Big Lessons from Small Business Saturday (and the Strange Stuff I Bought)
Depending on when you read this post, I am either doing some Sunday evening or Monday morning quarterbacking and sharing my thoughts from the epic Saturday shopping spree that was Small Business Saturday. Before I share the strange stuff I bought, I wanted to get a few lessons off my chest. Here are some tips to increase your success next Small Business Saturday:
- Not every small business is listed on AMEX’s website, if it is not listed, you will probably not receive the statement credit.
- Inversely, some small businesses listed on AMEX’s website are out of business or have changed ownership and no longer accept AMEX (happened to me and several other readers).
- Not every cashier knows how to split payment to use multiple AMEX cards per transaction (sometimes it is easier to just ring things up separately).
- If you really want to increase your success next year, I would do some homework a few days in advance:
- Make sure that the businesses you plan on visiting are on AMEX’s website and that they do accept AMEX.
- Ask them if they know how to split payment.
- Look around the store and scope out the items you want to buy, so you don’t spend more time than you want/need figuring out what to buy.
- Be willing to roll with the punches, not every business or cashier know what is going on, so be honest with them and tell them what you are doing. They may be more willing to help you if they understand what you are trying to do.
With all that said, here are some pics from my shopping spree. Here is my master spreadsheet with AMEX cards on the left side and purchases on the right side. I listed the cards from top to bottom in the order I wanted to use them, in case I didn’t max them out. Save your Bluebird and Serve Cards for the end since you don’t earn any miles/points/cash back on those transactions.
My first stop was to the Carmel bakery for pastries and scones for breakfast. I was too hungry in the morning that I forgot to take a picture. Next stop was Kurtz Orchards for some jams/jellies. I can’t wait to try all of these.
Down the street was a boutique jewelry and crafts store. I bought this owl ornament for my grandma to hang outside by the patio.
Next stop was the cheese shop for some Booren Kaas and Lamb Chopper cheeses from the Netherlands. My dad loves cheese and we got to sample a few different cheeses before we made up our mind.
After dropping off the previous items at the car, we continued our shopping spree at the Cottage of Sweets candy store. I bought a wide variety of candy and my brother did a really good job buying $10.05 worth of gummy fish.
Next stop was across the street to buy some souvenirs for my friends, a cool Monterey license plate keychain and a Monterey coffee mug.
I was running out of places to shop at, so I walked into the Mail Mart shipping supply store. I asked if they had any stamps for sale and all they had were Celebrity Chefs collectible stamps for $13 a sheet. If anyone wants these stamps, let me know and we can work out a price. I’ll make you a pretty good deal.
Here is a close up scanned image of the stamps.
After that, we went down to Cannery Row and bought some lunch on the pier, compliments to AMEX. I got a delicious bowl of clam chowder for $10 free and my parents and brother split some fish and chips. It was a lovely day of shopping and family bonding.
I know my approach to Small Business Saturday is different than most. The ideal strategy would have been to buy several $10 gift cards/certificates for businesses that you frequent, but that strategy would not have worked well for me. Every year during the Small Business Saturday weekend, I am up in Carmel, so holding onto gift cards/certificates that I can only use up there for an entire year was not very exciting to me. I also think that Small Business Saturday is more of a reason to spend a few extra bucks at some local businesses than to get as much money as possible from American Express. I think if everyone did that, American Express might reevaluate Small Business Saturday and make it not as exciting in the future. Let me step off my soap box now and see what you guys think.
FYI, here are the results of my last poll question:
What was the craziest thing you bought during Small Business Saturday?
I think the people that had the most fun out of it this year are people that did it with friends & family. Seems like a perfect day to share your hobby with friends/family and have a fun day doing something a bit different, trying new things etc etc at the same time.
Bit of a shame I missed out on it this year, but I got some nice stuff from the Chatuchak markets in Bangkok instead. Time to head back to the US in a few hours.
Glad you had fun in Bangkok, I have yet to make it to Asia. I know, I know, I have a lot of catching up to do. Have a safe flight back to the US.
I think you did great! You got to try some new food and got a few gifts-how fun is that! And if you sell the stamps, you can go back and get some more cheese lol
I participated in SBS two years ago (and I wasted pretty much all free money-bought gift certificates for a local restaurant, which went bankrupt, yet still on the AmEx map). Last year I was doing my study abroad and missed the event.
So, this year, I sort of planed what I need. Initially, I wanted to buy mostly hair products at a salon, called earlier a few salons, and one said they had that brand and that they accepted AmEx. So I got up early (they open at 8 AM). To my surprise, the place was a junk place, and they had generic product. So I went home and looked some more places.
Then I wrote down a plan with stops (including a gas station to put gas) and went on the spree. I went to a place I knew had the hair product I was looking for, so I drove there. Got it, they split the payments, but since I had some more “credit”, I got a product I didn`t need. Oh, well.
Then I went to a restaurant (steak house) and got certificates. Better yet, they had a promo on gift cards, and I got extra $$.
Then I went to a sub shop, got a sub and a few gift certificates. Got cash back for a difference between the certificate and the cost of the sub. I could had made cash on those differences !
I went home and started to look for more opportunities (yeah, I have a few AmEx cards!) I found a cheese/gourmand shop, which was about 10 miles away. Oh, well, I thought-I like cheese and sort of wanted to spread my “credit” among as many as possible small businesses.
I drove those 10 miles just to get a very bad owner. I asked if he could split the payments and explained him why. He was aware of the event, and said that only one transaction allowed. And then said “AmEx is aware of all those tricks”. I thanked him and walked away. On my way out, I asked what exactly he meant, but he looked at me like I was a “bad guy”. I was shocked-I drove to his store just to get judged. I explained him that three transaction are allowed and that he should had checked it out. Oh, well, he lost a business, maybe a permanent one-if I liked that expensive cheese he had.
That was my day. I was tired. Now, let`s wait for the credits.
:-)
Good morning Katrina, thank you for sharing. You had a very interesting experience, full of ups and downs. I’m sorry to hear that the cheese shop owner was not willing to fully participate in SBS.
You pointed out an interesting dilemma buying gift cards/certificates. You don’t want to buy those for a business that will go out of business before you can redeem all your gift cards/certificates. Now we wait for the avalanche of statement credits to post. Have a great day!
I planed a shopping rout with my daughter, but most of the shops we chose from the Amex website didn’t accept Amex or didn’t know about small business Saturday. Anyway, we had a great experience at one of her favorite restaurant. We had a ausome dinner and ended up buying their gift card. The casher was so nice to help us and charged $10 x2 for $25 gift card( buy $20 gift card, get $5). We bought 4 of them:)
Great deal Noko, it seems like a lot of SBS restaurants and stores had bonuses for buying gift cards/certificates. Enjoy the free food on your next few visits. Thanks for sharing!
I tried to maximize my $10 purchases at a local fruit/gift market….It was exhausting and, really, not worth it in the end even though I got 8 1/2 gal of fresh squeezed OJ, fruit, fudge, candy, salsas, jellies…I will not do it again next year. Not worth my time. I donated most of it to the women’s shelter, so I guess it was for a good cause!
Thanks for sharing Che. Sorry to hear that you had such a difficult time shopping at your local market. Was it really busy or because the store didn’t want to use multiple AMEX cards per transactions? I’m sure the women’s shelter appreciated the food :)
This was my first year participating in Small Business Saturday thanks to your site for the insight. I have 5 AMEX cards and maxed them all out. I looked on the app and found shops around my house and hit up the ones of interest. I bought lunch and beer at a restaurant, ($45 worth of food split up between 4 cards $10 each, the nice young waitress thought it was a little weird ,but did it with no problems) seafood at the fish market (I bought $28 worth of mussels asked the guy to do split payment, put $10 on one card he then said don’t worry about the rest have a good day! $28 worth of mussels for basically nothing! I did give him a $5 tip though!). I then bought a $12 beer so that was only $2 out of pocket. Pizza and sandwiches from the local pizza joint split between 2 cards. Bought more sandwiches from another local shop $11.27 each, paid for them separately so $1.27 out of pocket, Sushi at the local Sushi restaurant (out of all the shops I went too this is the only one who gave me a hard time of doing a split payment. In the end she did it and I got $23 worth of Sushi for $3 out of pocket). $12 at the local hardware store for $2. I ended up getting $189 worth of food/products for a total out of pocket cost of $37 with half of that being tips! I look forward to doing this next year. Thanks
It sounds like you had a really fun day. I like how you spread the wealth across many different restaurants and businesses. Glad you didn’t have much trouble splitting payments to pay with multiple cards. Thanks for sharing Rich!
My wife and I made a day of it. A whole day of one Super Fun Date!!!
1st stop: Yummy free Breakfast, plus $50 in gift certificates. 2nd stop: $20 in free clothing, 3rd stop $10 free food, plus $50 gift certificate, 4th stop: $30 free goods with free Christmas lights, 5th stop: free $20 fresh salmon dinner plus $20 in free Mexican cokes, 6th stop: $40 free in Christmas gifts, last stop $20 free of tea and pecan pie to end the day. Haven’t look at the final numbers, but it was about $350 in goodies and food from Amex on Saturday.
Sounds like you guys had a lot of fun on SBS! I’m glad you brought your wife along so she could see how fun our crazy miles and points hobby is. Enjoy all your purchases.
Small shop day was a disaster. AMEX didn’t maintain the list for my area (Richardson, Texas). We went to place after place after place to find out the businesses no longer existed. In some cases, the actual buildings were no longer there or had been converted into something else. I bought a bunch of stuff in one listed place and, at the cashier, found out they don’t accept AMEX cards. Do you know any way to give feedback to AMEX?
I would just tweet to AMEX and tell them about your frustrations. It sucks when the businesses are either out of business or no longer accept AMEX. So lame!
I don’t tweet….but I can toot. Any way to contact AMEX about this?
Maybe call them or chat with them after you log into your AMEX account.
My guess is that AE $10 transactions are losses for many businesses. Some businesses I went to either pleaded ignorance or refused to do $10 amounts ($25 or higher were ok to them). When asked why, they answered AE charges exhorbitant transaction fees. Most customers don’t realize a $100 transaction broken down in 10 transactions or $50 in 5, etc, will cost significantly more to the business than one $100 transaction. No wonder the small business owners don’t promote this. The ones who win are AE and us, the customers. Maybe they will get some repeat business from this, but none were too happy to see me on that day. My favorite restaurant who was on the map refused to honor the promotion. Said no $10 AE transactions today. He said no problem with Visa and Mastercard though. LOL.
For those with the map problems, make sure to double check the map before you go shop next year. I found places had been removed periodically. In-n-out was on the map Grant! at least in San Diego (they just recently started accepting AE in Oct). However they were removed from the map a few days before Sa (they are no small business). So probably no credit.
Thanks for sharing Kent. All of the businesses I visited happily took AMEX cards, but most of the places have pretty high margins, so I didn’t get any pushback. I’m sure smaller businesses with smaller profit margins would not be as excited to accept AMEX cards.
I Bought 30 Bottles of wine from a local winery. $550 out of pocket – $300 Amex credit – $200 Cap360 Black Friday promotion = $50. Score!!!
Grant, will these credit post before i have to pay off my statement? When did they post last year?
The AMEX charges should post 1-2 days after Saturday and the statement credits should post 1-2 days after that. If you don’t see your statement credits by Friday, I would call AMEX.
Wow, Necco Wafers are now $2.25??? I must be getting really old since I remember them for like .50
They are overpriced from that candy shop. I’ve seen the same roll for around $1 in other stores :)
Thanks for mentioning about strategy for SBS and so I did my homework this year, and between the wife and I and 13 cards, we went and got brunch first and then we hit the restaurants that we are interested in within our 1 block downtown area.. the wife was never as interested in this game but this year, she suddenly decided it would be a fun family event and we brought both our toddlers out with us… we divide and conquer and pretty much got 10 cards out of the way in about 30 mins… it wasn’t even noon yet so we took the kids to the museum in the city and then return for dinner and use up the last 3 cards. Also hit OfficeMax for $1600 worth of gc while we were at it to take advantage of their gift card cashback offers.. not bad for a day’s work… One of the restaurant even had the sign up about SBS, and when I told her I’ll like to get a $30 gift cert, she knew exactly what I wanted and happily rung me up…
Sounds like a perfect day with your family, compliments to SBS. I didn’t see the SBS sign at any of the places I shopped at. Only the lady working the Mail Mart knew about SBS. After I mentioned SBS, she knew exactly what I wanted to do. I love it when a great plan comes together :)
By any chance, are you left handed Grant?
No, I am right handed unfortunately. Why do you ask?
Missed out this year, was in NOLA, but then realized there are a LOT of small businesses there so I could have participated locally. I only have one Amex card at the moment, although just got approved for the business gold, THANK YOU for the random link that eventually led me to the 50k MR deal after 5k spend. :)
They were always be another Small Business Saturday next year, hopefully you can participate then.