Buy local? At The Locavore Variety Store you can't do anything else

In 2022, Caroline Weaver "naively" set about an impossible task: cataloguing every one of New York City's independent shops on foot. Walking up to eight hours a day, the former pencil-shop owner clocked up more than 1,000 miles and 10,000 stores before launching the Locavore Guide, an online directory of NYC's independent retailers. One year later she opened her own shop, The Locavore Variety Store, filled with a unique mix of local products. The tiny Greenwich Village space is an homage to traditional retail, featuring peg boards, gondola shelving and an orange bodega-style countertop with slanted candy racks - sourced from down the road in Brooklyn. Whether traditional shop door bells, glow-in-the-dark hair bobbles or the plastic Wiffle balls played with by children across America - almost every item on sale has been produced within a 100-mile radius of the city. "I made a shop to demonstrate that local goods aren't only cottage-industry products such as handmade soap, or pottery and textiles," says Weaver. "They can be such a wide range of manufactured things. But you wouldn't notice unless you're paying attention to the fine print on the back of a label." It was doing exactly that which led Weaver to discover that her favoured drain unclogger, Pequa ($8), is made in Great Neck, Long Island. It's an example of the kind of practical and cult offering that Locavore excels at, alongside the New Jersey-made Kiss-Off stain-remover stick ($6.50) and Pennsylvania's Squigle Tooth Builder Sensitive Toothpaste ($11). These utilitarian offerings are stocked alongside "weird and amazing" gifts. Glass pickle ornaments ($28) sell big during the holidays; Joya Studio's scented candles ($60), in glass vessels that emulate the colourful water towers along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, are, says Weaver, "the most stylish souvenir you can buy from New York City". The bestselling product is the Cannoli Bar ($15 for six), produced by a family bakery on Long Island. "It really does taste like cannoli," she says. The online Locavore Guide, which now includes more than 14,000 shops, will soon have a mobile app. A print version ($25) comes out once a year featuring Weaver's curation of what she describes as "the extra-special stuff": 789 shops, ranging from bonsai specialist Dandy Farmer to NYC's last remaining tack shop, Manhattan Saddlery. The guide's design is inspired by Yellow Pages directories and retro guides such as Zagat. Other Locavore-designed exclusive products include Shops of NYC trading cards ($10) and Baseball Scoring Pencils ($12) made at America's oldest pencil factory in Jersey City. But the products are only one part of the message. On Instagram, Weaver mixes fun videos of her "biking around town like a lunatic" - in search of pillbox hats, lilac perfumes and other hard-to-find requests from her followers - with explainers on how the independent retail economy works. She is currently writing a book, Shop World, on the subject. Most important for Weaver is that Locavore has become a place in which to build community. "We forget that by choosing the inconvenient option and visiting a real store, you gain so much more," says Weaver. Whether that be the exercise you get by walking there, the social contact once inside or the chance "to pet a really cute cat", she says that "these are the unquantifiable things that are so important to enjoying life in a city, beyond the exchange of goods." The Locavore Variety Store, 434 6th Avenue, NYC 10011; thelocavore.shop