.
- Educational. First jobs, learning to count change, talking with adults, seeing how a business really works. Lincoln County Schools runs a Career & Technical Education program. Ask a grown-up in your family: “What was your first job, and what did it teach you?”
- Physical: “eyes on the street.” Writer Jane Jacobs wrote about shopfronts and safety: “There must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.” She also wrote, “A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.” (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961, p. 35.) Jacobs was writing about big cities, and whether it fits a small-town square is a fair question.
- Resilience. Lincoln County’s paid jobs dropped from 9,230 (2019) to 6,548 (2020) and recovered to 8,514 (2023) (County Business Patterns). That shows the dip, not who recovered or why. Ask an older neighbor about a hard time in town. Which places stayed open?
Picture the square without its shops
Close your eyes and imagine the square with every shop gone. What would you miss first? Where would you get your first job? Which shop would you most want back, and why? (More dinner-table questions)
Think about it
- What shop on the square has been open the longest? (Hint: Fayetteville Main Street says one has been “in continuous operation since 1899.” Read its Square story.)
- What’s one thing you buy online that you could buy on the square?
- If you ran a shop, what would you do on a rainy Saturday when nobody walks by?
Try this
- Pick one shop you’ve never been in. Next time you’re on the square, step inside and look around.
- Count the open signs. How many lit windows on one side of the square? Who do you think opened up this morning?
- Bring your kid’s question. Print the Ask a shopkeeper card and try one question on your next normal visit.
Sources: Bookselling This Week, “Indie Impact National Summary” (Jan. 17, 2013): archivenews.bookweb.org · American Independent Business Alliance, “The Local Multiplier Effect” · Tennessee Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax · Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-712 (Justia; see also UT County Technical Assistance Service, “Local Option Sales Tax”) · Fayetteville Main Street, July 11, 2025.