Every time I go out of town, whether it is for a vacation or just a few hours during a day, I take notice of the different food options.
Clarksdale has many restaurants for a small community. In fact, I was happy to see Josie’s Cocktail Bar & Grill recently open in downtown Clarksdale. It has many good options.
However, I’ve always felt we could have even more food options for people who come through Clarksdale and Coahoma County.
After all, Clarksdale and Coahoma County is an excellent community and many people should be happy to spend time here. Having many potential customers, needless to say, is very important when an entrepreneur is opening a business.
I visited family in the Chicago area for a few days last week and will highlight some of the restaurants I ate at.
On Christmas Day, I had lunch at the Pita Inn, a Mediterranean restaurant in Mundelein, Ill., and had their special that included steak, rice, a salad and pitas. The next night for dinner, I went with family members to another Pita Inn in Skokie, Ill., and had a steak sandwich.
I also ate at two different Once Upon A Bagel restaurants – one in Winnetka, Ill., and the other in Highland Park, Ill. I had a lox and bagel sandwich at the one in Winnetka and a corned beef sandwich on a bagel at the one in Highland Park.
I had an Italian beef sandwich for lunch at Portillo’s & Barnelli’s in Vernon Hills, Ill., on Friday and a veggie burger for dinner at Michael’s Grill & Salad Bar in Highland Park, Ill., on Saturday.
I purposely ate at places and ordered food that would be tough to find in the Clarksdale area.
The moral of this column is not just to run through much of my vacation menu and make everyone hungry. It’s to show there are still ways we could make our community better when it comes to food options.
How can a community such as Clarksdale and Coahoma County support more restaurants than we already have?
I am not an economist or businessperson, but I do have some thoughts based on my own experiences.
I’ve lived in nine small communities since 2003. All of those communities have been in Mississippi, Louisiana or Arkansas. Every one of those places does not go after a certain customer base the way it should.
Businesses in all of those towns cater to prospective customers who live in their communities and tourists who come through. Few businesses cater to customers who live in neighboring communities 12 months a year.
Right here in Clarksdale and Coahoma County, we should be doing a better job reaching out to customer bases in towns such as Helena-West Helena, Ark., Marks, Cleveland, Tunica, Batesville, Greenville, Greenwood and Memphis, Tenn. We’d be more likely to reach customers from some of the closer communities I mentioned. But if more customers from all of those towns came through Clarksdale and Coahoma County, we’d be able to support more businesses.
Look at how I presented all of those restaurants I ate at while I was on vacation. Without pinpointing a specific community, I said I visited the Chicago area, which included all of those restaurants. Every one of those restaurants caters to customers throughout the area, not just residents of their town.
My hotel was in Prospect Heights, Ill., and my family members live in Mundelein, Ill. But I did not limit my food options to those two towns. In fact, I didn’t have a single meal in Prospect Heights.
As I mentioned, I also had meals in Skokie, Ill., Vernon Hills, Ill., Highland Park, Ill., and Winnetka, Ill.
We need to adapt the same mentality right here in Clarksdale and Coahoma County. Our neighboring communities also need to adapt that mentality.
Communities nearby could come together to market themselves as one big area. That would be more effective than having each individual community market itself as one small town.
Is this the only solution to our economic problems? No, and it will take many years for us to get where we need to be economically.
Small neighboring communities coming together as one big area is definitely a good start. Part of that good start is having businesses in the area reaching out to potential customers in neighboring communities.
Josh Troy is the editor and publisher of the Clarksdale Press Register. He can be reached at (662) 627-2201 or joshtroy@pressregister.com
