LEWISBURG, Pa. — Black Friday and Small Business Saturday stragglers are taking advantage of the free parking in Lewisburg.
Cycle Up Cafe on Market Street only recently opened for business, but owners say they saw plenty of customers over the weekend.
"Still have our grand opening sign out there so that helped but it was nice, we did see a lot of new faces and we are starting to get a lot of repeat customers so we did a lot of gift card sales which is great news for us so that's definitely telling us that people wanna support local business," said Chris Korbin, Cycle Up Cafe owner.
Like other small businesses, the cafe is competing against longtime stores in Lewisburg and online shopping.
"You definitely feel the difference with online shopping for sure but luckily, with us, before having our website, all of our sales have been in person, and with bikes, it's kind of unique because the customer, especially when they're not very familiar, they do need a lot of customer interaction and help," said Korbin.
At The Mercantile, a gift shop along Market Street, owner Laurie Slear says she saw a lot of foot traffic on Saturday as well.
"We're very very pleased with the weekend and we've been busy today too so you know not everybody is shopping online I think they're still shopping small," said Laurie Slear, The Mercantile owner.
Slear says the pandemic made more people aware of how quickly a small business could close without the community's support, which contributed to the increase in customers.
"So I think people are really more mindful of that, and they really try to support small businesses, so we're grateful that people seem to recognize that and want us to continue to stay in business so they do shop here, you know regularly we have a lot of visitors that come here too that love our town," said Slear.
Both businesses hope to see a continued increase in sales during the holidays.