Rural Route Ramble shines spotlight on small businesses in Northwest Iowa

MOVILLE, Iowa (KTIV) – The holiday season can be one of the busiest shopping times of the year, a group in Northwest Iowa has worked for four years to help out local businesses across Siouxland.

Main Street in Smalltown U.S.A., for many rural communities across the nation, their family-owned restaurants, one-off coffee shops, and local boutiques are the heartbeat of their communities. And for over a dozen Northwest Iowa towns, their local businesses are about to get a big boost over the weekend.

From Moville to Ida Grove – from Cherokee to Onawa, and everywhere in between, small-town businesses are given the spotlight in the 4th Rural Route Ramble.

“The Rural Route Ramble was started by a group of gals, my daughter and her friends, who really wanted to support small business; they love small business and they think that rural Iowa is a great place to have it,” said a greeter for the Ramble, Janna Brandt. “They just wanted to keep those small towns going, and to help their vendor friends they started the Rural Route Ramble which promotes these small businesses on a two-day shopping spree.”

Thanks to its rapid growth in popularity, the Rural Route Ramble has pulled shoppers in from all around Iowa to come and support small businesses.

“We have a lot of people come in from out of town, there’s people that have taken the day off of work to come and support our local businesses so we’ve seen a lot of new faces,” said the owner of Movillatte in Moville, Trissa Bottorff.

“I think a lot of people even from Le Mars, or Sioux City, don’t realize what these small towns have to offer,” said the owner of Fashion Shoppe in Kingsley, Karen Lindgren. “So this is a bit different, and it gets people to go and see what’s out there.”

Every kind of vendor sees an increase in customers and sales over the weekend.

“Everybody is always in such a cheerful mood, ready to shop, and support other people,” said Bottorff. “I think that support just keeps getting bigger and bigger with each year.”

“The girls have gotten a lot of positive feedback from the vendors about the traffic they’re getting each day here. And people know that they’re here now and they’ll come back another time and remember that there are great small businesses in these small towns,” said Brandt.

The Rural Route Ramble will continue through Dec. 2. Click here for a list of all the participating businesses and their hours of operation.

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