Richmond is ranked the number one city in America for supporting local businesses, according to a new national study from OnDeck. The report analyzed Instagram activity tied to hashtags like #shoplocal and #shopsmall across nearly 500 U.S. cities and found Richmond led the country with 68,263 posts per 100,000 residents.
Does that mean anything? Maybe, maybe not. But it does suggest locals are at least engaged with the idea of supporting independent businesses. Take the methodology with a grain of salt, but somebody had to land in the top spot and this time it happened to be Richmond.
That probably is not a huge surprise to anyone living here. Richmond’s identity has been built for years around independent restaurants, music venues, bookstores, galleries, coffee shops, markets, vintage stores, DIY spaces, and neighborhood businesses that survive largely because locals actually show up for them.
The report pointed to projects like Shop Made in VA and the RVA Black Farmers Market but there are countless other organizations, artists, venues, markets, and community groups doing the same work and helping spread that culture throughout the city.
There’s also probably a deeper reason this idea resonates here. Richmonders spent years building a culture around local ownership because for a long time it had to. Before the city became a national “best places to live” darling, much of the creative and small business ecosystem survived through word of mouth, grassroots support, and communities intentionally trying to keep money circulating locally.
And Richmond’s support for local business may also connect to another thing the city is known for: activism.
A lot of activism does not begin in formal political spaces. It starts in coffee shops, music venues, bookstores, galleries, bars, community markets, tattoo shops, DIY venues, independent media spaces, and neighborhood gathering spots where people actually know each other. The same people showing up for local businesses are often the same people showing up for mutual aid drives, preservation fights, protests, community organizing, local elections, and civic causes.
Richmond has long had that overlap between creative culture and activist culture. You can trace it through places like Gallery5, WRIR 97.3FM, Studio Two Three, the city’s mural movement, community markets, independent venues, and decades of grassroots organizing that helped shape the city’s cultural identity.
And ultimately, all of that is tied to people caring about the community itself. Cities with strong local business cultures often develop stronger civic engagement because people feel emotionally invested in the identity of the place they live.
Supporting local business becomes about more than commerce. It is about preserving culture, maintaining independent spaces, and keeping a city from becoming interchangeable with everywhere else.
So take this study for what it is. Maybe it is a little goofy, maybe it is not scientific enough to fully define a city, but it does give us a chance to appreciate something that has long been true about Richmond: supporting local businesses is one of the backbones of the culture here.
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