Shopping Vouchers

Buncrana has brought out Buncrana Shopping Vouchers that can only be spent in Buncrana. It’s run by Buncrana’s Chamber of Commerce.

According to their website:-

“Buncrana Shopping Voucher can be redeemed with any of our members, giving you access to a wide variety of purchases from groceries, clothing, shoes, jewellery, beauty treatments, restaurants and hospitality to the services of local accountants or solicitors and even home heating oil and car fuel”.

It encourages people to spend their money in Buncrana. Every Euro that is brought into a town (or kept in the town) circulates an average of six times. So, if they can keep in the town €50,000 that might be spent in Derry or elsewhere, that would be worth €300,000 to the town in terms of trade.

Protects Employment

According to Buncrana Chamber of Commerce website “Shopping Vouchers contribute to the local economy, supporting businesses and suppliers and protecting employment”.

Buncrana should do well at this time of the year when people are looking for Christmas Presents. It means that lots of people will get the Shopping Vouchers as Christmas presents and will spend them in January and February which are traditionally slow times for local businesses.

Better

They are better than Vouchers for individual restaurants and shops as they can be spent anywhere so people are more likely to buy them and people happier to buy them. The people getting them can them can decide what they spend them on.

They might spend them on a restaurant meal or some new clothes or they might want to spend them on something like heating oil or food.

Ideal Gift

According to the website “They’re also an ideal gift idea. For example, a €100 wedding gift in €20 and €10 denomination vouchers will allow the bride and groom to buy something for the home and enjoy a meal in a local restaurant”.

The best people to organise this would be the local East Inishowen Business Group – or Moville’s businesses themselves. They could do it jointly with Greencastle or they could do it separately.

I was talking about this last night to someone in Rosatos and they said that Bristol had something even better. They had their own money that can only be spent in Bristol.