Every “Local Collab” Is Just a Group Project to Separate You from Your Money.

Every business wants to look local now. Even the big ones. They plaster “community partner” across every product launch. They pair with breweries and bakeries. They run joint giveaways with boutiques and food trucks. Your favorite coffee spot teams up with a bank. Your favorite candle shop pairs with an insurance agency. They call it collaboration, like it’s some kind of neighborhood potluck.

It’s not generous. It’s not selfless. It’s survival.

Small businesses can’t stand on their own anymore. Large ones can’t either. Every one of them is leaning on someone else’s audience to stay afloat. It’s a group project, and you’re the prize. Their goal is simple. Cross-pollinate until you spend money on something. They don’t care which one of them gets it. The only rule is that it stays inside the circle.

They talk like they’re building community. They’re not. They’re building nets.

You are not a neighbor. You are a lead. Hands that look like they’re lifting each other up are really gripping each other so they don’t sink first.

We’ve been trained to clap when businesses work together. “Look at how great our community is,” we say while they pass us from one checkout page to another. They call it collaboration so they don’t have to call it what it really is. Consolidation without the paperwork.

Local doesn’t mean independent anymore. Most “local” shops rely on wholesale from the same three suppliers. Coffee trucks serve beans roasted four states away because it makes a good Instagram partnership. Farm-to-table means the lettuce took one photo with the chef before being swapped with a Sysco shipment in the back.

Everyone wants to look small while scaling wide. They want loyalty without responsibility. They want community without commitment. They want support without scrutiny.

And let’s be honest. None of this counts as local if it wasn’t produced where it is sold. Your local restaurant doesn’t get to call it local if the tomatoes show up shrink-wrapped in a semi. Your local flower shop doesn’t get to claim community roots when their bouquets come off a cargo plane from a thousand miles away, dipped in preservatives so they stay alive just long enough to die in your kitchen. Zip code matters. Proximity matters. If it wasn’t grown, made, or built within the same air you breathe, it’s not local. It’s just packaged to look like it.

If they really believed in community, they’d ask what we need. Instead they ask what we’ll buy.

We don’t need more pop-up collabs or shared discount codes. We need people who produce more than content. We need people who create value that can stand on its own without a brand buddy to hold it upright. We need people who build something strong enough to feed, warm, or shelter someone without printing a logo on it first.

Collaboration used to mean work. Now it means shared marketing. It’s not mutual aid. It’s mutual exposure.

You can call it clever strategy. You can call it modern business. Just stop calling it community. Read more about the local halo effect here.