Original article archived on Germantown Newspapers website, here.
Northwest Businesses Sweep Awards

By PATRICK COBBS
Staff Writer, Mt Airy Independent

On Tuesday December 2 the Empowerment Group announced the results of its citywide competition highlighting small businesses with the biggest positive impact on the local community, and the top three prizes went to businesses from Mt. Airy and Germantown.

“It just turned out that way,” said Executive Director Angel Rodriguez.

The Empowerment Group (www.empowerment-group.org) is a nonprofit that supports local small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its signature event is the yearly Entrepreneurship Week, held each April, which is a weeklong celebration of small businesses. The My Block My Business Award competition is a new effort to highlight local small businesses as community pillars.   

The first annual My Block My Business competition fielded heavy entries from all over the city, but the panel of judges took a shine to the Trolley Car Diner in Mt. Airy, the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts in Germantown, and Philly Electric Wheels in Mt. Airy. They took the top three slots.

“I think there are a lot of growing businesses in the Northwest,” said second prize winner and School of Circus Arts owner Shana Kennedy. “It’s fun to be part of a community that is really thriving and that seems to be the case in Germantown and Mt. Airy.”

Trolley Car owner and Mt. Airy resident Ken Weinstein thought it said something special about the Northwest that local business did so well in the competition. And he also took the first prize award as an affirmation that “supporting the community is good business,” he said.

It makes sense that the Trolley Car’s $100,000 in charity donations over the last eight years would have struck a cord with the judges. Those donations came from the restaurant’s Helping Hands program, which gives 15 percent of the gross receipt totals to local nonprofits on selected days. But the many local volunteer days that the Trolley Car has helped to make a success might have made a difference too – these are events like the community building days for the playground at Henry Huston Elementary School on Allen’s Lane.

Some may consider this kind of thing good karma, but Weinstein thinks of it in business terms. He calls it “grass roots marketing.”

“We’d rather put our marketing dollars into making our community better than throw a bunch of adds on the radio,” he said. “It helps us build good will, which keeps our most loyal customers coming back, over and over again. And at the same time it makes our employees feel better about what they’re doing on a daily basis.”

And speaking of marketing, the competition winners will receive a series of direct marketing gifts from the Empowerment Group, including a dedicated website and poster advertisements on some of the major SEPTA bus lines. Weinstein was particularly tickled by this, given the antique SEPTA trolley sitting on his business’s front lawn.

For Kennedy, making her business act as a positive force in the community came a little more by accident. When she opened the school she did it because it was something she wanted to do - for herself. But with her success and the positive reaction from the neighborhood her view has expanded. She has a new kind of pride and personal involvement in the neighborhood now as a business owner, she said.

Soon after her business opened the large building at 5900 Greene Street started to buzz with more exciting new businesses. And nearby residential renovations started to appear as well. Now she sees herself as part of something bigger.

These are just two examples, but Rodriguez said the city is full of local entrepreneurs that make it their business to improve their neighborhoods. And he hoped the contest would help spread the word about the vital roles local businesses can play in community life.

“Our focus is trying to raise the profile of local business owners as key ingredients and central to the fabric of Philadelphia as a whole,” he said. “And to think of them as community leaders. When you’re talking about the local business owners they’re there every day, their concerns are the residents’ concerns and they want to be involved.”

Philly Electric Wheels owner Afshin Kaighobody could not be reached for comment.