Over the lunch hour on Nov. 15, the Great Bend Chamber of Commerce hosted a special roundtable dubbed “Shop Talk in 60” with the topic being “Business NOT-As-Usual this Holiday Season & Beyond.” 

The purpose was to bring members together to share observations, hurdles and hopefully some solutions along the way, said Chamber President Megan Barfield. The dialogue was found worthwhile by those in attendance, which included members coming from retail, service, and attraction-based businesses. 

“It’s important to hear directly from our business owners and to create an opportunity for them to learn from other chamber members in the process,” Barfield said. “The chamber will continue to hold sessions like this for members and non-members to come together to share and learn.”

There are a lot of great ideas and tools that business owners are using and they’re willing to share those “hacks” with their local business peers, she said. “Working together to face our challenges can only be a win.”

They invited Jon Prescott to guide the conversation and they were able to identify some of the pitfalls as well as generate some ideas. They captured the key takeaways to share with chamber members.

“We have noticed a general shift in attitudes and habits of visitors to the Kansas Wetlands Education Center since the pandemic,” Curtis Wolf, KWEC director. “So I was interested in hearing what others are seeing and how they have adjusted their day-to-day operations in response.”

The center has had fewer drop-in visitors this year, which has been compounded by the drought, but also by what seems like a change in visitor attitudes, he said. “We have noticed that some visitors that are stopping in are not spending as much time in the museum during their visit, and do not seem to be as engaged with the interactive exhibits at KWEC. We have also had more difficulty filling our programs that we offer than in past years.”

But, he was glad he attended.

“While the challenges that local businesses face can be worrisome and even daunting, it is nice to realize we have a network available to bounce ideas off of and learn from,” he said. “Even if the businesses are seemingly very different and the reasons for the shifts in our ‘businesses as usual’ might be different, we can find commonalities in diagnosing the issues we face and how we can overcome the challenges.”  

This is comforting, he said. “There was the realization that we are all part of the Great Bend and central Kansas community, and competing with larger forces in the market helped us realize that by working together we can be more successful.”

He was most excited about the “business walk about,” a networking program where business owners would travel as a group to learn about the other businesses in the community, thus educating themselves about what goods and services are available in the community. 

“This will help us utilize each other’s traffic, and recommend to our customers that they can find what they are looking for locally,” he said. “It’s amazing to me how much we don’t know about our neighborhood businesses.”

“It was refreshing to sit down with a group of business owners that were willing to be honest and frank, and share their opportunities and issues,” said Mark Mingenback, longtime community businessman.

The next discussion is scheduled for noon on Jan. 17, 2023. It will be entitled “New Year. New Strategies.”