Valentine’s Day brought a surge of customers to local shops across Erie, with business owners saying they saw significant foot traffic throughout the day. Many say the community support means a lot \u2014 and gives them a chance to connect with customers on a personal level.<\/p>\n
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Marsha Eaton, co\u2011owner of the Floral Gallery, says that connection is what makes the holiday special for small shops.<\/p>\n
“It’s a personal touch. We know a lot of our customers that come in. We have a lot of returning customers and we are a local business. We’ve been here for going on 40 years now.”<\/p>\n
Across the city, Valentine’s Day was hard to miss. From flowers to chocolates, Erie\u2011based businesses spent hours hand\u2011packing orders \u2014 a sweet reminder of how much work goes into this time of year.<\/p>\n
Tony Stefaneli, owner of Romolo\u2019s Chocolates, says they take pride in what they do.<\/p>\n
“We try to do whatever we can for the community and we try to put out the best absolute product in the country and people are responding, so it’s absolutely wonderful.”<\/p>\n
Whether shoppers are looking for custom bouquets, sweet treats, or a fun night out, many say they\u2019re making it a priority to find something personal this holiday.<\/p>\n
From classic floral arrangements to stuffed animals almost as big as the customers buying them, people are coming in from all over the region to find the perfect gift.<\/p>\n
Customer Donald Lawrence says local shops offer something special.<\/p>\n
“Came in local shop, got a lot of different bears, a lot of different flowers \u2014 selection that I can’t quite find anywhere else.”<\/p>\n
For many business owners, Valentine\u2019s Day isn\u2019t just about sales \u2014 it\u2019s about community. They say when people choose local, everyone benefits.<\/p>\n
Bertrand Artigues, owner of Cloud 9, says seeing the community out and about is what makes the day worth it.<\/p>\n
“Community, I think, and all that \u2014 just to see a lot of people coming out downtown, it’s just awesome.”<\/p>\n
Local businesses say even one purchase can make a big difference \u2014 especially during one of the busiest times of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valentine’s Day brought a surge of customers to local shops across Erie, with business owners saying they saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137,50064],"class_list":{"0":"post-114405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news","11":"tag-valentine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}